Fire in the Streets (13 page)

Shenelle and the other girl stop turning. They cluster toward us. “Whoa, how'd you do that spin?”

“I want to learn to switch places!”

“Can you show us?”

“Sure,” Emmalee says. “Most of it isn't that hard, once you know the ropes real well.”

I hang back and let her do her thing. I learned most of what I know about jumping from her to begin with.

Across the yard, Sam and Rocco chat up some boys around the basketball hoop. I watch them for a minute as Emmalee doles out double Dutch tips. Rocco's right in the thick of it, switching off with a couple of guys shooting free throws in turn. Sam's leaning against the half wall, talking with two boys on the sidelines. Not even once does he look my way.

I hate the uncertainty of us these days. The way he brushed by me earlier without so much as a hi. I hate not knowing what it means, or what to do.

Emmalee nudges me. “Come on, Max, let's turn for them.”

“Sure.” I take the ropes in my hand. They settle in my
palm. I've always preferred ropes like these, that don't have handles. The thick gray cord loops around my fingers, familiar as yesterday. Emmalee sets the rhythm. My arms just follow, falling into place like they always did. It feels good, being back here. It feels lighter. I try to free my mind from the weight of things, and it almost kind of works.

But the little girls try all our fancy spins. Get tangled, time and again. They're learning. I know better than to be annoyed with them, but I can't help it. I just want to stand here, just want to turn and let the rhythm carry me away. I say things like “Good try. Turn your foot out a little more,” but I feel my voice growing tighter. I think Emmalee can sense it in me. She gathers her rope ends in one hand. Nods to me.

“Tomorrow's Saturday,” I tell the girls. “If you come to The Breakfast, the Panthers are going to have some stuff for us to do afterward. Will you come?”

They erupt in a chorus of “Yes!”

We hand back the ropes. “See you then!”

E
MMALEE TRIES TO TALK ME OUT OF WHAT
I'm headed to do. I don't bother to wonder how she can read me so easily. I'm making a beeline for Sam and I'm sure it's transparent.

“Sam.” He's moving away, almost running. Not actually running, though I nearly have to in order to keep up.

“I have to go.”

“No, wait.”

“I'll see you tomorrow, Maxie.”

He streaks away, which only ticks me off. Sam's supposed to be the steady one; it's me who can't sit still.

“I wouldn't kiss you
one time
and so now you're ignoring me? That's low,” I shout after him. But he let me hold his hand at the meeting the other night, so none of it makes any sense.

Emmalee comes up behind me. She takes my arm, tries to turn me around. “Let it go. You're supposed to be getting over him, remember?”

Sometimes the pep talk works; sometimes it doesn't. We all know I'm not over him. Shaking her loose, I chase after Sam, tailing him all the way down toward the water. “Stop. Why won't you walk with me?”

“Leave me alone, Maxie.”

I know I should. Of course I should, but I can't. “I want to talk to you.”

“Not today,” he snaps.

“It kind of feels like that means never.”

He spins on me and the look on his face actually makes me take a step back, like maybe he's about to hit me. “Not today.”

“Why not?”

“Not today!” he screams, and it's the kind of rage that makes a girl end up with bruises, but I can't believe it of him so I press.

“Why not?”

His eyes glow with that certain light, that my-way-or-the-highway light that I've seen before, and I brace myself. Because if it's going to happen, it has to be now, so I can stop believing he's different.

He moves his hands. It's only the smallest movement, but I flinch.

It's quick. A reflex. I can't help it.

Sam freezes. His gentle hands hang there, inches from mine, stuck like he knows I'm afraid. But I'm not anymore.

All the air goes out of him, and the fight, and the spirit.

I put out my hand. Ashamed of thinking even for a second that Sam would ever in the world try to harm me.

“I'm sorry,” he says, drawing his fingers back, away. “You should go.”

“Sam–”

He covers his face with his hands. A small gnawing ache twists low in my belly. Something's happening, outside of me, outside of us, to him alone. I begin to feel it, not knowing why I haven't sensed it all along.

“Get away from me,” he says. “I'm no good right now. Just leave.”

A cool wind sweeps off the water, forcing its way between us.

I press the words out, arcing them across the invisible divide. “I'm not going,” I promise. “Just tell me.”

The silence stretches long, but he doesn't move away again. He lowers his hands and the air seems to sting his eyes. When he blinks they overflow.

“It's his birthday,” he murmurs.

The wind whips at the words, wraps around us and catches us. As good as naked in this moment, me figuring everything out.

“I didn't know.”

Sam turns and walks to the edge of the water. He might
as well have drifted away, for all there is left to touch of him. I don't even know whether to try or not.

Across the water the clouds bunch up along the horizon, moving away from us. A great storm brewing in the distance. I long for it to crash over us, to wash us clean. To give us something to listen to besides the blur of traffic in the empty echo air and our own hearts beating, where Steve's is not and never will again.

Sam kicks off his shoes and wades in until his pants are wet to the knees. I follow. My toes slide into the gritty sand. The water laps mindlessly, seizing my skin like ice. My skirt hem catches the tips of the waves, and the spill of the tide draws my mind back to the day it happened.

He'd come to the water that day too, tried to lose himself in the lake, I don't know, or tried to lull his mind toward forgetting.

There can be no forgetting. We know that, and that's why it hurts. I slide my hand into his and put my cheek on his sleeve at the shoulder. He's grown taller now. I lift my head for a second to know for sure and, yes, I can tuck myself right under his chin. So I do. Wrap my arms around his waist, glue myself to his chest, and hold him while the tears rain down.

We hug long and quiet in the wind and the water, and I can feel him choking on memories. Swallow some of my
own. I can feel how he carries it with him, this ache, but there's nothing I can do to erase it.

His hands move on the skin of my arms, setting me away at last. I kiss his mouth and brush the wet streaks from his cheeks. In the depths of his eyes I spy the storm I had wished for, and it isn't about to pass.

W
E WALK HAND IN HAND FOR A
long while after that. Along the water, along the streets, through the park, and back. We don't talk or anything, which is okay at first, but then I start thinking maybe the good-girlfriend thing to do would be to chatter and take his mind off things. Except all my thoughts are the kind that would make things worse. I think about Steve and how he used to smile when he saw me coming, and how he always talked about Sam to me like he was trying to sell me a car. I think about Raheem and how most days he drives me to the point where I want to wring his thick old neck, yet I can't imagine the world existing without him. He's like a brick wall between me and everything out there that wants me, the good, the bad, all of it. Sure, I spend my days trying to chip it down, but if it really fell, I'd feel, I don't know, exposed. So I keep my big mouth shut. Sam squeezes my
fingers time and again. I search my heart for the right thing to say in the face of the sadness, but it's never that easy, and the air grows cold.

Maybe I ought to walk Sam home, but we do it the other way around, like usual. He leaves me at my door and walks away with his head hanging. I don't want to go inside, because I never want to go inside, so I stand looking after him. Thinking about all the times he's left me here with a kiss still tingling on my lips while he spins away, smiling. Wondering if, when he walks away, he ever feels any piece of my dread or knows that the worst part of my day is ahead. I'll never understand his pain, but at least I see it. I reach out and touch it, because he lets me. Would he ever know . . . ever be able to do the same for me?

T
HE APARTMENT DOOR OPENS, LIKE HE
knows I'm there.

“Heya, Maxie.”

“Wil.”

He spells it with one
L
, he told me, because he's Wilbur. Not William or something usual. What kind of name is Wilbur for a skinny old city brother, I want to know, but these are things I don't bring up.

He pulls a folded buck out his pocket, shows it to me. “Going for smokes.”

“Right on.” I step aside, all smooth and easy, hoping he'll take the hint.
I'll stay out of your way, you stay the hell out of mine.

He nods, one of those chin-raising what-up kind of deals, and moves on down the hall. So far I don't have a problem with Wil. He's my kind of conversationalist.

Ma's inside, all laid out on the couch, trying to play like it's the longest day of her life come to the resting place.

“Where've you been?”

“Been where I been.” I glide past her, right on into my bedroom. Looking like that, she's not about to follow.

I wake to the sound of Raheem grunting out push-ups on the floor of our room. The curtain is pushed back. Morning light pours in on him, planked out and pumping himself up and down.

“Gross,” I say. “You sound like a diseased rhinoceros.”

He tips his head up far enough to glare at me. “Girls like pecs.”

I snort loudly.

“Now who sounds like wildlife?” he huffs, breathing out the words to the rhythm of his arms.

“Who do you like, anyway?” I try to think if I've seen him getting all mushy on anyone lately.

“Shut up,” he grunts.

I stretch out my legs and try to kick him over, but he's pretty well balanced. “You know I'm going to find out. And then I'm going to tell her all about your workout noises.”

“Stop it.” He shrugs off my pokes, comes up onto his knees. Then he flips onto his back. Sit-ups.

I come all the way out of bed. “I could stand on your belly. Make it more of a challenge. Girls like abs, too.”

My foot dangles over his middle. Raheem grabs my ankle and tugs, making me lose my balance and hop around. “Heem. Heem!” I squeal. He gives me a tiny shove and I flop back onto my mattress.

“That'll teach you to mess with a man and his muscles,” Raheem mutters, crunching.

“Don't see no man, don't see no muscles,” I quip as I skip out the door to pee.

In the living room Mama has her head out the window. “It's hot out,” she says. “Short sleeves, breezy skirt kind of hot.”

“That's weird.”

I slip into the bathroom, wash my face, brush my teeth.

On my way back through, Mama's in the kitchen eating cereal from the box. Says, “Your brother giving you a hard time? Sounds like you fighting in there.”

“Nah.”

But back in our room, Raheem is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking mopey.

“She turn you down already?” I joke. “That's fast work.”

He looks up at me with this face I don't know what to make of. “What?” I ask. “What happened?”

“Why did you say that before?”

“Say what?”

He squeezes the mattress. “That thing about me not being a man. That's not a nice thing to say.”

“You pushed me on the bed.”

“I'm a man,” he says. “The only man around here. I take care of things.”