“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” He back in his seat.

I got my eyes on a booger under the window next to me. Miguel came to visit and left it there, I think.

He say he can’t sleep no more, so he might as well talk to me. He’s skinny. With wrists small as Miguel’s seem like. And lashes longer than mine. I ain’t notice his shirt before—lemon yellow with a polo player on it. His loafers is doubled stitched at the sole.

His name is WK. The initials stand for his real name, he tells me. The one his mother gave him to get back at his father, only he hardly uses it because it sounds like a payback name. I wanna laugh. I don’t ’cause I didn’t come on the bus to chat it up with nobody.

“Ill.” It’s Miguel. “What’s that stink?”

“Pigs.” It’s the man behind me.

All of a sudden, the whole bus stink like a Porta Potty got dumped on it. Miguel and his sister run up and down the aisles, snorting like pigs. A lot of people, even me, hold their noses. WK pull out a can of Right Guard and sprays. Then he squirt sanitizer on his hands like he touched them pigs.

I take out my coloring book and crayons. He get the hint and start talking to Miguel’s momma. Her name is Mrs. Rodriguez. She takes bubble gum out her pocket and gives it to her kids on their way by. WK moves on. Two rows back, he talking to purple Mohawk girl, who tells him she’s on her way to Arizona. He is too, he says.

I heard of that place. Dry heat. Sand and coyotes. My fourth-grade teacher showed it to us on a map. She told the class she was gonna retire there one day. I said, “Maybe I can go there and be a teacher.”

“Teacher?” Mrs. Gamble smiled. “Charlese, I hadn’t realized you aspired to that?”

I asked what aspired meant. Everyone laughed but her.

While WK walking up front, I dig around in my backpack for the piece of paper I wrote that word on. “Aspire. To attend to, go after, to make happen,” the definition says. I found it myself. Researched it at the library last Monday. Didn’t even ask a librarian for help ’cause they think you stupid sometimes too, you know. That’s the sentence I wrote beside the word. The kids at school would laugh if they saw it. I would too, six months back. But things with me is changing too—not just for JuJu. I aspire to be somebody people like.

WK talk a lot. Now he up front with the driver. And the whole bus can hear him. “I had surgery.” Why he lifts his shirt, I do not know, ’cause how can a man drive and stare at your cut-up belly at the same time? The driver tells him that too. “My brother was on dialysis ten years. My parents said I was too young to give him my kidney until last March after he almost died.” He holds on to a pole to keep steady. “I had two—so why not?” He lets his shirt drop.

That boy still talking about kidneys when he sit back down next to me. Do I know how many black people die because family members and friends won’t give one up? he asks me.

“I’m taking both of mine with me when I die.” I put away my word.

“Organ donations—”

“I want to be buried with everything I was born with.”

“What good would that do you?”

“My body ain’t the 7-Eleven where you can get what you need whenever you need it.”

He’s quiet. The whole bus is. Guess they didn’t like what I said.

He takes a bottle of water out one of his bags. I ask if he’s gonna drink it all.

“Duh, yeah.”

“Well, can I get a sip?”

It’s one of them small ones. After I open it, I pour some in my mouth and swallow. Then dribble water onto that tissue he gave me and hand him the bottle. “Thanks.” I got one eye closed while I’m rubbing away that booger. When I drop the tissue on the floor, I tell WK that it’s okay. They hire people to clean up after we gone. He like Caleb. He picks it up, including the letter I tore up. Then gets back to talking about kidneys. To get him to change the subject, I ask who Jason is.

“Nobody.” He lift his shirt, traces scars with his finger. Doctors cut him from the middle of his back to his navel.

“It hurt?”

“My brother had it worse. At the dialysis center, they stick horse needles in your arm,” he says, “and pump chemicals in you to get the bad stuff out your blood. They’re killing you and fixing you at the same time,” he whispers.

I ask if his parents made him give up that kidney. He swear it was his idea. What would I give up for JuJu? Not a kidney, I know that.

He wanna know if I got a boyfriend.

“No.”

“A girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Both?”

I laugh a long time. “Nope.”

He gets back to his favorite subject—him. Tells me he’s headed to Atlanta because they do a lot of movies there.

“I thought you were going to—”

“Yeah, I go there first to speak at churches, the NAACP, and community centers about kidney donations. Then I go to Atlanta. My sister’s boyfriend’s family lives there. They say I can stay a while … attend cyber school.” I should memorize his face, he say, ’cause one day I’ll see it everywhere.

His nose is long, crooked in the middle. He got big round eyes that remind me of girl eyes, now that I think about it. They sad and soft and sexy-looking at the same time. There’s a dimple in his chin, and a cross earring dangling from his ear.

“I hate when a boy is prettier than me.”

Out of the blue he say, “I loved him. But—”

“Everybody can’t get with pretty, you know.” I’m thinking about Caleb. He was cute. I’m cute. Why he ain’t want me?

WK kisses my cheek. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”

“What?”

“Whatever made you so sad and mad.”

“No, it won’t.”

He take my hand and puts it on his scar. “There’s worse things that could happen to you. Your boyfriend could break up with you at the hospital the day after you had surgery to help your brother.”

“Wow.”

“Then dump you two more times after that.”

“Dang.” I look at him. “You still love him.”

“I know. But I shouldn’t.” His boyfriend’s new bae is a junior in college. “A 3-D copy of me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s like when you buy jeans. If they fit well, make you look amazing, you get the exact same pair in another color.” That’s what his boyfriend did, he say. “Got me in another color—white.” He twists the ring on his left middle finger. “Like he could ever replace me.”

He blinks, fanning hisself like he might cry. I tell him he better not. Then I go into my backpack. “You play?” I pull out a pack of cards. He ask if I can play Tonk. I play it all, Blackjack, Poker, 500, Joker’s Wild, Spades, slots. Sometimes, I had to deal—when JuJu ain’t trust nobody else in the room.

I break open a new deck and shuffle. “My sister kicked me out, sent me away. But I’m not going where she sending me.”

He rubs his hands after he sanitizes ’em. I let him cut the cards before I deal. “You got a knife?” he asks me.

“No.”

“You should. People crazy, you know. I wouldn’t want to hear about you on the news.”

I am the type to end up on the eleven o’clock news. The twins’ mother said that once, and it’s true. Girls like me always do.