The Pact (11 page)

Marcus

I
sat in my BMW with the top dropped.
My BMW
—I liked the sound of that. It had a nice ring to it. I pumped the music as I waited for Michelle. If she didn’t get a move on, we’d be late for the Lil Wayne concert, and I didn’t want to miss one minute of the show. Just to set the tone for the evening, I slipped in Lil Wayne’s CD and tested my speakers. The music sounded nice as it drifted into the air, and probably woke up everyone who was sleeping.

Dressed in a pair of tight jeans that looked as if she’d painted them on and a blouse that actually showed cleavage, Michelle hopped into the car. She had left the pop-bottle glasses behind and must have been wearing a pair of contacts. Her hair hung to her shoulders in curls, and I couldn’t stop staring at her.

“Let’s go, Marcus. We gotta pick up Andre.”

I continued to stare.

“What, boy, dang!” she said. “Quit staring at me.”

“It’s just…you look so different.” I smiled at Michelle. “I didn’t even recognize you at first. I mean, you actually look…like…like a real girl….”

She rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Marcus, and drive.”

I put the car in Reverse and headed out of the parking lot. Every now and then I would glance over at Michelle, just to see if she was real—or to see if she was just a figment of my imagination. I pinched her just to make sure.

“What is your problem?” She squealed when I pinched her. “Stop acting so stupid, Marcus.”

“Sorry.” I laughed, and then turned into Andre’s apartment complex. Before I could blow the horn, he was already heading toward the car, dressed in baggy jeans and a Tall T, with a fitted cap on his head.

“This you, dog?” he asked, checking out the car, and then hopped into the backseat.

“This is me.” I grinned. Knew that I was styling and profiling in my new car.

Andre was looking at Michelle as if he didn’t recognize her. When she said, “What are you looking at, fart face?” he knew exactly who she was.

“Michelle?” he asked. “Dang, girl! You look like…like a real girl.”

“That’s what I said.” I had to laugh at the fact that Andre and I had the same thoughts about Michelle’s new look.

“Both of you are stupid.” Michelle pretended to pout and looked out the window. “I knew Andre was stupid, but you, Marcus?”

“Hey, we’re just saying that you look good, Michelle. You should take it as a compliment.”

“Word,” Andre agreed, “that’s all we’re saying.”

Lil Wayne bounced around onstage, his dreadlocks swaying from side to side as he spat out fresh rhymes on the microphone. Girls in the front row were going crazy, screaming, some of them crying. Several of them had their camera phones out in the air and were snapping pictures of Lil Wayne. The music was so loud, and the bass was unreal. Everybody in the house was bouncing to the music.

Dwayne Carter was Lil Wayne’s birth name, and I couldn’t help thinking that we were probably distant cousins somewhere down the line. Especially since he was from the seventeenth ward of New Orleans, and my family was from New Orleans. And the fact that he was currently attending the University of Houston really struck me as ironic, since I now called Houston my home. So many similarities, I couldn’t wait to corner him backstage and ask him a few questions, find out if we were really related.

Unfortunately, Michelle had misplaced the backstage passes, and we couldn’t get past security. She claimed that she’d had them in the back pocket of her jeans when she’d left the house but explained to the security guard that somewhere between her house and the Toyota Center, they must’ve fallen on the floor.

“Sure they did,” he said sarcastically, his body forming a barrier between us and backstage.

No matter what she said, he wasn’t trying to hear it.

“Let’s just go, Michelle,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is to me, Marcus.” She was almost in tears. “I’ve been waiting all week just to talk to him. I wanted to get a picture of him with my camera phone. Why do you think I have on these stupid contacts, and this stupid outfit, and got my hair done?”

“I don’t know, maybe because that’s what normal girls do?” Andre said, and then laughed.

“Shut up, Andre.” She normally would’ve had a comeback for him, but now she didn’t even put up a fight.

“Michelle, it’s not that serious,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

I was glad I didn’t have to drag her out of the Toyota Center kicking and screaming. She left quietly, but I could tell that she was very disappointed. She’d had plans of meeting Lil Wayne face-to-face; probably had a whole speech prepared with things she wanted to say to him. I’d had no idea she liked him that much until that night.

Once in the car, we dropped the top and blasted the music. After everyone had agreed that they were hungry, I pulled the car into a late-night Mexican spot for a bite to eat. In Texas, Mexican restaurants were on every corner, like liquor stores were in the hood. We stepped inside, found a booth and ordered tacos, nachos and enchiladas. Michelle was feeling better about not getting to see Lil Wayne up close and personal, and before long she and Andre were going at it again with their insults.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot of our subdivision, it was almost three o’clock in the morning. Michelle had taken her heels off in the car and was now carrying them in her hand.

“Thanks for driving to the concert, Marcus,” she said.

“Thanks for getting the tickets for us. That was cool,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay, Marcus.”

I stuck the key into the door and stepped inside. Mom had left the lamp on in the living room, so I turned it off before heading to my bedroom. I changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt to sleep in, turned the radio on to the quiet storm. When I checked my phone, I had an unread text message, and I silently hoped it was from Indigo. It read: Thinking of you…Rena.

She had left it hours earlier, during the Lil Wayne concert. No need to respond now, I thought. Instead, I turned on the ceiling fan over my bed and listened to Sade sing “No Ordinary Love.”

Marcus

Fourth
of July.

Fireworks were illegal in Houston, but I couldn’t resist the urge to shoot a few M-80s. Even though they were illegal in Georgia, too, Pop and I still managed to make the drive to Chattanooga, Tennessee, every year and come back with paper bags filled with firecrackers, bottle rockets and M-80s to shoot off in celebration of our nation’s independence. Our neighbors usually started popping firecrackers two weeks before the Fourth of July, but Pop made me wait until at least a couple of days before. And late at night on the Fourth of July, after everyone had gone inside and all the evidence had been swept away, Pop and I would sneak out back and shoot our M-80s in the middle of the night. My dog, Killer, would hide underneath the porch with his head covered and howl. I loved to hear Gloria’s mouth when she realized that the noise was coming from our backyard. She would be fussing the whole time we were outside, but Pop never gave in, and I was glad. It was the one tradition that we still shared, Pop and I, and he didn’t allow Gloria to steal it away.

When I thought of the guy who would soon become my new stepfather, I wondered if he would drive me to a place where M-80s were sold and if he’d shoot them in the middle of the night with me. He didn’t seem like the type to buy illegal fireworks, let alone shoot them, even though everybody did it anyway. In fact, he’d probably have me arrested if he knew that I had a bag full of M-80s hidden underneath my bed. I didn’t trust him at all.

Mom and I didn’t have any traditions together. I hadn’t spent much time with her over the years, and definitely not long enough to start any new traditions. But all that would have to change. We’d have to start our own traditions, just like Pop and I had. Today would be a good day to start.

“Ma, what you doing today?” I asked her.

“I thought we might fire up the grill and throw a few steaks out there. Leon’s coming over later,” she said. “What would you like to do, Marcus?”

“Well, there’s this music festival at the park today. I’ve been hearing about it on the radio. You wanna go?”

“Marcus, it’s hot out there.” She frowned. “It’s been years since I’ve been to a concert in the park.”

“Well, that’s why you should go. You’re always working, and never have enough time to just chill,” I told her. “Besides, me and you…we need to start a new Fourth of July tradition.”

“That’s sweet, Marcus, but I’ve got some work I need to finish up,” she said. “I’m gonna pass.”

“Okay, Ma, cool.” I was disappointed but tried to disguise just how much.

I fixed myself a plate filled with eggs, sausage and toast. Sat down at the bar and ate breakfast as my mother spread paperwork out on the sofa. I noticed that she had taken steaks out of the freezer to thaw, and I figured that our tradition would be to fire up the grill on the balcony and cook them to perfection, and then I’d eat mine alone because she would be too busy working. What an exciting Fourth of July.

When I’d finished eating, I headed for the shower, put on a pair of jean shorts and my Phat Farm shirt and decided to go see what was going on at the pool. There was a community barbecue and pool party scheduled for the day, and I wanted to see if anybody special had decided to show up.

The music wasn’t bad; they had someone mixing CDs—it was a combination of old-school and new-school, and the crowd was just as mixed. Old people and young people alike hung out at the pool, talking, swimming and relaxing in lawn chairs. Small children were running about and chasing each other all over the pool area. Somebody’s dad had a grill fired up, and some woman placed a tablecloth on a round plastic table filled with packages of hot dog and hamburger buns.

I finally spotted someone I knew—Michelle—and briskly walked toward her. She was sitting on the side of the pool sipping some punch in a plastic cup. A paperback book lay in her lap facedown.

“What you reading, girl?”

“This book my mom bought me,” she said. “I’m not much of a reader, but she kept blabbing on and on about these books…. It’s a new line of books that are supposed to be about black kids like us, written in our language…yada, yada, yada…”

I took the book from Michelle’s lap, lost her page as I looked at the cover. There were two beautiful black girls on the cover—looked like a couple of models.

“Are they girl books?” I asked.

“No, I think they’re for everybody.”

I turned the book over and read the back of it. The plot sounded very interesting; made me want to read the book.

“How many of these you got?”

“She bought me three of them. I have two more in the house,” she said. “Why, you wanna read one?”

“I like the sound of this one,” I said, and pulled up a lawn chair next to Michelle, plopped down into it.

“You can’t read that one, Marcus. I’ve already started it, and it’s actually pretty good,” Michelle said. “I’ll go get you the other two out of the house. You can read one of them. But not this one.”

“Fine, go get them.”

Before Michelle even reached the gate of the pool, my nose was already buried in the first chapter of her book. I was hooked by the first few sentences and found it very interesting that the conversation that the characters were having sounded just like a conversation I would have with my friends. Michelle was gone at least ten minutes, and when I finally saw her head bouncing down the stairs of her condo unit, I was already on the third chapter. There was no way she was getting this book back. I had to find out what happened next.

I stuck the book into the back pocket of my shorts and took off in the opposite direction of the pool’s entrance, headed toward the showers. I hid behind the wall, peeping around the corner until I saw Michelle looking for me. She did this for a few more minutes and then decided to plop down in a lawn chair when she couldn’t find me. She opened one of the books that she had in her hand, started flipping through the pages. Soon she was reading. I snuck from behind the wall, headed out of the pool area, across the parking lot and up the stairs to my house. Michelle never looked up.

Mom was still working in the living room, papers spread out all over the sofa and floor, when I passed through. I left her alone and headed for my bedroom. Lying across my bed, I pulled the book out of my back pocket, opened it up and got lost in the pages again. I liked to read, mostly science fiction stories and magazines like
Vibe
and
Sports Illustrated.
I rarely read regular fiction like this. Most of the time the characters didn’t look like me, and if they did, they weren’t my age and they sounded corny. But I could totally relate to the characters in the book I’d swiped from Michelle. It had me mesmerized, even though it looked like a girl book on the outside—inside, the pages revealed so much more.

Just as I reached the sixteenth chapter, there was a light tap on my door. Mom stuck her head inside.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading this book that I stole from Michelle,” I told her.

“It must be pretty good, because I haven’t heard a peep from you all day.” She had changed into a sundress and had pulled her hair up. “I came to see if you still wanted to go to that festival in the park.”

“You serious?” I laid the book down and sat up in bed.

“Yes.” She smiled.

“Well, let’s go, then!”

I didn’t know what had made my mother change her mind, but I was glad she had. I slipped my shoes on and followed her to the kitchen. She’d already packed a cooler filled with Cherry Cokes and bottled water, and she handed it to me to carry. With blankets and a can of Off! to fight off the mosquitoes, we headed to the park.