Wednesday
For the real event they’ll be starched versions of themselves, in blue gowns and tasseled mortarboards, but Crisp likes this better: the sea of kids in ripped jeans with rings and tats in full flare; teachers scattered in the back rows of the vast auditorium, casually enjoying the fruits of their labor. A party mood, with mostly just the elders paying attention to his rehearsal of the valedictory, The Speech he practiced at home, over and over, for his mother and grandparents.
Center stage, he finishes: “…and that is why my years at Stuyvesant have been not just formative, but inspiring. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam—I shall either find a way or make one.”
An explosion of applause tells him that he was wrong—people were listening. Adrenaline nearly lifts him off the stage, and there he is, floating over everyone, smiling, laughing, reaching down to feel a thousand fingertips graze the palms of his hands. Feeling like the new balloon at next year’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, representing…what? A brown-skinned, fro-headed hybrid of a young man with high-tops clean and white, the way he likes them, and—here’s the kicker—something to say.
He levitates through the rest of rehearsal and then the 687 other seniors are dismissed until morning, when the official ceremony will take place.
Outside in the buttery June afternoon, Crisp unlocks his bike and flies along Chambers Street and onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Dodging pedestrians with pinball precision, the lightweight bike so attuned to him that it feels like part of his body. Ignoring dirty looks and riding fast, faster across the wingspan suspended between two urban shores. Energized by the fact that a lifetime of New York City public schools is behind him. Wondering how, if, he’ll fit in next year at Princeton. The sharp tip of that thought bursts his bubble and he feels the air begin to seep out of him. Of course, it won’t be easy. He slows along the bridge’s off-ramp, merges into traffic, and comes to a stop at the intersection of Tillary and Adams.
“You.” A short, burly cop standing in front of the corner diner waves him over. “Come here.”
“Me?” Crisp points to himself, his mind whirring.
“You deaf?”
“No, sir.” Crisp pedals onto the sidewalk, comes to a stop near the officer, and hops off his bike. “Did I do something wrong?”
The cop rips a curled printout off his ticketing device and hands it to Crisp with a dead-eyed stare.
“What’s this for?”
“Can’t you read?”
Crisp looks at the ticket and there it is: a hundred-dollar fine and a court summons for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk. He swallows the bitter foretaste of a percolating anger.
“Officer Russo,” getting the name off the lopsided tag beneath the badge, “I rode over because you told me to.”
“It’s against the law to ride your bike on the sidewalk. You oughta know that, kid.”
“But you told me to come over. When I was riding in the street.”
“You saying you didn’t ride on the sidewalk just now?”
“No, but—”
“You think I’m blind?”
“No.”
“Don’t do it again.” Russo begins to move away.
Color flushes out of Crisp’s fingers, he’s gripping his handlebars so hard. He shouts, “Who do you think you are? Franz fucking Kafka?” He inches his bike closer to Russo and jerks it to a stop.
“What’d you call me?”
“Franz Kafka is a who, not a what. Sir. But you wouldn’t know that—fucking idiot.” He’d meant to think that last part, but somehow the words hissed out.
Forehead sweaty, jowls shaking, Russo whips out a set of handcuffs.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
“Oh, I am not kidding you, son.” He snaps open one bracelet and latches it to Crisp’s left wrist.
“‘Son’? You think you’re my father now?”
Muttering the standard Miranda warnings, Russo yanks Crisp’s right hand off the handlebar and clinches the second bracelet. The bike crashes to the sidewalk.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Assaulting an officer. Resisting arrest. And now—” Russo glances at the fallen bike. “—littering.”
“Assault? How?”
“Verbal assault with threat of physical violence.”
“What? This is insane!”
“Trying to mow me down with that bike.”
“I did not!”
“Tell it to the judge.”