Miles Morales Read online

  You’re just like me.

  Uncle Aaron lived in the Baruch Houses, a few blocks from a Ray’s Pizza. Baruch was a huge housing development running along Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive. Right on the East River. If it weren’t for the fact that there were over five thousand people living in fifteen blocks of brick high-rises, it might’ve been considered prime real estate. Waterfront property. Miles would always meet Uncle Aaron on the corner of East Houston and Baruch Place at a bodega, where Aaron would buy grape soda. Then they’d go and get a whole pizza, before walking through the forest of skyscrapers to get back to Uncle Aaron’s apartment. Because you never walk through projects by yourself unless you live there.

  If Miles’s parents had known that he used to spend time with Uncle Aaron, he’d be on punishment for the rest of his life. As in, forty years old with kids of his own, still not allowed to go outside. So Miles would tell them he was going to hang out with some friends at Ray’s Pizza. Which was technically true…even though there were like a hundred Ray’s Pizzas in New York. And this “friend” was, in fact, his uncle. And Miles always made sure he wasn’t in Aaron’s apartment when he had to call his parents to check in, that way he wouldn’t have to lie. He couldn’t. It just wasn’t his thing.

  Uncle Aaron’s apartment—4D—had nothing in it but a mattress, a few fold-up chairs, a rickety TV stand with a TV on top, and a small coffee table with a few packs of panty hose on it. There was also always random shoe boxes, size nine, which Miles knew was too small for his uncle, and he hated the fact that they were also too small for him. Probably just merch to be boosted on the block. Fell off the trucks.

  Everything else, like all of Aaron’s clothes and things, were in trash bags lined up along the wall. He was all the way moved in—as a matter of fact, this was the only place Miles had ever known Aaron to live—but always seemed like he was ready to move out.

  While Miles and Uncle Aaron ate, sitting on the foldout chairs with the pizza box on the empty corner of the coffee table, they talked about family, school, and girls. Well, really Uncle Aaron would talk about girls, but he’d do it in a way that made Miles feel like they were talking about girls, even though Miles really didn’t have nothing to say about them besides I don’t really have nothin’ to say about them. The one thing Uncle Aaron never—NEVER—talked to Miles about was “business.” He never told him about the banks, or the stores he had hit. He never talked about how he’d stalk around Wall Street‚ the only late-night ghost town in New York, waiting to catch unassuming, stiff-suited stockbrokers working overtime. And he definitely didn’t tell Miles about the biggest hit of all, the one he made just before Miles came for a visit one afternoon. The one that would change Miles’s life, and ruin their relationship. OSBORN Industries. The home of the most cutting-edge innovation when it came to defense, biomedical, and chemical technologies. And spiders. Genetically mutated, chemically enhanced spiders.

  It was forty-five minutes before Miles would have to leave to make the phone call home. TV playing midday talk shows. Are you ready to see her new makeover?! Gina, come on out! A duffel bag on the floor next to Miles’s chair, full of money and pieces of technology Aaron thought he could sell on the black market. And from the bag emerged a spider, one that crawled up the leg of the chair and bit Miles right on the top of his hand, sending a sizzle down to his fingertips.

  “Ouch!” Miles hissed, flicking the spider onto the floor. Uncle Aaron jumped up and stomped it dead.

  “Sorry, kid,” he said, with absolutely no embarrassment in his voice. He smeared the spider on the wood floor like chewing gum on the sidewalk. Miles saw him square himself to get a look at the guts. The goo that was aglow. “But you know how it is. Baruch ain’t no brownstone.”

  There was a bang on the bathroom door.

  Miles instantly camouflaged, blending in with the Pepto-pink tile of the wall.

  “Miles? You fall in, son?” his mother shouted. After he’d come back in from taking out the trash and getting the You know your uncle was this and that talk, he’d left his parents and Ganke in the living room. His father, opening mail—mainly bills—from the day before. His mother, flipping through TV channels looking for Lifetime. And Ganke, a belly full of chicken and rice, sitting on the couch, waiting for Miles so they could get going back to Brooklyn Visions Academy. Miles shook his head and came out of camo mode—he was way too on edge.

  “Um, no!” Miles yelled. “I’ll be out in a second. Just, um…brushing my hair.” He knew she wouldn’t believe that. It was the one time he took comfort in knowing she probably assumed he was having some…alone time. Miles pulled off the mask and used his hand to try to smooth his hair down.

  “Rio!” his father called. “Come see this!”

  “Hurry up, Miles. I don’t want y’all leaving too late. You heard what your father said about those punks robbing kids.” His mother walked away from the door, zipping a “What is it?” to his father.

  Miles listened for his mother’s retreat before dashing across the hall to his bedroom. He stuffed the mask into his backpack and grabbed his brush off the table so he could keep up with the whole hair-brushing story.

  “Aight, I’m ready,” Miles said, entering the living room acting like he hadn’t been in the bathroom forever. Brush, brush, brush. The top goes forward, down on the left, down on the right, down in the back. In that order. His mother was standing beside the couch reading a piece of mail that she pressed to her chest once Miles walked in the room. Miles figured it was another bill—there was always another bill. If he asked about it, he would just trigger another lecture about how important it was that he do well in school. And after the last three days he’d had, he couldn’t take another one of those.

  “All that brushing ain’t gon’ get it, son,” his father said, tapping Miles’s mother on the leg to snap her out of her trance. “Rio.”

  Startled, she folded the letter, stuffed it back in the envelope, and handed it back to Miles’s father.

  “Um…sorry,” she said, approaching Miles. She ran her palm along his head. “You need a haircut, papi.”

  “This weekend when you come home, we’re going to the barbershop. Can’t have you out here woofin’,” his father teased.

  Miles kept brushing his hair and brushed his parents off. “You ready?” he asked Ganke, who had gotten up from the couch and flung his backpack over his shoulder, a goofy grin spread across his face. Ganke always loved these moments with Miles and his family. More ammo for jokes.

  “Yep. Take care, Mrs. M.” Ganke came in for a hug.

  “Bye, Ganke. Keep him in line, please.”

  “I always try, but the boy’s crazy.”

  “Whatever, man,” Miles said, hugging his mother and kissing her on the cheek.

  “Mr. Jeff.” Ganke reached out his hand. Miles’s father took it, squeezed it tight. Ganke’s face wrinkled with pain.

  “Next Sunday we’re having an all-veggie dinner. You in?”

  “You know it!” Ganke chimed.

  Miles’s father looked at his mother, shook his head. “I tried, honey. But it didn’t work.” He laughed.

  “Okay, okay, you boys be safe, please. Ganke, tell your mother I said hello. Miles, call us when you get there.”

  “Of course.” He slipped his brush in his bag.

  “Don’t forget, mijo.”

  “I won’t.”

  Once outside, Miles was about to ask Ganke how his weekend had gone, especially since he knew time at home had been weird for Ganke since his parents had split up. But Ganke had a way of sensing those kinds of awkward questions, so before Miles could get it out, Ganke countered with a doozy of his own.

  “So there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for, like, ever.” Ganke had just finished tying his shoes at the bottom of Miles’s stoop. Miles took the concern on the tip of his tongue and slipped it underneath it, like gum—to be saved for later. Miles knew Ganke was probably setting him up for some joke he’d been thinking about
for the last thirty minutes. He was one of those friends you couldn’t leave alone with your parents because he would ask all kinds of ridiculous questions, digging for secret embarrassing things that your mother and father would see as cute. Stuff like Miles used to cry every Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Not because of what happened to Dr. King, but because the television and radio would play clips of his speeches and Miles always thought he sounded like a ghost. Or Miles had irritable bowel syndrome and crapped his pants until he was ten.

  “What?” Miles groaned as they passed Ms. Shine’s house. He remembered the way that mattress smelled when he’d moved it out for her, the way it felt to have those mystery stains and globs of matted white cat hair brush against his cheek. Ugh.

  “Aight, don’t get mad,” Ganke prepped Miles, “but…”

  “Just say it.”

  “Okay, so…your last name. It don’t really make sense to me.”

  “What? Morales?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m half–Puerto Rican.”

  Ganke stopped walking and twisted his face up at Miles, like Duh.

  “So…”

  “So, your mother’s name is Rio Morales, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “And your father’s name is Jefferson Davis.”

  “Two for two.”

  “So then why isn’t your name Miles Dav—” Ganke’s eyes widened. “Oh…snap. Miles Davis!” He stopped walking again, this time in front of Mr. Frankie’s house. Ganke folded himself in half, exploding into laughter. “Wait…wait!” He tried to catch his breath while Miles laser-stared him down. “Miles. I’m sorry. Wait…Miles Davis? I just…I never thought of that until just now.…Oh…man…hold on.…” The laughter tapered off. “Okay…woo. Okay…”

  “You done?”

  “I’m done. I’m so done. Sorry, man, it just caught me off guard.” They continued down the block.

  “Anyway, that’s not even the reason,” Miles said. “But I’m glad you think that’s so funny.”

  “So then, why?”

  “Ganke, why you actin’ like you don’t know my mother? Better yet, why you actin’ like you don’t know my abuela?” Now Miles laughed. “Nah, seriously, I don’t know. I kind of think it’s something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Miles shrugged. “Back in the day, my pops and my uncle did enough dirt in their lives to make Davis a bad word in some circles. I look just like them both and live in the same neighborhood, so, I don’t know, I wonder.…”

  “Gotcha,” Ganke said, the funny finally all faded.

  There was an empty quarter-water jug on the sidewalk. They were shaped like small plastic barrels, but Miles always pretended they were grenades when he was younger. He kicked it, and it rolled ahead in front of him. He cleared his throat. “That’s also why I think my superpowers are messin’ up.”

  “Uh…you think they’re messing up because of your last name?” Ganke asked.

  “No. But because of what my last name means. I mean, what that part of me is. Like, what if I’m not cut out to be…I don’t know…good?”

  It all just made so much sense to him. Like how really tall people usually have really tall parents. Or how you can be predisposed to be an alcoholic if one of your parents is. Miles had what he always considered complicated genetics: bad blood. And, to make it worse, his father and uncle were sixteen when they got started in crime, which was Miles’s age now. So maybe that part of his bloodline was fighting whatever changes to it the spider bite had caused, like some kind of grimy blood cell fighting off anything awesome inside him.

  “Dude, shut up.”

  “I’m serious, man.”

  “You’re also stupid. Like, that’s just silly. That’s like saying if you play basketball, your kids are gonna play.”

  “Good chance,” Miles said. He used his thumb and index finger as a pincer claw to pick up the empty jug he’d kicked, residual responsibility from Friday’s trash cleanup.

  “When’s the last time you’ve seen Michael Jordan Jr.?”

  “I’m not sure if Michael Jordan has a junior, Ganke.” Miles tossed the grenade in a neighbor’s open garbage bin.

  “Exactly. And do you know why you don’t know if Jordan has a little Jordan?” Ganke asked. “Because Little Jordan didn’t grow up to be…Little Jordan.” Miles didn’t reply. “I mean, you don’t even know why your buzzy head-alarm thingy is all outta whack. Might be because…it’s just wearing off. Like maybe the super stuff from the spider venom, or whatever, was like a virus that took a few years to finally pass through your system. Or maybe it’s just hiccuping because you’re growing. Shoot, for all we know, you could mess around and lose all your superpowers when you finally get a girlfriend!” Ganke’s jaw dropped.

  “Sounds like something my uncle would’ve said.” Miles stepped over a pile of dog crap.

  “Lucky for you, the girlfriend thing ain’t happening no time soon,” Ganke fired off, tapping Miles on the arm.

  “Yeah, for you either!” Miles shot back.

  “Look, the point I’m making is, true, you don’t know what’s causing it, but worrying about it probably isn’t helping. You gotta de-stress. Relax a little bit. Have some fun with it.” Ganke sent a wave through his arm as if he were breakdancing. “Shoot, if I had what you have…”

  “Man, what? What would you do?” Miles asked, his tone short and sharp.

  Ganke stopped walking for the third time. The train station was to the right. Ganke peered down the street, then looked left to make sure no cars were coming. “Let’s go straight, and I’ll show you.”

  Two blocks to the basketball court. When they got there, a two-on-two was in play.

  “What we doing here?” Miles asked as he and Ganke strolled up to the gate.

  “Just a little pit stop. You asked me what I would do.”

  “Ah. Maybe next time, man,” Miles said, peering through the gate. “They’re already runnin’ a game.” But Ganke wasn’t having it.

  “Let’s go.” Ganke headed in.

  “Nah, man.” Miles grabbed his arm.

  “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “Ganke, I—”

  “Hey, guys! Guys!” He walked onto the court, strutted right into the middle of the game. Miles followed behind him but stopped at the sideline.

  “Time-out, time-out!” Ganke called, jamming the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other, making a T.

  “Yo, what you doin’?” a short guy with a puffed-up chest asked, picking up his dribble. “You not playin’, so you can’t call time-out. Matter fact, you can’t call nothin’.” He flared his nostrils. Miles shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for a fight and couldn’t risk having his eye blacked or anything like that.

  “Get off the court, Bruce Bruce Lee,” the short guy said.

  “Who is Bruce Bruce Lee? You mean, Bruce Lee?” Ganke said.

  The guys all looked around at each other, bewildered. “You don’t know who Bruce Bruce is? The comedian?” Shorty Puff-Chest put his arms out and blew out his cheeks to do his best and worst imitation of a fat person. “Fat funnyman. And Lee, because—”

  “Because that’s my last name,” Ganke deadpanned. Miles stifled a laugh.

  “Wait…your last name Lee, forreal?” Shorty Puff-Chest asked.

  “Yep. And his name”—Ganke pointed back at Miles—“is Miles Davis.” Miles sighed, rolling his eyes.

  “Like the jazz dude?”

  “Nah, like the dude who’s about to take your money,” Ganke cracked.

  “Oh, word?” Another one of the guys spoke up. He was light-skinned, the color of flu mucus. And slimy, too, from sweat. “And how he gon’ do that?”

  “Dunk contest.”

  “Wait…what?” Miles squawked, now stepping timidly onto the court.

  Mucus Man smiled and tapped the dude standing next to him. A man built like…well…like a Super Hero spoke up.

  “Now you talkin’ my language. I do
n’t know if you know who I am, but ain’t too many cats around here can out-jump me,” he bragged.

  “Yeah, Benji got bunnies. Jump out the gym.” Mucus Man played hype-man.

  “No doubt. And little jazzman over there look like he ain’t even got nut-fuzz yet. He also look like he ain’t got no money.” The last guy on the court finally chimed in. He’d been standing off to the side drinking water. He was…a bear. Not an actual bear, but not far from one either.

  “He don’t.” And as soon as Ganke said it, the guys laughed and shooed him and Miles away like pesky flies. “But,” Ganke added, “I’ll bet these.” Ganke slipped out of his sneakers. “Air Max 90s. Infrareds. OGs. Apparently everybody wants them, and this is my first time wearing them. They probably worth, like, three hundred.” Ganke wasn’t a sneakerhead, but his father was. Yeah, his dad. His two favorite hobbies were hounding Ganke about school (he and Miles’s parents had that in common) and collecting rare sneakers, the bulk of which he gave to his son when he moved out, under the condition that Ganke took care of them. Of course, Ganke never had to. Because Miles took care of them for him.

  “What?” Again, from Miles.

  “What size?” the man called Benji—the one built like a Super Hero—asked.

  “Size ten.” Ganke, ignoring Miles, eyeballed Benji’s feet. “Your size.”

  Benji smiled, revealing a space between each jagged tooth. He dug into his sock and pulled out a wad. His buddies reached into their own pockets, socks, bags, and put up their own cash, too. After counting out the three hundred bucks, they laid it all out on the court, placing one of the sneakers on top to keep the evening breeze from turning dollars into feathers.

  Then everyone cleared out in front of the hoop to give Benji and Miles space. Benji dribbled the ball intensely, as if he were pounding a head against the pavement. Miles got the drift. He shot a glance at Ganke, who was now wearing Miles’s backpack on his front. Ganke smiled, followed by his usual shrug.