“You mean the girl who’s been on honor roll since the first grade?”
Bowie scratches the top of his trusty Steelers skullcap. That cap is stapled to his head—teachers don’t even bother to ask him to remove it anymore. His curly hairs poke out from the front, and they look like they’ve been dipped in grape Kool-Aid.
I shake my head at him. “Your hair’s purple. How am I supposed to school you when your hair’s fickin’ purple?”
Bowie adjusts his skull cap and tucks his hair back inside. “Got bored last night.”
“Pick up a book next time. Not a bottle of Dimetapp.”
Bowie lets out a silent laugh to tell me to fick off. He’s weird. Hella weird, as he’d put it. One of the only white kids to not be on Youngs Mill’s swim or golf team, he latched onto me in ninth grade after I didn’t pick him last in gym for dodgeball. Almost three years later and I still can’t shake him off, no matter how hard I try. Not that I try that hard or anything. Bowie’s the zig to my zag, the Chewbacca to my Han Solo—without him, I’d be pretty one-note. We even created our own cuss words to feel badass around adults. MiMi still thinks fick is some kind of texting acronym.
Gilbert announces it’s time for the Pledge, and Booker motions for us to stand.
“To be continued,” I say to Bowie as I climb to my feet. I mouth the words to the Pledge of Allegiance but don’t say them aloud. I stopped doing that about a year ago. Don’t have the balls to take a knee like three of the football players in class but figured my silent protest would do for now.
As we reach the climax of the Pledge, Mrs. Pratt, the school counselor, slinks into the room with her designer heels and chunky earrings she got from her trip to Panama or Trinidad or some other place more exotic than Bad News, Virginia. She keeps a map on her office wall with pushpins outlining her summer travels.
“This could be your map one day,” she likes to tell me before our mandatory class-scheduling sessions. Yeah right, lady, I want to say. Guys that look like me and come from my neighborhood don’t go no farther than Williamsburg for a vacation. I lost count of how many times I had to see the Jamestown Settlement.
I’m about to take my seat when I notice both Booker’s and Pratt’s eyes on me. I can’t help but glance at Bowie. This is the moment I’ve been dreading since I started charging clowns for papers last fall. Of course the moment I pull in Bowie, it all goes to hell. The hell you do? I mouth to Bowie. Bowie throws up his hands to show me they’re clean. It’s Camila’s turn to feel my scrutiny, but she stares back at me. Wide-eyed.
“Can I borrow you for a minute, Jay?” Mrs. Pratt asks, inevitably.
“Do I have a choice?” I ask, add a smile for good measure.
“Boy, go with Mrs. Pratt. Bowie will catch you up,” Mr. Booker orders.
My sneakers squeak louder than necessary as I follow Mrs. Pratt out of the classroom. Before we reach the school counseling office, I glance at the main entrance. Count how many steps it’ll take me to reach it. If I double-timed it, I could be out the door before Pratt even looked back at me. Make up some excuse about MiMi. She’s old, she fell. She needed me. It’ll give me some time to clear past assignments off the computer we all share in the kitchen. Maybe even dump my iPad somewhere.
“You want to take a seat, Jay?” Mrs. Pratt asks me.
I blink and I’m staring at Mrs. Pratt’s infamous dotted map. My feet failed me and led me right into her office. I fold into the chair across from her desk. Link my hands over my lap so they won’t shake.
“You probably already know why I brought you in here,” Mrs. Pratt says.
If not Bowie or Camila, did Meek sell me out? I’d rather have taken the ass whooping.
“Jay?”
I shove the thought out of my mind and give my full attention to Mrs. Pratt, who’s in full-on counseling mode. Leaning forward, giving me direct eye contact. The whole nine.
“Mrs. Chung told me she asked you to be co-editor of Run of the Mill,” she says.
A gush of air seeps out of my mouth and I float in Mrs. Pratt’s office. The lit magazine. Mrs. Pratt’s trying to bully me into joining that damn lit magazine. That’s all.
“She also told me that you said you’d get back to her,” she continues.
“Yeah, I did.” I settle more in my seat. Check out the blinds for dust, scope out any new thumbtacks in her map. Wonder what the hell is a Bhutan and why Pratt would want to visit it.
“Jay, that was two weeks ago. I have to ask—what’s the hold up?”
“I mean, it’s a lit mag,” I say, then shrug.
“Don’t do that.” Mrs. Pratt folds her arms across her chest. “Don’t play the cool guy routine with me. Not when I know how often you check books out of the media center each week. And not when I know you could list all Colson Whitehead’s books in order of publication.”
“First of all, run-of-the-mill basically means, well, basic. Not a strong selling point. Second of all, nobody reads print anymore,” I say. “Everyone’s too busy clicking and swiping.” Plus, time spent working on a lit mag means less time working, period. MiMi always said: “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.” I get what she means now. Pratt wouldn’t understand, though. She’s too busy traveling the world to see what’s going on in her own hood.
“See? Mrs. Chung needs your fresh ideas. You could propose a digital magazine instead. Maybe a new name.” Her hands dance in the air now, getting more and more jazzed up about something I didn’t sign on the dotted line for. “Besides, it’s not like you’re doing anything else, Jay. You’re not playing sports. Not doing any extracurriculars outside of Sunday school. You’re not even signed up for many AP classes even though you could probably do most of the work with your eyes closed. Colleges look at everything, and you’re nearing the end of your first semester of junior year.”
It’s like she’s been conspiring with MiMi. Everyone’s trying to box me up and ship me away for four years. It’s not that college hasn’t crossed my mind. It crosses everyone’s mind, even if it’s just a fleeting thought while taking a stroll or deuce. But I’ve done the research. Lots of people make good grades, so why would someone offer me a full ride instead of some other dopey black dude in my school? It’s not like I can handle a ball. Basically, if I wanted to go to college—a good college—I’d be relying on loans and MiMi. She’s done too much for me already. I have to pay her back, and a degree in African American lit isn’t going to cut it.
But man, studying African American lit would be pretty, well, lit. I could be sitting in a student union, arguing the merits of Alex Haley with a dreadlocked kid named Zahir who wears skirts over jeans as some kind of political statement. Maybe I’d have my own map in my dorm room, pushpins on the places I planned on visiting. Hell, maybe I’d even give Bhutan a chance. But that dream danced away the day Mom decided to crash our Chevy into the back of a squad car. If I went away for four years, who would take care of MiMi? Can’t necessarily rely on Nic anymore.
“Jay?” Pratt frowns. “I thought you wanted to go to college. Of course, there are other routes you could take, but I thought with your grades and—”