All American Boys (15 page)

Shannon couldn't hold it in anymore and burst out laughing. Then Carlos flashed a toothy smile.

“Sike, man. You know I wouldn't do you like that. I know her Daffy Duck–lookin' ass is the love of your life,” Carlos teased. When dealing with a clown like Carlos, the key is to never let him see you flustered. Never let him think you take him seriously. It's the opposite, come to think of it, of how we were trained to deal with police. With your friends, you
never
put your hands up. I have to admit, though, Los almost got me with that one.

“By the way, she asked about you today,” Shannon said.

“Word? What she say?” I asked, eager.

“Just that she and a bunch of other people were thinking about coming to visit you,” Shannon explained.

“No,” I waved my hand, as if I was waving off the thought of Tiffany coming. “No one can come. I don't want nobody to see me like this.”

“You sure?” Shannon asked.

“Yeah, man. Please. Tell everyone I'm fine. But no visitors.” I caught eyes with each of them to make sure they knew I was serious. I didn't need anybody else standing in front of me all
teary-eyed, or sitting on the edge of the bed feeling awkward. I'd already had enough of that

When I caught Carlos's eye, he jumped right back into form. “Man, can I finish
my
story?! Damn!” he said, all indignant.

“Yeah, yeah, go 'head,” I said, trying to rush him along.

“So, the girl I got a little closer to was, drumroll please!”

“Come on, man,” I huffed.

“You wanna know or not?”

“I don't really care.”

“Just give me a drumroll, bro. C'mon.”

I shook my head and started patting on my legs, doing my best to ignore the pricking feeling in my abdomen.

“Latrice Wilkes!” Carlos blurted this out like a dude squatting behind a couch waiting to yell
surprise
to an unsuspecting birthday boy. “Latrice ‘Silky' Wilkes.”

Now, Latrice Wilkes was no slouch. As a matter of fact, she was pretty much one of the coolest, prettiest girls in our class. And “Silky” really wasn't her nickname. That's just what we called her among each other, and I have no idea why.

“For real?” I was honestly surprised. I mean, Latrice was way out of Carlos's league. “Okay, okay, well, then why was it an
almost
?”

“Because . . .”

“Because then Latrice saw English,” Shannon interjected, with perfect timing.

“Whatever! It's because the cops came and messed my whole groove up,” Carlos shot back.

I laughed. Hard. Well, as hard as I could without feeling like my head was going to explode, or my ribs were going to rip through my chest. Once I finally got it under control, I said, “Well, listen, if it makes you feel any better, the cops messed my groove up too.”

None of them laughed. Not one of them. You could almost feel the temperature of the room drop, like the way light dims whenever a cloud floats in front of the sun. I was that cloud. So I changed the subject. “Anyway, what else is going on at school?”

“Same ol' shit. You ain't miss much except for the fact that everybody's talkin' about you,” Shannon explained.

“Yeah, you finally popular,” Carlos mocked. I couldn't figure out if he was trying to bring the mood back to a lighter tone, or if he was just trying to make up for getting crushed by Shannon. Or both. “This
might
even land you an actual date with Tiffany.”

“Please, I don't need no broken nose to get a girl.” The mere mention of it made the bandage itchy. I scratched it super gently.

“Take what you can get, bro. It's an easy layup,” Carlos replied.

“Too bad you didn't have all this layup knowledge when you were trying out for the team, huh?” I owed him a good
one for the
I almost got with Tiffany
joke. Redemption.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Me and Carlos went back and forth because it's what we do, but neither one of our hearts was in it. The jokes lacked punch. No zing. Just . . . flat. Like
The Family Circus
.

“Forget all that, man. When you getting outta here?” Shannon asked. He stretched his legs, crossed them at the ankles.

“The doctor just left right before y'all got here. He said my nose and ribs are healing fine, but they're still watching me because I got some internal bleeding. He said it hasn't gotten any worse, thank God, and that after a few more days I should be good to go.”

“Sweet,” Carlos said. Meant it.

“Cool,” Shannon said.

English didn't say nothing. He just stared at the TV like he was in a trance.

“English, you good?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, snapping out of it. “I just . . . I don't know, man. This is crazy. You know that's Guzzo's brother, right?”

“Guzzo?”

“Yeah, big giant goony kid on the team. His brother is the asshole who did this to you. Paul Galluzzo. That's why they call Guzzo, Guzzo. It's short for Galluzzo,” English explained.

“Wait, you tellin' me the ogre-looking dude on the team, that's his brother?” I asked.

“That's exactly what I'm telling you.”

“Has he said anything?”

“Not that I know of. Coach Carney won't let us talk about it,” English explained. “Says we gotta focus on the team and our season, and that's it, and to leave all this stuff at the door. Said he'd bench anybody who brought it on the court.”

“And you can't afford to be benched, dude. Especially since scouts are checkin' for you, hard,” I said.

“Yeah. But it's just nuts.”

“Yo, what I wanna know is, what the hell happened,” Shannon jumped in. “Since Carney's made it clear that I ain't allowed to ask Guzzo, let me hear your side of the story. I mean, English told us what Berry said, but I wanna hear it from you.”

That was my cue. I knew English had already heard most of it from his sister, but I still gave the fellas the play-by-play, hoping that somewhere in it, it would make sense. But it didn't. I grabbed a bag of chips, reached into my bag to grab my cell phone, a random lady tripped over me, and the next thing I know I was getting pressed out by the officer. There really wasn't anything else to the story as far as I was concerned. The cop and the clerk thought I was stealing and wouldn't give me a chance to explain.

“Did you resist?” Shannon asked.

“Why would I resist? C'mon, man, you know I was shook. Ain't no way I was resisting,” I said. “And when he got me on the ground, that's when he really started going in. Like, every time he hit me, I would move—who wouldn't—it
HURT!—
and then he'd tell me to stop moving. But I couldn't help it.”

“Shit,” Carlos said, his eyes full wide.

English was staring at the TV again, his face now becoming a fist, tight and angry. The room was stifling with a weird tension, this strange sadness, when finally Shannon spoke up. “English.”

English didn't respond.

“English!” Shannon snapped.

“What?” he snapped back. And that's when I could tell this whole thing was getting to him. It was stirring him up inside in a way that I had never seen before. I mean, this was English Jones, the coolest dude on Earth.

English braced his hands on either arm of the chair, and for a second I thought he was going to throw it. But then he drew a deep breath and simply said, “We got practice. We gotta go.”

He looked from Shannon to me, his eyes slightly glassy. He stood up. Shannon stood with him.

“Yo, what we gonna do about this?” Carlos asked, watching English and Shannon grab their bags. He ran his finger
along his nose like he always did when he was thinking of something he probably shouldn't have been thinking of.

“I don't know. But I'm telling you, Coach ain't playing,” Shannon said, flinging his bag up on his shoulder.

“Just leave it alone,” I said.

“Naw, man, we gotta do something, 'Shad. I mean, maybe you can't do nothing, 'cause you in here. And maybe these two can't do nothing because of punk-ass Carney. But I'm not on the team.” Carlos caught my eye and stopped me from cracking a basketball joke before I could even open my mouth. “So
I
can do something.
Somebody
gotta do something.”

“Los, just don't be stupid,” English warned, coming over to the bed and giving me five.

Carlos didn't respond. Instead he just asked me if I wanted him to stay. Carlos didn't have anywhere to be. He never had anywhere to be.

“Naw, I'm cool,” I said. “I'm sure my parents and my crazy brother will be by here later.”

“Word,” from Carlos.

“We'll be back tomorrow,” from Shannon, reaching out for my hand.

Only a nod from English. And then it was just me, the TV, and the shadows, fades, and outlines of my art again. I thought about the fact that English and Shannon wanted to do something but were afraid to break the rules. I understood. I
did. But the look on English's face was a look I had never seen. He was struggling with it all. Maybe it was what happened to me that was eating him. Or maybe it was the fact that he felt like he couldn't do anything about it. And then I thought about what kind of ridiculous plan Carlos might cook up. I just didn't want him to put himself in some stupid situation where he got his ass beat too. Even though I hadn't had to put myself in any “situation” for that to happen.

I glanced at the TV. My face, again. Wasn't there anything else going on? I mean, there had to be something going on in the Middle East, right? Celebrity drama? Anything besides me?

I wasn't sure what to do about any of it, or if I even wanted anyone else to do anything on my behalf. The looks on my friends' and family's faces—it hurt me to see them that way. Especially knowing that it hurt them to see me this way. I didn't deserve this. None of us did. None of us.

I grabbed the remote, pointed it at the screen, and hit the power button to click it off. But it didn't go off. I clicked it again. Nothing. I slapped the remote in my palm a few times, because that's what you do to, I guess, activate the batteries. Clicked again. Nothing.

Now, split screen. Galluzzo's face, next to mine. Him in his uniform. Me in mine. But we were not the same. We were
not
the same.

I didn't deserve this.
Click.
Nothing.
Click.
Nothing. My eyes began to well up and my throat suddenly felt scorched, as if I had swallowed fire.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Nothing. Fuck.
Click.
Please. Please turn off.
Please.
His face. Next to mine. I didn't do nothing. I didn't do nothing. His face. Made my bones hurt. A scrapy feeling in the marrow stuff. Fuck.
Click.
Nothing.
Click.
NOTHING. I couldn't take it anymore, and before I did something stupid like throw the remote across the room, smashing it into hundreds of plastic pieces that I wish were Galluzzo's face, I leaped from the bed in a panic and yanked the cord from the wall, which turns out was also stupid because it felt like giant hands that I couldn't see were ripping me in half.

But the TV was off. My face next to his, gone. Finally.

O
n Tuesday morning, everything changed—
for real
.

Spray painted in wide, loopy neon-blue letters like a script of stars so bright they glowed in the day, and stretched so large it covered the entire sidewalk at the foot of the front stairs, was a graffiti tag. A tag so huge every single student, teacher, administrator, staff member, parent, and visitor to Springfield Central had to step over or around, and could not miss:

RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY

Everybody was staring at it, taking photos of it, posing with it, and definitely talking about it. As soon as I saw it, I felt a ball of shredded nerves unwind and whip around my
stomach.
Oh shit!
And my first thought was, probably just like everyone else's: Who'd done it?

At first you could tell the teachers were deliberately avoiding discussing it, but it was pretty much all we (the students) talked about between classes or at lunch. I say “we,” but I was still trying to take Coach's advice and ignore all distractions, so when it came up, I tried not to engage. But it was frigging impossible. At lunch, kids were taking food from the cafeteria and heading out to the front steps, eating and talking while sitting near the giant graffiti tag, but I avoided that and looked for some of the guys on the team in the cafeteria. We'd always sat together at lunch, only in fragments, never the whole team together, but with the impromptu gathering out front, everything had shifted.

Only Guzzo, Dwyer, Hales, and Reegan sat inside—the four other white guys on the team. Guzzo looked up and saw me in line. He waved me over to their table, and although he'd ignored me all day yesterday, his interest now kind of ticked me off. See, that wasn't Guzzo's style. Usually, he'd let others call the shots. But today he was too insistent, beckoning me like he was some kind of Mafia boss and I was supposed to hustle right over to him.