so I don’t want a repeat of this summer with Wes.
“Can you believe this motherfucker?” JaQuentin asks his buddy in the front. Peggs holds up his phone. “I texted him ten minutes ago and he said he’d be here. Shiiit.”
His inked-up friend just grunts. JaQuentin steps on the gas and roars around the corner to start another lap. He loops his arm around the passenger side’s headrest and cranes back toward us. He shifts his lazy gaze back and forth between me and Wes. Meanwhile, he’s still cruising a few miles an hour, his car drifting across the center lines. “After this we gonna hit up a place on 30th. My boy Hutch is throwing down tonight. You two invited.”
When I clear my throat, Peggs doesn’t even flinch. “You got a problem, Bowen?” he asks.
“I got to get back,” I say. I try to put a little oomph behind it. After all, I’ve got four inches on the guy. But I can’t hide the fact that I’m way out of my comfort zone.
“What? You ball a little and you think you’re too good for us? Shit. You in my car now, D-Bow.” Then he hits the brakes and jackknifes into an open space, the back end hanging out a good two feet. He points out the passenger side’s window. “There he is. Let’s roll.”
He and his friend get out. A gust of night wind comes into JaQuentin’s ride. I’m no fool. I know what they’re doing. They move beneath dim streetlights down to the corner where a man—older, bulkier—waits. He keeps his body still, but his head swivels slowly, like a security camera. The street’s so quiet you can hear the roar of engines racing on nearby blocks. When the man finally sees JaQuentin, his There you are cuts clean through the air. After that, they talk more quietly. All you can hear are rises in inflection, bursts of laughter now and then.
“You got to be kidding me,” I seethe at Wes.
He’s pinched himself all the way back into the opposite corner, as far away from me as he can be. “It’s not a thing,” he says. “Be cool.”
“Be cool,” I spit back. It’s like someone who’s just committed three straight turnovers and been beaten for three straight buckets turning to you and saying My bad.
When we were runts, they’d hit us with all these talks at school. They’d bring police officers in to lecture us about every single danger out there. Nobody took it seriously. It was like the more they tried to scare us, the tougher we had to act. They did this one exercise, though, I thought was over the top. They’d have a person stand on the teacher’s desk and try to pull up another kid who was sitting on the floor. Nobody could do it. Not even the strongest guy. Then they’d have the person on the floor tug on the person on the desk. Most of the time, the person on the desk would come tumbling down in a heap. They told us that was what it was like trying to help someone who was messed up with the wrong people or on drugs or something. All they did was drag you down.
I guess I always thought that was stupid—like the moral was to never try helping anyone. Until now.
“You didn’t have to come,” Wes says.
“I wanted to try to help you.”
Now Wes gets his back up. “Help me? You think I need your help? Just accept that I got my own thing going and deal.”
“This is your thing?” I gesture out the window to where JaQuentin slaps hands with the guy they met. They hug it out and then Peggs and his boy start back for the car. Right then the chirp from a police car pierces the night. Everyone freezes. In that pause I feel it all—my season, my career, my dreams—drifting away like so much smoke.
But it’s just a noise from another block, signaling trouble for someone else. It’s like a warning shot though. JaQuentin hustles back to his ride. He and his boy pile in. He smiles at us in the back seat. “Business is over. Play time now. Let’s hit up Hutch’s.”
“I can’t do that,” I say.
JaQuentin’s smile vanishes. He turns to his boy riding shotgun. “D-Bow does think he’s too good for us. I guess if you don’t have scholarship offers from the ACC then you don’t rate in the great D-Bow’s book.”
“It’s not about that, it’s—”
“What?” JaQuentin shouts at me.
“I just got to get home.”
JaQuentin stares at me for a few seconds. He looks at his friend. Then at Wes. Then back at me. “Fine,” he says. He throws his ride into reverse to back us out, then lays down some tire as he roars down the road. First stop sign we hit, he slows enough that I can hear him mutter to himself—“Some bullshit, Bowen. Straight bullshit.”
But at least we’re heading back to Patton.
I don’t even try to cover it. I’m late, so they’ll demand an explanation.
And as soon as the name—Wes—is out of my mouth, Mom springs off the couch. “I know!” she hollers. I shake my head, and she can see what I’m thinking. “Don’t act like your brother betrayed you. What? You think he’s going to lie to me to protect you? Would you do that for him?”
I mutter out a no, the only acceptable answer. Besides, it’s probably the truth. I fear nothing on the hardwood, but, man, nobody has the brass to lie to my mom when she gets heated up. I take a quick look at Dad. He’s sitting in his chair, hands gripping the armrests. He reaches up slowly, removes his glasses, and wipes his tired eyes. Then he shakes his head. “If you’re looking to me for sympathy, you’re not going to find it. Come on, son. On the same night you were suspended? You have to be smarter than that.”
Still, at least his tone is one of worn-out disapproval. My mom’s still on full-tilt. “Every detail,” she snaps. “I want to know every single thing that happened tonight.” She levels her index finger at me, all business.
I go through it. JaQuentin Peggs. His friend. The noise they got up to. All of it.
“Derrick,” my dad says at the end, “what on earth are you thinking?”
“Look. I got out of it as best I could. I didn’t go the party with them. I just got home.”
“I understand that.” He sighs. “But, Derrick, you’re not some prep school kid who keeps getting chances. People will give you a little rope because you can play, but not as much as you think. You screw up too many more times and everyone will think you’re just another thug.” His gaze hardens as he stares past me, thinking about me but something else at the same time. “And you’ll be shocked at how cold the world gets when they decide that about you.”
I accept the mini-lecture and then take a step toward my room. Mom’s not having it. “Where you think you’re going?” she asks. “Wait here.”
She storms out of the living room, her feet pounding the floor so hard I’m sure that Jayson’s wide awake now and listening in. She comes storming back down the hall with a city map in her hands, unfolding it angrily as she walks. Ripping right past without even looking at me, she heads to the kitchen. She spreads the map on the table, then turns around to me and Dad. “Come here,” she commands.
As we walk over, she yanks a kitchen drawer open and unsnaps a red Sharpie. A quick wave of her hand indicates that we best sit, and we obey.
