Look Both Ways Read online

“Come onnnn.” Bit was at the end of the driveway, rocking back and forth, antsy. “We running out of time.”

  * * *

  They went back to the main road. Back to busy Portal Avenue with the cars and trucks and other kids—other walkers—lollygagging on their way home from school. “What’s the math, Francy?” John John asked as he pulled a wad of sandwich bags from his pocket.

  Francy was the smartest Low Cut when it came to numbers. She could break it all down in her head in a way that would’ve taken Bit and John John a calculator to do, and Trista probably two pages of long division.

  “Eighteen pieces. We do bundles of three. That’s six bundles. Sell them for a dollar a pop.”

  “That’s only six bucks,” Bit said.

  “Yeah, and that’s enough,” John John replied.

  “No. We need more. We can get more.” Bit had turned around and was walking backward so he could look his friends in their faces. “I know these guys. I mean, I know these kinds of guys. They don’t carry change. Ever. So we charge them $1.50 and they’ll give us two. Matter of fact, because we don’t even have time for all these transactions, let’s just do three bundles of six. Two fifty a pop. They’ll all pay three, and—”

  “We’ll walk with nine.” See, even though Francy was the best with math, Bit was the best with hustle. No doubt about it.

  When they got to Placer Street—which they’d practically run to after figuring out the numbers—they stopped on the corner, out of breath, and organized the candy. Three Mary Janes and three Life Savers in three bags.

  Trista slid her phone from her back pocket again. “It’s three forty-four. We got fifteen minutes.”

  “Gotta make this quick,” Francy said, twisting the bags, tying knots at the tops of them.

  A block down the street they came up to a building that looked like an old house but had a sign out front. PLACER POOL.

  The Low Cuts stood outside, stared at the building for a moment, working up the nerve to go in. And whether the nerve was worked up or not, once Bit said, “Ready?” he took off for the door. It chimed when he pushed it open and stepped into the smoky building, John John, Trista, and Francy following close behind.

  Silence, except for one pool ball smacking against another. Then total silence. Old men, like scraggly human cigarettes with non-human cigarettes dangling from their mouths, all turned and looked. And after a few awkward seconds, Bit ballooned his chest with bravery, rolled his shoulders back, and said, “Candy for sale.”

  A man came from behind an old wooden bar. “Kid, you can’t be in here.” Bit knew he couldn’t be in there. He knew none of them could be in there. But he had been watching this place for a while. He’d been sitting across the street checking out who was going in and how long they stayed. The smoke that came screaming out every time the door opened. The cussing men who went on about losing money and the laughing men who bragged about winning some. This was a place for pool players, but more than that, Bit knew it was a place for hustlers.

  “Don’t I know you?” another man said.

  “Don’t matter if you know me,” Bit shot back. “Me and my friends selling candy. Say buy or say bye.” John John, Trista, and Francy were impressed by that line. They’d heard Bit talk like this before. This wasn’t the first time they’d done this. They’d walked into a bingo hall once and heard him tell an old lady he was her troll doll, the only good luck charm she’d ever need. But this time was different. There was a knife in his voice. Something sharp they’d never heard.

  And the guy did know him. Knew him from the neighborhood. That guy had fixed his mother’s car once. And Bit had stood next to him, mean-mugging the whole time the guy was under the hood just in case he tried to cheat his mom.

  “We don’t want no candy. So how about—”

  “We got Mary Janes and Life Savers.” Francy joined in, held the bags up like they were full of gold coins.

  “Yeah. We got Mary Janes and Life Savers,” Bit said, doubling down.

  “Mary Janes?” a man wearing an eye patch called from the back of the room. He set his pool cue down on the table next to him and walked toward the Low Cuts. “What y’all know ’bout Mary Janes?”

  “We know we got ’em. And Life Savers, too.”

  “Individually wrapped,” John John added, just because it was a detail Ms. CeeCee kept adding.

  The man chuckled. “I can’t remember the last time I had a Mary Jane.” He slapped the guy next to him. “You?”

  “Been a long time. Used to go down south to visit my grandpappy and he’d always have that kind of stuff in his pocket. Be all melted and still be good. And Grandma used to give us strawberry candy, and when she ran out, she’d give us cherry Life Savers.”

  “And them butterscotch.” Another man.

  “Whew, and don’t get me started on them, uh… them Squirrel Nut Zippers.” This came from the guy who ran the place.

  “All this is great, gentlemen…” Bit put a pothole in the middle of memory lane. “But like the man said, we ain’t allowed in here, so—”

  “How much?” Eye Patch asked.

  Bit turned and looked at his friends. Bounced his eyebrows just slightly. Just enough for them to see.

  “Bundles of six. Three of each candy. Two fifty.”

  “Two fifty! That’s penny candy! At least it was when I was coming up.” Eye Patch couldn’t believe it.

  “My mother said gas was a dollar when she was a kid,” Bit shot back.

  “And I heard Jordans cost, like, eighty bucks,” John John followed, again stealing Ms. CeeCee’s line. “Guess everything costs more over time.”

  The Low Cuts, in what seemed like one fluid motion, all shrugged.

  “I’ll tell you what ain’t never been cheap—kids,” Eye Patch said.

  “And I’ll tell you what’s hard to find—Mary Janes,” one of the other men said, digging in his pocket. He clearly had no idea that there was a woman who sold them right around the corner. “You said two fifty?”

  “Yeah,” Bit said, bouncing on his toes, anxious.

  “You got change?”

  Bit looked at his friends again. Bounced his eyebrows again. “Nope.”

  The man pulled three bucks from his pocket. Handed it to Bit. Francy handed over the first bag.

  Trista spoke up. “Thank you.”

  “Hey, I took them dollars off him,” he replied to Trista, but pointed to a red-haired man, who just laughed and muttered something they couldn’t hear. “Eight ball, corner pocket. Cha-ching!” The buyer pumped his fist.

  And that was it. The last two bags were snatched up immediately, because it turned out, the thing about men in pool halls is none of them want to be outdone. For John John, Francy, and Trista, it was like looking at a roomful of bigger Bits. In the future.

  Nine dollars later, the Low Cuts were out the door and almost out of time. Trista didn’t bother checking her phone. They knew they were late because they saw the ice-cream truck pulling off from its usual post, in front of the fifth house on Placer Street. It hadn’t been there when they’d gone into the pool hall—it arrived at four every day—and never stayed if kids weren’t waiting there to buy anything—gone by 4:02.

  It was 4:03.

  So they ran.

  All four of them broke out down the street, sprinting, screaming for the ice-cream truck to stop. Halfway down the block, it finally did. The Low Cuts ran up to the truck, slapping their hands on the side of it. The driver yanked the window open.

  “Almost missed me,” the ice-cream man said. He looked more like somebody’s big brother than an ice-cream man. “What can I get for y’all?”

  “Four vanilla soft serves,” Bit ordered.

  “Cup or cone?”

  “Cup.”

  “Sprinkles?”

  Francy, John John, and Trista looked to Bit.

  “Hmmm, sure,” Bit said.

  “On all four?”

  “Yep.” Bit didn’t ask anyone else. And no one cont
ested.

  The ice-cream man handed cup after cup through the window, rainbow sprinkles all over them. Bit passed them down so that each of the Low Cuts had one, then handed the ice-cream man the nine dollars.

  “It’s only eight,” the ice-cream man said.

  “A dollar for you,” Bit replied. “Thanks for stopping.”

  As the ice-cream truck pulled off, John John, Trista, Francy, and Bit walked a few houses down, until they got to a small house they’d all been to before. That Trista and Francy always called cute, John John never called nothing, and Bit called home. Bit pulled his key out of his pocket, unlocked the door.

  “Ma!” he yelled. “You dressed?”

  Seconds later, Bit’s mother, Ms. Burns, came from the back and was greeted by all of them—the Low Cuts—holding cups of fresh ice cream. Not one swirl licked. Not one spoonful missing. Ms. Burns looked at them, her face both cloudy and sunny, her skin absent of her normal brown.

  Bit’s mom had relapsed.

  The cancer had come back, but the doctors were optimistic she could beat it again.

  “Hey. What’s going on? How was school?” Bit’s mother asked, kissing him on the forehead. But he shrugged off the question.

  “How was your first day back on chemo?”

  “Oh, it was… you know. It was chemo. I’m okay.” But she sounded exhausted and rubbed her stomach. “A little queasy.”

  “I figured you would be. So, we got you a bunch of ice cream.” Bit waved his arm like a game show host showing off the four cups. “Vanilla,” he said. The other Low Cuts watched Bit the hustler, Bit who could turn ninety cents into nine bucks—into ice cream—turn into a son. A son who was scared. A son who loved his mom.

  And she smiled, her shiny eyes jumping from face to face, bald head to bald head, friend to friend.

  “With sprinkles.”

  SKITTER HITTER

  MAYBE IF Pia Foster had known yesterday, when the bell rang and she ran to her locker, grabbed her skateboard, and started kicking down the hall of Latimer Middle School—the wheels rolling and scratching over the floor sounding like the chugga-chugga of a small train—that the journey home would be different, she wouldn’t have been in such a hurry. Maybe she wouldn’t have ignored her classmates moving out of the way, sucking their teeth all annoyed by her decision to dart through the crowd as if riding on an arrow no one wanted to be struck by, shot from a get out of school bow no one could see. Maybe she would’ve excused herself. Apologized for almost clipping ankles or running over toes. Maybe she would’ve walked. For once. Maybe even stayed after and talked to Fawn Samms, the only other skater she knew. The only other skater who was a girl. The only other skater she respected. Maybe Pia would’ve tightened wheels with her. Talked about deck art, stickers, sneakers. Maybe practiced tricks in the parking lot after all the buses were gone. Heel flips. Kick flips. Maybe watched videos on their phones. Videos of Santi hitting ollies in a dress and pumps. Maybe Pia would’ve even told Fawn about her. About Santi. About what happened to her. Fawn would’ve listened. Might not have said nothing because Fawn don’t talk much either. But she would’ve listened, for sure. Heard her. Maybe Pia would’ve done all this. Or maybe not. Maybe if she wasn’t so soft-spoken. But she was and the skateboard, like so many skaters’, was her voice at its loudest saying, Get out the way or pay!

  She named her board Skitter. And called it “she.”

  * * *

  Maybe if Stevie Munson had known yesterday the skateboard’s name was Skitter, he would’ve said something. Maybe if he’d known Pia’s name was Pia. If he’d known she had a big sister named Santi. Maybe if he’d just known those things, he would’ve done something. Something different. Something at all.

  The bell rang at Brookshire Boys Academy, and an ocean of testosteronies crashed into the hallway, green ties swinging like polyester tails coming from their throats. Matching pants and blazers. White dress shirts with soggy collars from all the neck sweat and faded red splotches on their chests from the ketchup that missed their mouths. But Stevie’s shirt was stained from lots of things: food, sweat, Magic Marker… Marcus.

  Marcus Bradford was a box-faced baseball player who wrote stuff on the back of Stevie’s shirt almost every day. Stevie was a sweater, so he always took his blazer off in class to avoid becoming a washcloth—something to wring out. But the oxford button-downs he wore underneath the blazer were all two sizes too big because his mom couldn’t afford to buy new ones every year. School was already expensive enough, so the uniform, he’d have to grow into. “Everything will fit eventually,” his mother would say, but the fabric was always so blousy and poofed away from Stevie’s body in a way that made it impossible to feel Marcus’s pens and markers gliding across the cotton. So Marcus used Stevie’s shirts like locker room walls, for jagged graffiti and curse words.

  And maybe if yesterday Pia had known his name—Stevie—maybe if she had shaken his hand and said, My name is, and he’d said, My name is, she could’ve read his face. Read his fear. Maybe he could’ve read hers. Or maybe not. Either way, Pia would’ve taken her house key from around her neck and clutched it with the teeth jutting between her fingers. A fist-knife. Just in case.

  Maybe Stevie wouldn’t have been there at all yesterday, with Marcus and the boys, if he hadn’t tried to figure out a way to get them to leave him, and his shirt, alone. Telling wasn’t an option. Snitches get stitches and sometimes ditches. That’s what Marcus said the other day when Stevie found out Marcus had drawn a green penis on the back of his shirt. Greenis written underneath. Maybe Stevie wouldn’t have even been there with them if his mother hadn’t asked him what he was doing with all the bleach. Why was he using so much of it?

  “Not that I’m not glad you’re washing your own clothes, but detergent and bleach ain’t free,” she’d say. And what Stevie couldn’t say was, I’m sorry, but there’s a boy in my school drawing on my clothes, because then his mother would say, I don’t send you to private school for boys to draw private parts on your private uniform that you still have to grow into, and Do I need to call the principal? and Stevie didn’t want to hear none of that. Stitches, remember? Maybe even ditches. Besides, Mr. Brock, the principal, already knew. He’d seen the pictures and words and all he ever said was, Boys will be boys.

  But whether Stevie told his mother about Marcus or not, yesterday Pia still would’ve taken that way home. She still would’ve kicked down the hall, dashing through the crowd on her skateboard, ignoring all the teeth smacking and slick talk and Ms. Wockley yelling, “No skating allowed!” Feeling that freedom she was used to. The kind of freedom that comes from feet not touching the ground. Coasting through the school door, weaving and winding across the pavement, riding the asphalt wave, avoiding the bus waiters and the pickup parents. The orange sashes of safety patrols and the sound of a whistle blown by the crossing guard. A whistle Pia never listened to because skating meant freedom. Rules were for the classroom, where teachers would say things like Participation is part of your grade.

  But Pia wasn’t a participator. Not in school. She spent most days daydreaming about frontside 180s, while scribbling her sister’s name on the desk—the S, a geometric trick that looked more like a pointy eight, the way Santi always wrote it—and thinking about how much it sucked to roll an ankle, and yet rolling an ankle was way better than Ms. Broome calling Pia’s name to ask her to explain what some old guy she never heard of meant in a story she’d never read but was supposed to read just because Ms. Broome said she was supposed to read it. Pia was always ready to go. To cut into the wind and float down Portal Avenue toward Bastion Street. Pit stop at the skate park. Skate down Santi’s sidewalk. Roll toward home.

  * * *

  Stevie was never ready to go. Because to go meant to get got by Marcus and the boys.

  There was one time they grabbed Stevie by the tie and yanked it so hard that his neck was sore for a week. They called it “Snatch the tail off the donkey.” The triangle knot had been pulled s
o tight that undoing it was like trying to unravel a rock. So he cut it off, buried it in the bottom of his backpack, a dead fabric snake. Told his mother he lost it. And she lost her mind.

  “I don’t send you to a private school for you to lose ties. I send you there for you to be able to make them one day!” she yelled. But she knew her son. Knew he was the kind of kid who could lose the brown off his skin if he closed his eyes for too long.

  Another time when Stevie wasn’t paying attention, Marcus and the boys ran up on him and threw a cup of water all over the front of his pants. Then they cupped their hands around their mouths and announced to as much of the world as possible that Stevie had pissed himself. And even though Stevie said he hadn’t, pleaded it like his life depended on it, they talked over him, howling and shrieking, Yo, you pissed your pants! Everybody, this fool pissed himself! Stevie was so embarrassed that he almost matched their joke with the real thing.

  And then there was the time Marcus decided he needed to practice his wrestling moves. The ones he watched on TV. And who better to practice on than Stevie? Kid never saw it coming. A body slam. An elbow drop. A pile driver. A pin on the sidewalk, one, two, three, while the other boys threw their hands up and cheered like audience members and taped the whole thing on their phones. Viral.

  So Stevie was never ready to go. Until yesterday when Marcus and the boys finally offered him… freedom.

  * * *

  Pia saw them. Yesterday. She was used to seeing them and they were used to seeing her, but they never said nothing. Normally they stepped to the side and let Pia skate by. It was usually only three boys standing along the fence at the skate park, but this time, four. Dressed in green. And if Pia hadn’t known Marcus, she would’ve thought private school guys were automatically good. She would’ve thought their ties made them mature. She would’ve thought they lived perfect lives, in perfect neighborhoods, in perfect houses with clean windows and green grass. Grass even greener than their jackets. Houses that smelled like coffee in the morning and popcorn at night.