In the distance, beyond the cars and minibuses, taxi drivers shout their destinations, competing for customers. Beyond them, sea air wafts over the sea wall. It mixes with the heat and the bodies, the car exhausts and the smell of fish. My white T-shirt and blue overalls cling to my body.
I run to catch up with Mama as she navigates the roundabout with cars speeding around the corner. We pass the courthouse, only to cross over again to the market. I try to blow air on my skin, but my breath is as warm as the heat and makes no difference. I wipe the sweat away.
Mama turns as we approach the market. ‘If you don’t see your father—’
‘—don’t go in the water,’ I groan. ‘Mama, I won’t.’
‘I’ll come and get you when I’m done,’ she says, planting a kiss on my forehead before disappearing into a crowd of people.
I wipe her kiss away, afraid someone from school might have seen, then take the small gap between the wall that separates the market from the beach and walk down a narrow path. The path stops right on the sand, and that’s where I stop too. My breath catches in my throat as I look out at the sea. Waves crash on to the white sand and I step back, as though they will reach me from here. I grip the board as my breathing gets quicker.
Calvin and Anton share the water with four or five out-of-town surfers. Tourists who travel around the world to surf. There is a whoop as they catch a good wave. Anton’s older brother Junior sits on the hot sand talking to a girl, with his perfectly white teeth and his newly cut Afro fade. Occasionally he glances at the sea to check on Calvin and Anton. I’m surprised he gave up his time to watch them. Usually Junior is too busy with girls for his brother. But I guess things have changed.
I search the beach for Papa and spot him in the distance cleaning his boat. I shuffle along the sand until my back is against the wall, and that’s where I stay until Calvin finds me.
He must have spotted me when he came back in from riding the waves, even though I tried to stay hidden. He beckons me over. When I don’t move, he drops his board in the sand and approaches.
‘You’re here,’ he says, looking down at me, water dripping from the curls in his hair. He observes me for a second, then sits next to me.
I feel so stupid that I came down here thinking everything would be OK. Now Calvin will know how scared I am. He will tell Gaynah, and she will use it against me like she does everything else.
‘Pick leaf tomorrow,’ he says, resting his elbows on his knees. He grins at me. ‘You ready to lose?’
I scoff, rolling my eyes. ‘Not this year. We have a plan that is going to annihilate you all.’
He laughs. ‘Big word. Let’s see if you remember it tomorrow when you lose.’
Chapter Three
The game pick leaf has three rules:
You can only pick a leaf from the tree named by the appointed leader.
The leaf must come from the tree itself and not the ground.
Never, ever steal the leaf from your opponent. That is an automatic disqualification for your entire team.
The leader, usually Calvin or one of his friends, chooses the name of the tree. The first one to pick a leaf from that tree and bring it back to the starting point is the winner of that round.
The game always starts from my front yard. Maybe because our house is at a point higher than the others, making the race back to the finish more exciting. We push and shove our competition out of the way, even going as far as to step over them if it gets us ahead.
Or maybe it’s because our house is surrounded by the most trees: a guinep tree hanging over Uncle Albert’s house below, at the back of the house a mango tree, and a banana grove down a steep embankment.
Eldorath is the only other person with a garden filled with trees. He is the only one around here who lives in a big house too. But it’s too far up on the hill for any of us. It used to be a plantation house, back when the British owned our island. Eldorath is family, but you would never know it. He doesn’t come to our house every night like the rest of the village. He doesn’t come around at Christmas or birthdays. In fact, we hardly ever see Eldorath. Not any more. Not since the town turned against him.
He doesn’t have the most popular tree, though. He doesn’t have a guava tree.
If the call is for a guava leaf, you have to trek down the hill, along the dirt road past Pastor Brown’s house. Then left, down a steep embankment to where Ms Gee lives, behind a forest of trees.
Ms Gee is blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other. Mama says she might be the most miserable person she knows.
There is a joke around the hill that if you need a knife, you can ask Ms Gee, because her tongue can cut anything. Ms Gee doesn’t leave her house unless it’s life or death. All she does is sit on her veranda in her rocking chair screaming some poor kid’s name to help her with her chores. She doesn’t pick on anyone in particular—we’ve all had our turn cleaning Ms Gee’s yard or washing her clothes.
But she has the one thing we all want: the guava tree. The one tree that sends us into a panic. No one wants to enter Ms Gee’s yard for the guava leaf. There is one other guava tree in the village. It’s a ten-minute trek down the hill, outside the school. Most of the kids will go for that tree, but not me and Gaynah. We know that Ms Gee’s tree is worth the risk, if we do it properly. Going into Ms Gee’s yard means extra points for sheer bravery. But also, her house is closer. If we can creep into Ms Gee’s yard without her knowing, we can be back with a leaf before the other kids have even reached the school. An easy win for us.
Amber Wilson, the taller of the twins, and the bossier of the two, picks the teams today. She splits us into groups, she and her sister in one, Anton and Calvin in the other, which leaves me with Gaynah. Amber gives me a ‘sorry, not sorry’ shrug.
Calvin offers me the look of pity that I see in everyone’s eyes these days. ‘Want me to be on your team?’ he asks.
Anton isn’t happy with this and pulls Calvin back.
‘No,’ I say, folding my arms firmly against my chest.
I can hear Gaynah huffing to my left. She turns her head away, nose in the air, as though she doesn’t care that Calvin invited himself on to my team. But she cares.
I don’t want Calvin on my team anyway. He is my main competition, and I already told him I was going to beat him.
It was always meant to be me and Gaynah against them. It’s one of the few times Gaynah has agreed with me that we can’t let the other teams win. But we haven’t spoken since yesterday. I’m still mad at her for calling me a baby, and she’s obviously mad too, because her lips are pursed tightly together and she refuses to even look at me.
When it comes time to find out the tree we are picking from, of course Amber chooses the guava tree. It’s the one that causes the most chaos, and the one she and her sister are most certain they will win.
Gaynah and I may not be friends, but she needs me to help her get the leaf. A win for her means status among the other groups, and status means the attention of Calvin Brown.
I don’t care for any of their friendships. All I want is to prove that Gaynah can’t do any of this without me. She needs me.
We follow the others down the hill. Each group splits in different directions with excited squeals.