Before Ja’nae and Ming finish dancing, I’m out the front door and headed for home. I hear her yelling for me not to be like that, but I keep on stepping.

By the time I’m at the end of the block, Sato is walking beside me. Matching every step I take. We don’t say a word to each other till we get to the corner of Nectar and Oak—four blocks away. We in trouble too. The fireplug is on full-blast. Water is shooting halfway ’cross the street onto passing cars, and kids and grown-ups are standing in the street trying to cool down from the heat. Sato and me don’t move. We staring at wet women sliding barefoot across the slippery street like it’s made of ice. We laughing at the pigeon-toed little boy pulling off a wet Pamper and sitting down on the curb butt-naked. It’s crazy. Everybody and everything is wet, except me and him.

After maybe ten minutes, a man yells for somebody to hold back the water so me and Sato can pass. Six little boys stick their butts up to the fireplug. The water squirts up in the air like a fan.

We halfway ’cross the street when one kid holding back the water says, “Now!” You can’t outrun water. So we don’t try. We get soaking wet, like everyone else. After that, Sato pulls me over to the fireplug. He holds me ’round the middle while he stands right behind me making sure the water soaks every part of me. I’m kicking and screaming and laughing—swallowing water and wiping it out my eye with my fist. I’m pulling at Sato’s wet, slippery fingers, and begging the girl next to me for her bucket.

“It’s so hot, you don’t mind people trying to drown you,” Sato says, walking over to the curb and sitting down with me. A few minutes later, he’s talking about what happened at Ja’nae’s.

“How come you ain’t wanna dance with me?” he asks.

I lean over and let the cool water roll over my hand. “I don’t know.”

Sato asks me again. I tell him the truth this time. He don’t laugh. He says he only slow-danced two other times before. “I was practicing with my aunt the first time.”

Momma probably been home from work a long time now. So I’m gonna be in trouble when I get in. But it’s like a party out here. Water and music and food everywhere. Nobody hurting nobody else. Just people having fun.

I squeeze water out the bottom of Sato’s T-shirt.

“You like your freckles?” he asks.

I stare down at my wet, wrinkled shorts. “I don’t know,” I say.

He looks up the street at a man pulling a woman into the waterfall. “I do,” he says, sweet and low.

I keep my mouth closed after that, ’cause I don’t want to ruin things.

By the time we get to my place, my hair is dry and crunchy like Brillo.

It’s almost eight o’clock. Sato and me been saying good-bye for a long time. But we still here, in front of my apartment building. I’m standing on the second step. Sato’s on the pavement. There’s a bunch of kids over at Miracle’s building making all kinds of noise. They got a lamp on the porch, and they playing cards and eating food. Weave Girl ain’t with ’em. So nobody’s paying us no mind.

“I gotta go,” Sato says again. “I’ll be in trouble if I don’t.”

“Me too,” I say, looking away when his eyes fix on mine. I wonder, when he licks his dry lips, what it would be like to kiss him. Not a long kiss, like they do in the movies. Just a quick one. A peck, Ja’nae would call it.

Then I see Odd Job coming our way.

“Raspberry Merry.”

I back up two steps. “You better go,” I say under my breath.

Odd Job elbows Sato in the side. “You don’t know how to call and say you gonna be late?” he says to me.

“Man,” Sato says, pointing and laughing at me. “Your mom sent Odd Job to find you? That’s so lame.”

I sit down next to Odd Job. He says Momma called him from the university and told him I wasn’t home. Asked if he could go look for me.

The three of us sit out front for twenty more minutes before Odd Job says for me to get inside so he can go take care of his business.

I walk up the steps backward, saying bye to Sato six times in a row.

“You got a home, ain’t you boy?” Odd Job says, putting Sato in a headlock, and knuckling him on the head.

Sato is so embarrassed. “Aaah, man. I ain’t like that,” he says, breaking loose from Odd Job’s big, strong arms. “Raspberry’s the one that be trying to come after me,” he says, walking up the street backward. “Ask her. See if it ain’t true.”

Odd Job looks at me and winks. “Better stay away from her boy, ’fore I have to cut you or something,” he says, reaching in his pocket like he gonna pull out a knife.

I turn to Odd Job and tell him to stop it.

“Oh, so you embarrassed now,” he says, walking up the steps. “Good. That’s what I’m here for.”

We sit on the top step till Miracle’s friends get so loud we can’t think.

“Let’s go,” he says, but neither of us moves.

I close my eyes and breathe. “Don’t they smell pretty?” I say about the flowers.

Then I tell Odd Job how Sato wet me up in the fireplug, and how he is the first boy ever to say he likes my freckles. Odd Job leans back on the step and looks me in the eyes. “You sure are pretty,” he says.

I smile, and wonder when Sato’s gonna say something nice like that to me.