Darnell Rock Reporting (5 page)

He went into his bedroom, put on the television and his radio, and saw there was an envelope on his bed. In the envelope was a picture of him that Tamika had drawn. It wasn't bad, either. He opened his drawer and put it with the other pictures that Tamika had drawn of him.

He looked at his books, thought about starting his homework, and then began thinking about Sweeby Jones.

“Hey, Tamika!” he called out.

Tamika arrived at his door. “Speak, O turkey!”

“Dad home?”

“Yeah, but he went to the dentist,” Tamika said. “You in trouble again?”

“No,” Darnell said, a little annoyed that Tamika would say that he was in trouble. “But you know that guy that stole the potato?”

“Yeah?”

“I saw him in a lot over on Jackson Avenue,” Darnell said. “And there was another guy there with him who was a friend of Dad's.”

“What do I care?” Tamika asked.

“Later for you!”

“You like my picture?”

“Nope!”

Tamika went to Darnell's drawer to see if her picture had been placed with the others. She saw that it had been and smiled.

When his father came home his jaw was swollen and he went right to bed. Darnell would have to ask him about Sweeby another time. Maybe it was better, Darnell thought. He didn't want to talk in front of Tamika, and there was no way he could have a talk with his father without his sister listening if she was home.

“Stupid!” It was Wednesday afternoon, and Angie Cruz was screaming in the schoolyard. “I've never seen anything so stupid!”

There were a thousand kids running around the schoolyard at lunchtime, and Chris had told Jackson Holiday to pitch him a hardball. Jackson threw it underhand, and Chris hit it as hard as he could, and
it went off his bat like a shot. It was a great shot except Chris was facing the school and the ball went right into the general office.

Everybody was screaming and getting out of the way of the falling glass, and Tony O! was there trying to figure out if the hit would have been a home run on the baseball field.

“This could be a big story,” Tony O! was saying.

Mr. Baker stuck his head out another window, and a group of sixth-graders instantly pointed at Chris.

“FU be right down!” he roared.

Some of the kids and two of the teachers cleared out of the yard as quickly as they could. By the time Mr. Baker reached the yard almost everyone had stopped what they were doing to look at him.

“Can you tell time,
Mr.
McKoy?” Mr. Baker's neck was swollen as he leaned over Chris.

“Yes, sir.” Chris swallowed hard.

“Then at exactly eight-thirty tomorrow morning I expect to see your face in my office! Do you understand that?”

This time Chris's “Yes, sir” was so quiet the rest of the kids in the yard could hardly hear it.

Linda showed up with her notepad. Eddie Latimer was there, too, taking pictures of Mr. Baker dropping his attaché case.

“Get that camera out of here!” Mr. Baker yelled.

“Fm from the school newspaper!” Eddie said. He looked hurt that Mr. Baker had yelled at him.

Mr. Baker just stuffed his papers back into his attaché
case and stalked across the yard to the parking lot.

“It was an accident/' Chris was saying.

“Don't worry about it,” Darnell said. “He'll probably just suspend you, have your mother come to school, and hang you by your thumbs for a little while.”

“Man …”

That was Chris's way of saying that he knew he was in big trouble.

Miss Green came out the front door and made everybody go inside before they cut themselves on the glass.

Darnell went back into the school as soon as he could. You didn't mess with Mr. Baker when he got mad.

“Darnell.” Miss Seldes called Darnell as he passed the library and asked if he had time to give her a hand. “Just a few minutes,” she said.

Darnell didn't like Miss Seldes always talking to him like that. He liked her, but he didn't like a teacher being so friendly. It made him look a little bad, especially in front of the Corner Crew.

“What happened out there?” Miss Seldes asked.

“Chris hit a ball through a window,” Darnell said. “It wasn't such a big thing, but all the sixth-graders are out there.”

“And they're not nearly as mature as you seventh-graders, right?” Miss Seldes had that funny smile on her face that she got sometimes.

“That's right,” Darnell said. “I'm more mature than I used to be a year ago.”

“You probably are,” Miss Seldes said. “Put the books on the cart according to the first number.”

Darnell started to put the books on the cart, looking at the ones that were being borrowed. He knew that Miss Seldes was going to ask him some more questions. That's the way she was.

“The newspaper's going all right,” Darnell said.

“You write any big stories yet?”

“I don't have any big stories to write,” Darnell said. “I like sports and stuff like that, but Tony O! is the sports guy. I don't like the other stuff.”

“What's the other stuff?”

“World peace,” Darnell said. “Stuff like that. I mean, like, I want world peace, but I just don't want to write about it.”

“Maybe you're more a human interest kind of writer,” Miss Seldes said.

“What's that?”

“Well, you ever see somebody and wonder what they're all about?” Miss Seldes asked.

“Sort of.” Darnell thought about Sweeby Jones.

“Perhaps you should write about people you want to know about,” Miss Seldes said. “If you're interested in a person or persons, then other people might be interested in that person if you wrote about it.”

“Could be,” Darnell said. “Could be.”

He had thought about not going to the meeting of the
Gazette
staff, but now he thought he would go and ask if he could just write about somebody who interested him.

The bell rang and he had to go to homeroom. Miss
Seldes asked him if he wanted to borrow a book and he said no.

The day dragged by slowly, and everything that could go wrong went wrong. Darnell had forgotten his math book, which they never used in class, and Mr. Ohrbach got angry.

“It's a good thing your head is screwed on,” Mr. Ohrbach was saying, “or you would leave that home, too!”

Darnell didn't think it was funny. He had heard it a hundred times and the same people always laughed. He felt like getting up and walking out of math, but he knew that if one member of the Corner Crew got into trouble—and Chris was already in trouble for breaking the window—then the punishments would get worse and worse.

The
Gazette
staff meeting was supposed to start right after the final bell of the day, but Darnell had to copy the homework assignments from English and didn't get to the
Gazette
office until the fight between Kitty and Linda Gold had started. Linda was one of the most popular girls in the school and maybe the smartest. Darnell figured that if she quit the
Gazette
the paper would be in deep trouble. And from the way she looked he knew she meant it when she told Kitty that she didn't need to be on the paper.

“So quit,” Kitty said. “If you don't need to be on the paper, then don't be on it!”

“You can't fire me,” Linda said. “I'll quit when I'm good and ready!” She dropped three quarters in the soda machine.

“What's going on?” Mark asked.

“She wants to print this.” Kitty pushed a sheet of paper across the desk. Mark read it aloud.

“Wait a minute.” Jessica, who had been half listening to the conversation and half doing her math homework, looked up. “Everybody knows that Chris McKoy broke the window. Where was the crisis?”

“How did he know for sure it was Chris?” Linda said. “And how did he know it wasn't some gang or something who deliberately threw a ball through the window?”

“Maybe he asked somebody who saw it,” Jennifer said.

“Then he should have told us,” Linda said. “It would have taken only a minute or so.”

“I don't think we should have that story in the paper,” Mark said. “It's only going to get Mr. Baker madder.”

“It won't be in the paper,” Kitty said.

“That, my dear, is censorship,” Linda said. “Is
that what the paper is about? Censorship? And can I write a story about censorship in middle schools?”

Kitty got up and started to walk out. Linda looked around the room and shrugged.

“Hey, Kitty, I got an idea for a story/' Darnell said. He realized he was holding his breath.

“What is it?” Kitty said.

“It's about a guy I met on Jackson Avenue,” Darnell said. “It's a human event story.”

“Human interest,” Mr. Derby said. He had been sitting in the back of the room looking through some quiz papers. “You've met someone you think you'd like to write about?”

“Yeah,” Darnell answered.

“Who cares about him?” Kitty asked.

“Okay, so I won't write about him,” Darnell said.

He picked up a copy of a magazine and started looking through it. He wasn't reading, not even looking at the pictures. He felt disappointed in himself.

“I didn't say you shouldn't write about him,” Kitty said. “If you think it could be interesting, you should do it. Right, Mr. Derby?”

“I certainly think so,” Mr. Derby said. “I'd be very much interested in who you think you should write about.”

“You going to do it?” Mark asked.

“Maybe,” Darnell said. “Maybe.”

After school Darnell went home, changed his clothes, and started to do the English reading assignment while lying across his bed. Mrs. Finley had said that he should try to do the reading while he wasn't too tired. He knew she was right. Sometimes he would start reading something, then start daydreaming about what he was reading, and before he knew it he couldn't separate what he was reading from what he was daydreaming about. He read some more of
The Old Man and the Sea
and wondered why the author, some guy named Hemingway, had written about the old man. He knew that Chris wasn't right, that Hemingway thought the old man was a chump and just wanted to write about a chump.

Darnell had read the whole story once and hadn't figured it all out, and now he was reading it again, trying to remember what Mrs. Finley had said in class and what the other kids had said. He read for a while with the radio on, then started daydreaming about being on a boat with a big fish tied to the side
of it. He couldn't figure how the old man could have caught the fish if he couldn't get it into the boat. It had to be some big fish. He imagined himself catching the fish, and then he imagined himself catching a shark, which was the biggest fish he knew about. But then he knew he would be afraid to try to tie it to the side of the boat. After a while he fell asleep.

When he woke he went to the kitchen, found some orange juice in the refrigerator, and poured a big glassful. No one was home. He looked out the front window and saw Larry on the stoop. He also saw some legs, which might have been Tamika's. Darnell had some more orange juice, went up to look for his keys, found them in the pockets of his school pants, and then went downstairs.

Tamika was sitting on the front stoop with Larry. They were drinking sodas. There was an old bike on the ground next to the stoop.

“Where did you get the sodas?” Darnell asked.

“The Black Muslims came by with a load of bean pies and sodas and I took the sodas from them,” Tamika said. “I told them if they don't like it they can come and see you about it.”

“Why you got to talk stupid all the time?” Darnell asked.

“No, man, that's true!” Larry said.

“Now she got you talking stupid, too,” Darnell said. “You want to go over to the park and shoot some baskets?”

“No. Tamika said you and her can help me paint my bike.”

‘That's your bike?” Darnell asked, looking at the bike. It was all right looking, except that it was dirty and the spokes were rusty.

“Yeah, my dad got it for me,” Larry said. “I got some spray paint.”

“I told him what colors to get,” Tamika said.

“How did you get spray paint?” Darnell said. He knew most stores wouldn't sell spray paints to anybody under eighteen.

“Them Black Muslims got it for me,” Larry said, looking at Tamika and smiling.

“Yo, man, you still talking stupid, huh? Hey, I got it now,” Darnell said, nodding his head. “You and Tamika got a thing going so you both talking stupid. That's love talk, right?”

“Get out of here!” Larry protested.

“You going to help him spray the bike?” Tamika asked.

“Yeah.”

Darnell knew that Larry's parents were split and that he only saw his father once in a while. If his father bought him a bike, then it was more than he usually did. Larry mostly didn't like his father that much, so if he said anything good about him at all it was unusual.