Deepest

Adjective. AKA: Secret. AKA: Truth. AKA: The hole you didn’t know was there.

George and I dance in our seats. Alma’s AP class files in behind Miss Link to mix and mingle with our degenerate asses.

Alma’s teacher, Miss Link, argues with Miss Black like she do every time we combine. Miss Black ignores her like always and does whatever she planned to do in the first place.

Miss Black passes out little slips of paper. She sets a big bowl on her desk. She holds up a long lighter.

She has our attention.

Gum stops being popped. Heads look up from phones. George stops combing his coat.

Alma’s teacher pays attention too. Her inner monologue is written all over the wrinkles on her forehead.

Miss Black: “Today you'll write down your darkest fear.” She flicks a lighter. “When you’re done, toss it in this bowl.”

Miss Black scribbles on the board. Narrative Writing: Dig Deep!

Alma arranges her pencil on her desk next to two erasers and a teeny tiny stapler. But nobody hates Alma. (See B for Bestie.)

Kid with the crunchy mohawk: “Man, when I was a kid, I made sure every part of me was covered with a blanket at night. Like the blanket was axe-murderer proof.”

Me to Alma: “At night I got on every light in the house including the closets. If your house is dark, people don’t think you’re home. So they get to thinking—maybe they’ll stop by. Help themselves to your TV, your bling . . . Then they help themselves to you.” (See K for Kitty.)

Alma: “Dang, Macy. That’s dark. If I wasn’t afraid before—”

Me: “You should be. I am. Because it don’t matter how many times I lock the door at night—Yasmin is just going to let in the exact kind of asshole I was trying to lock out.”

Alma: “Oh, sweetie.”

Sweetie. Alma is the only person on the planet earth who would ever dare to call me that.

Alma pats my hand and turns to her blank slip of paper. Curtains her desk with her hair so no one can see. Not even me.

I sit up and crane my neck. “What’s yours?”

Alma shrugs but still won’t let me see. WTF???

“What? You once ate without a napkin? You only combed your hairs 99 times?”

Alma turns around so fast, her hair whips my face: “Yes, Macy. That’s it.” She turns around again, but this time I duck her hair.

For real? She really isn’t going to show me? I’m confused. I do what my counselor does to me. I lean in and whisper into her hair: “You are tapping your foot, Alma. I think you are angry. Am I right that you are angry?”

“Shhhh!” Alma. The only person who could shoosh me and not have her neck under my shoe.

Alma leans on her elbow. I tap it. “Uh, could I borrow a—”

She slams the pencil on my desk. Yup. She’s pissed. She flips her hair so I can’t see her face. Obese Kid: “Rats!”

Like ten kids jumping on their chairs: “AHHHHH!”

Obese Kid: “No!! I mean, like I’m. You know. Afraid of them—don’t even play like you’re not!”

Me to no one because Alma isn’t listening: “Rats? One time, at home, a rat came swimming up through my toilet. Straight from a squat I launched up three feet in the air. I’m thinking of a career as a stuntman.” She don’t laugh.

Pretty Girl: “Cockroach!”

Like ten kids: “AHHHHH!”

Miss Black: “No no no no no. If you can say it out loud, it isn’t your deepest darkest fear. It has to be something you cannot speak, but can write.”

Pretty Girl: “NO, FOR REAL! A cockroach!! It’s crawling out of Mina’s backpack!!”

Me: “Aw. It’s leaving home. Probly for the first time.” I flip off a sneaker and FUÁCATA! Score. There should be a category for my talents in the Olympics. The GettOlympics.

Obese Kid whispers and points to me: “She scares me.”

“Hey!” I tell Big Boy. “Write it! Don’t say it!”

Miss Black flips off the lights. It actually gets quiet. I look around the room. George is carving his deepest fear into his desk. V-A-N. V-A-N.

Poor George. That’s how his little sister died. She thought a white van was a ice cream truck. Whoever was in it pulled her in and drove off with everybody screaming and running behind it. George tried to jump on the back and got hurt real bad. By the time they found the van, his sister had been tortured to death. Every year people throw roses all along the street where the van turned the corner and got away.

Miss Black flips on somebody called Baytoven. I get serious. My deepest fear. Not darkness. Not rats—not even after the toilet incident.

Let me explain first. I’ma do a compare-contrast: Here at school and at home.

Okay, at school the bafrooms ain’t pretty. But, if somebody vomits it’s like the bat signal goes up and Pepe comes running. There’s a rat? Pepe will do everything short of swimming through the toilet to catch its flea-bitten ass. Some kids call him grandpa.

Could be rain, snow, sleet, hail. I still get here at 7:30 every day because as long as you get through those front doors, it’s gonna be dry and warm. Pepe opens them up for me and I can feel the blast of heat—feel it—not imagine it.

At home? Last night, the temp dropped twenty degrees. My mother offered for me to sleep in her bed to keep warm like Zane used to do. Like I used to do waaaay back in the day. But waaaay back in the day my mother’s bed did not have cooties. Me, rathering to die of hypnothermia than Ebola, chose to sleep under the couch cushions.

At school if there’s a arch criminal on the premises we go on lockdown. We do not wear spandex for them and ask if they have a cigarette.

At school, there are different rooms for different things. Ain’t one room for everything. I swear one night after one of Yasmin’s dates I threw out the table. Woman brought it back in, though. Zane and I had to do a anti-cootie ritual. At school, there is a room for eating. I can smell whatever is on the menu around nine. When I eat, all anyone wants from me is to throw out my tray when I’m done. NOTHING else.

At school you celebrate things All The Time.

At home, time stops.

It stops on Fridays at 3:15. The last day I know where the food’s coming from. You’re fucked if it’s a three-day weekend.

So my deepest fear . . . is that someone will find out . . .

I scribble it down real tiny.

I HEART school

Even Alma don’t know. And if she don’t know, no one ever will.

I look at Alma. She making a tent with her arms to cover up her desk. Like always, she folds her paper like origami. This time a swan. (Which will make it easier to find.) She tosses it into the bowl.

I have a lightbulb. My new greatest fear. It makes me more afraid than anyone finding out my secret. What is it that I don’t know about Alma?

She’s still writing.

Don’t have much time to think about it, though. George is done carving V-A-N into his desk and is standing up. Somebody has to stop him from throwing the desk at Miss Black’s bowl and setting it all on fire.