Every block we pass seems desolate, maybe just one or two people out, sweating on their porches and giving menacing looks as we cruise. It’s the kind of night where one wrong word would be like gasoline on a fire.
“D, if you gonna punk out on JaQuentin’s, then just drop me there,” Wes says.
“What the hell, Wes?” I snap. “Last night of summer and you want to spend it in a bad mood?”
He leans back just a little further in his seat. It takes an effort, but he manages to lodge his foot up on the dash, just to piss me off. I know this car’s a bucket, but it’s still mine. I smack him on the shoulder. “Get your foot down. Have some respect.”
Wes just grumbles and then, the seat squeaking under him, gets his left foot up there too. It’s a crazy uncomfortable position, and I have to almost respect him for going to those lengths just to get under my skin. Still.
This time I reach over and grab his ankle, lift it off the dash and throw it down where it belongs. We swerve to a stop at the Fairfield light. Wes unbuckles and makes like he’s going to get out. “You gonna be that way?” he says. “I’m out.”
Before he can open the door, I mash it. In the Nova, that only means we lurch ahead and then almost stall out when the transmission shudders under the strain. It’s enough to send Wes flopping back in his seat though. Point made.
“I’m not trying to cause static,” I say. “I just thought we could hang like we used to.”
“Used to ain’t…” But then Wes trails off. He was going to keep after me, but maybe he’s thought better of it. Maybe I can get the old Wes back after all. He sighs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him grin. “Used to be you didn’t get yourself in a hissy fit just for a brother propping his feet up.”
He makes a big show of it now, bending his knees and plopping those Timberlands on my dash with two successive thuds. This time it’s all play. I do my part, acting like I’m going to rip his feet right back where they belong again, but he swats at my hand. I try again, shouting at him that he better get those boots off my dash if he wants to keep his feet attached to his body, but I’m laughing as I say it.
It’s all good, until I hear it: that quick whup-whoop behind me. Then the interior of my car gets lit in flashing red and blue. I know what’s up, but I check the rear view just in case, hoping that the cop is after someone else, maybe responding to a call from 38th. No luck. He’s right on my tail. We weren’t doing anything wrong, but both Wes and I instinctively straighten in our seats. As I ease to the side of the road, I feel my heart pound. My tongue gets thick in my mouth.
Wes fidgets in his seat, getting more nervous with each second. I know the officer’s just checking tags, biding his time. But Wes keeps whipping his head around to look, squinting into the glare of lights. “You weren’t doing shit,” he says. “This is profiling, man. This is bullshit.” There’s a jangling anxiety in his voice, and it infects me—like the more he claims we’re the ones being wronged the more I think I might be in real trouble.
“Just be cool,” I say. I really don’t want Wes to go all thug mode on a policeman. The way he’s been acting lately, you never know.
The officer approaches. I roll down the window and look up at him hopefully. Here I am, all 6’3” of me crammed into this Nova. If I stepped out, I’d tower over that officer. But as is, I feel like a child, impossibly small under his gaze. He gets close—he’s thick through the body, some dough on his gut but a big broad chest that says you don’t want to mess with him—and leans down. He flashes his light into the car. Wes and I both look away.
“Been drinking tonight?” he asks.
“No, sir,” I say.
“Then what were those swerves back there?” He tilts his head back toward the blocks behind us. He must have seen us veering all over the place. My shoulders relax a little. That’s it. Just those swerves and the sudden start. Hell, maybe it means I get a ticket, but if that’s all he’s after then I can relax. It’s not like we even did anything, but you get that police cruiser on your tail and you start imagining crimes—like somehow you robbed a bank and just forgot about it.
“I’m sorry, sir, we were messing around.” I start to explain what had happened, but I realize the officer isn’t even listening to me. Instead, he’s locked in on Wes.
Wes won’t look up. He’s got his hands in his lap now, nervously picking at one of his nails.
“You have some marijuana in there?” the officer asks. It’s more a statement than a question. I start to stammer out a no, but he asks to search the vehicle before I can get out word one. Wes tries to tell me something under his breath, but I can’t hear it. I just tell the officer okay. As soon as that’s out of my mouth, Wes lets loose a big, disappointed sigh, like I’m the stupidest guy on the planet.
He makes us wait until a second cruiser arrives for backup. It makes it look like some big bust, so everyone passing slows to a crawl and stares. I hope like crazy nobody recognizes me. That’s all it would take to get Twitter popping in the worst way. Then the second officer—he’s not as muscular as the first, but he’s got a military stare in his eyes—instructs us to sit on the curb while the first one searches my car. Sure enough, once he’s been rummaging around the passenger side for a minute he gives this real pleased shout to his partner—“Well, look here!”—and holds up a cellophane bag.
I’ve never touched weed in my life, but any fool knows what it is. And any fool knows where it came from. I steal a glance at Wes. He looks away. He better not believe for a second that I’m taking the fall for him.
The police finish with the car and then start on us. We get the full treatment—hands laced behind our heads while they frisk us top to bottom. You hear about things like this—how humiliating a pat-down is—but it’s just noise on the news until it’s happening to you. The first officer does me, and he’s not exactly gentle about it. He just gets all up into me. But I’m clean. And so is Wes—probably since he deposited whatever he was holding in my passenger seat.
Finally the first officer addresses us both. He holds up the weed. “This belong to both of you or just one?” he asks. I don’t want to rat Wes out, but he doesn’t seem too eager to step up. The officer must see me glance Wes’ way, because he takes a step in his direction. “This yours, little man?” he asks.
Wes looks down at his shoes. I can see his shoulders tense on that little man. I’m afraid he’s going to say something stupid. He shakes his head a couple times in disgust. Then, at last, he mutters something. The officer asks him to repeat himself and speak up. Wes lifts his chin about an inch and mumbles, “I don’t know where that came from.”
Wes doing me dirty like that is the biggest disappointment of all. He must know it, because he won’t even turn his head my way.
“Fine,” the officer snorts. “We’ll sort this out at the station.”
There’s no excuse in the world that will work on my parents. I mean, I could have documented proof that the CIA planted the drugs on Kid two decades ago and it was still in the car through none of my own doing, but Thomas and Kaylene Bowen aren’t gonna hear it.
Back at the station, Mom waited in the car. Dad came in and was about to bust. To anyone in uniform he
