“Sweet!” Brody and Nate crashed off into the woods, while Anthony skipped flat rocks on the water.
After lunch, they rowed closer to the group, partly because they didn’t know where they were going next but mostly because a teacher had yelled at them. There was talking and teasing between the boats, and a few kids used their paddles to slap water at one another. Anthony didn’t take part in any of the horseplay, though. And he wouldn’t let Nate and Brody do it, either. His clothes were new and he didn’t want to get them wet.
They reached the final island, and Mr. Hawley and the other teachers got the kids to work. Soon the entire camp was set up and Anthony relaxed in the mouth of his tent, watching everything. Nate squirted girls with a water bottle, Brody and a hippie girl named Venus slipped into the woods, and the Brooklyn boys traded big-city stories in front of a wide-eyed audience.
“Tired?”
Anthony looked up to see Ms. Atwood smiling down at him. She was young and pretty but way too nosy. It was the third or fourth time that day that she’d ambushed him with a question. “I’m straight,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, I’m okay. I’m not tired.”
“Oh.” Still grinning, she sat down close to him. “Well, that makes one of us. I’ll sleep like a log tonight.” She laughed and looked at Anthony, clearly hoping that he would laugh, too. He didn’t, though, and eventually she put a hand on his arm. “What’s the matter? Are you homesick?”
“No.”
“Are you lonely?” She glanced at Paul and Khalik holding court, and then back at Anthony. “Those guys seem pretty fun. Have you met them yet?”
“I met ’em. They’re straight.”
“Oh,” she said, lighting up. “Are they from the same part of the city as you?”
Anthony looked at her, shook his head, and then frowned. Did they think that every black person in the world came from New York? “I’m from Cleveland, Ms. Atwood. I wish people around here would get that right.”
She shifted uncomfortably, and blood rushed to her face. Anthony was glad that she was embarrassed. “That was a dumb assumption,” she said sincerely. “It’ll never happen again, Tony. I promise.”
Anthony rolled his eyes and caught movement at the edge of the woods. Brody came out, smiling wide and weaving between the trees. Venus emerged a few seconds later and teetered over to a group of girls. Anthony sighed. Maybe he should have smoked up when he had the chance.
“Don’t worry,” Ms. Atwood said, rubbing his arm again. “Making friends takes time.”
He drew a breath but then let out the air. Telling the truth wouldn’t get her off his back. “I’m making plenty of friends, Ms. Atwood,” he said. “For real. Everything’s fine.”
She stared at him awhile and then smiled. “You mean straight, right? Everything’s straight?”
“Yeah, Ms. Atwood,” Anthony said, grinning. “Straight as a gate.”
After dinner, Khalik started telling more New York stories. Most of them were violent and filled with blazing guns. The tales sounded fake to Anthony, or at least exaggerated. He could tell that Paul smelled the bullshit, too, by the way that the other Brooklyn kid kept frowning.
“I got a story,” Anthony said before he could stop himself. Everyone looked, and he suddenly felt hot.
“He talks?” one of the other kids said, and a few of them laughed. Anthony said to forget about it, but then they all urged him on.
“Okay,” he said, and then swallowed. At first he was going to tell them about Mookie, but he changed his mind. He wasn’t ready to share that story yet, especially with a bunch of rich white kids.
“There was this old dude who used to live on my street,” he said. “Mr. McKinley. And he was mean as shit. He used to sit upstairs on his porch all day and yell at anybody who came near his grass. But these girls, Delores and Darnetta, lived in the downstairs half of the house, and we used to sit on their porch and play Uno.” A few people nodded at the mention of the card game. It helped Anthony relax. “So one day we were down there, playing; me, the two sisters, my friend Floyd, and this dude named T-Bone. Mr. McKinley started yelling at us, but we mostly ignored him. Old dude got quiet after a while and we kinda forgot he was up there. Then all this water came down on top of T-Bone and he started screaming. We all jumped out the way and saw Mr. McKinley standing up there with a big pot in his hands, laughing his ass off.”
“Oh my God,” someone said from the other side of the fire. “He poured hot water on him? Is that true?”
Anthony nodded, feeling a twisted sense of civic pride. Brooklyn and Khalik could kiss his ass. “T-Bone went and told his big brother, Junebug,” Anthony continued. “Bug was just outta jail and already crazy. Later on that night, he broke into Mr. McKinley’s house and straight killed him. Cut him up in the bathtub . . .”
“Oh my God.”
“But that ain’t the scary part,” Anthony said. “This happened when I was in the third grade, and ain’t nobody lived in that house ever since. But somehow the front grass always stay cut, and if you go sit on the steps by yourself, drops of hot water come down on your head. . . .”
At first there was silence and Anthony wished he hadn’t said anything. But then came the grins and questions.
“Cut him to pieces?”
“Did the police ever catch him?”
“To pieces?”
“Is that really a true story?”
“As true as I’m sitting here right now,” Anthony said, even though he had lied about part of it. Mr. McKinley, the hot water, and the murder were real, but the house was only empty, not haunted. They didn’t have to know that, though. It was better for them to believe in the angry spirit protecting his lawn, and that T-Bone’s brother was still walking around somewhere, with his razor.
CHAPTER FOUR
They got back to campus after the camping trip and found it full of upperclassmen. Most of the ninth graders lingered outside to try to meet the older kids, but Anthony went straight to the bathroom. For days he had flatly refused to squat in the woods and he was just about ready to bust. Inside the stall, he saw that someone had scratched BELTON DIPLOMAS just above the roll. Next to that was a poem about a man from Nantucket, plus a few faded names and crude cartoons. Anthony smiled at a few of them and shook his head at others. He would get a Magic Marker and add to the wall, just as soon as he had something to say.
When he was done, he took a shower and then went back to an empty room. From upstairs came the sounds of doors opening and closing, of loud music and sophomores talking and laughing. How many of them came from houses with swimming pools? How many had butlers and their own bank accounts? Probably all of them. And they would all grow up to one day take their parents’ places, running the world and ruining it for poor people.
He was hungry, and Anthony realized that lunch was nearly over. He got dressed and joined Paul and Khalik in the dining hall. They ate in front of the big windows and looked out for black faces, but didn’t find any. The New York boys started talking about basketball, about Brooklyn neighborhoods and a dozen other things Anthony didn’t know. And they called each other “son” and “kid” all the time, especially when they got excited.