Heston Crawford stared at Chelsea Spain as she got out of Jaris’s car in the Harriet Tubman High School parking lot. “What’re you doing here, Chelsea? Goin’ to summer school?” he asked her.
“No,” Chelsea answered, “I gotta see Ms. Colbert about working with opossums.”
“Huh?” Heston asked. “Working with what?”
“There’s this guy, his name is Shadrach,” Chelsea explained. “He takes care of sick and wounded opossums, and he lets kids come and help him. Ms. Colbert arranges it. I gotta see her.”
“No way!” Heston exclaimed. “For real?”
“Yeah,” Chelsea replied, grinning. “Maybe you’d like to sign up too, Heston. It’d be fun working together.”
“Wild animals are cool,” Heston said.
Ms. Colbert came around the corner, smiling. “You guys look like this year’s freshmen,” she remarked.
“Yeah,” Chelsea responded, “we graduated from Marian Anderson Middle School. We’re gonna be going here to Tubman.” The words sounded so good. Chelsea always thought it would be such a big deal to be going to Tubman High. This is where the big kids went, the kids who got to do almost-adult stuff. Chelsea knew she’d be only a lowly freshman, but just being here was going to be exciting. “Me and Heston want to help Shadrach with the opossums, and he said we had to sign up with you.”
“Yeah,” Ms. Colbert said, picking up her clipboard. “We’ve got a few kids already. We’re going out to the opossum refuge on Saturday. If you guys are here Saturday morning around ten, I can take you in my van.”
Ms. Colbert gave Chelsea and Heston some papers for their parents to fill out. Then she wrote their names on her clipboard.
“Ms. Colbert,” Chelsea asked, “do you know Shadrach real well?” She was hoping Ms. Colbert and Shadrach were good friends. It would help put Mom’s fears to rest. Her mother was still uncomfortable about Chelsea helping out at the opossum refuge.
“Oh, we’ve worked together some,” Ms. Colbert replied. “He’s very patient with the volunteers. You’ll learn a lot about the wild things. He’s a very good man.”
“Uh, I bet he was in the war. That’s how he got hurt, huh?” Chelsea asked. If she could tell Mom that Shadrach was a wounded veteran that would go far in impressing her.
“Oh, you better ask Shadrach about that,” Ms. Colbert answered evasively. “Okay, see you Saturday.” Then she went into her classroom.
“How’s the guy hurt?” Heston asked.
“He’s missing an eye,” Chelsea explained, “and his face is scarred on that side. It’s like he was burned or something. That prissy old Inessa freaked out over him. She got stupid like he was a monster or something. Mom didn’t like it either. She went to the opossum refuge with me, and she got weird. I was hopin’ I could find out if he was a war hero. Then I coulda told her and Inessa so they’d be ashamed of looking down at him.”
“Yeah, I bet he is,” Heston said.
“Well, I gotta get back to my brother, Heston,” Chelsea told him. “He’s over there, pacing around in the parking lot. He gets antsy when he has to wait too long.”
As Chelsea got close to Jaris’s car, she heard loud music. “What’s that, Jaris?” she yelled above the noise.
“It’s music from Mali, you know, Africa,” Jaris answered. “It’s rock and funk, West African. It’s got this awesome guitar sound with blues and boogie mixed in.” Jaris loved music. He was always looking for something unusual. “Well, you signed up for the opossum deal, chili pepper?”
“Yeah. Heston was there, and he signed up too,” Chelsea told him. “That’s extra nice ’cause we can work together.”
They got into the car, and Jaris tuned the music down. It was now playing at a low background level. He started the Honda and steered for the exit to the lot.
“You know what, Jare?” Chelsea mused. “I hope Tubman is gonna be as great as I think. I mean, I hope I make a lotta nice friends. Like I don’t have as many really good friends as you had when you were a freshman. You came from middle school with guys like Trevor and Derrick, Alonee, Sereeta, Sami. Y’know, that little bunch Sami calls ‘Alonee’s posse.’ I mean, you guys’re tight. Except for Athena and Keisha and maybe Heston, I haven’t got anybody. Inessa’s too prissy. You can’t have any fun with her. Athena’s always pushing me farther than I wanna go, but she’s so fun.”
“You’ll make new friends, chili pepper,” Jaris assured her.
“I hope,” Chelsea wished, staring straight ahead through the windshield. “There’s some mean girls coming from middle school too, girls like Kanika and Hana. They used to get all the girls together in eighth grade. They’d make them all swear they wouldn’t talk to a certain girl—at all. They’d just freeze someone out and pretend she didn’t exist. It was a game with them, a really cruel game.”
Jaris glanced at his sister. “They ever do that to you, Chelsea?”
“Yeah,” his sister admitted. “One whole week, nobody would talk to me, except for Athena. It was horrible. I’d ask somebody something, and they’d pretend they didn’t hear me. Nobody would eat lunch with me, but Athena did.”
“Why did they do that?” Jaris asked. Jaris always felt that girls could often be meaner than boys. If a boy didn’t like you, he might punch you in the nose. The next minute you’d be friends again.
Chelsea shrugged. “’Cause they’re mean. I guess it made them feel big that they could control other people. Kanika, especially. Kanika Brewster isn’t very pretty, but she’s got power. She gets Hana to do her dirty work. I hope they’re not in any of my classes.”
“Don’t worry about them,” Jaris advised. “You got other friends who aren’t starting high school yet, like Lark Lennox, Kayla Shaw, and Maya Archer. You can have fun with them.”
Chelsea made a face. “Oh but Jaris, they’re little kids!” she objected. “I can’t hang out with middle schoolers! That’s so lame. They’re like babies, and I’m in senior high school!”
“Come on, chili pepper,” Jaris laughed. “They’re like a year or two behind you!” He turned into the driveway of the Spain house.
“Look, Pop’s truck,” Jaris pointed. “He’s home in the middle of the day. I hope nothing’s wrong.”
“He’s the boss now, Jaris,” Chelsea said. “He can come home anytime he wants.”
As Chelsea and Jaris came into the house, they heard their parents talking in the living room. It wasn’t an argument, but neither was it a pleasant conversation. They were seated at either end of the sofa.
“You just continually make me look bad to the children,” Mom was saying. “Especially to Chelsea about those stupid little rats she wants to befriend.”
“Okay, babe,” Pop responded. “Let’s discuss stuff together before it turns into a big deal. I agree with that. But it ain’t any good for me either to come home from work and get hit with some loony story. Way you were talkin’, some rat keeper who looks like Frankenstein’s monster wanted our daughter to work in his lab. So before you come on so strong to Chelsea, let’s you and me hash it out, babe. Let’s not start with the hysteria, okay?”
“I’m never hysterical,” Mom objected crossly. “I’m a very rational person.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Pop agreed. “But you’re throwing around words like ‘horrible looking man in a rickety house.’ I’m getting’ images in my mind of some wacko from the Halloween movies. That ain’t very rational, babe.”
Mom’s silence seemed to be her way of saying, “Conversation over.” Pop waited a few seconds to make sure he got the message right. He then leaned back.
“Anyway, getting back to the garage,” he said. “Boston’s doing fine, but I gotta watch the kid. He’ll be jerking some part out of one of the beaters, and it ain’t even what’s wrong. I gotta make sure he’s doin’ it right. He took that course at the community college in mechanics and that’s great. But I learned by doing. I was working on engines with my own pop when I was eight years old.” Pop laughed. “He’s kind of scared of me. He knows I know my stuff. But he’ll be okay.”
“Just don’t turn into old Jackson, Lorenzo,” Mom warned. “You know how you felt about him.”
Pop laughed again. “Yeah, you’re right, Monie. But now that I think back on it, Jackson was okay. I hated his guts when he was riding me, but I learned a lot from him. He was all right.”
Pop turned and saw Chelsea in the doorway. “How’s it goin’, little girl?” he asked.
“Good,” Chelsea replied. “But I’m a little nervous about finding good friends at Tubman when I start there. I mean, except for Athena and Inessa, I got no real friends.”
Pop’s bushy eyebrows went up. “Oh boy—Athena—she’s the top of the list now?” he remarked. “You are in trouble, little girl.”
“Oh, Inessa is such a Goody Two-shoes,” Chelsea admitted. “And, yeah, Athena is a little wild. There’s something wrong with all of them . . .”
“Lissen to her,” Pop crowed. “Our little girl is gettin’ the big head. She’s growin’ into a little woman, and now the head is swellin’ up. Here’s some good advice, Chelsea. Make friends with the shy little twerps who got no friends. Stay away from the cliques, the popular chicks. They’re usually creeps. You hang with them, you’ll get just like them.”
Mom had a skeptical look on her face.
Pop looked at Jaris and spoke to him. “You been there, boy. It’s a zoo, right? You got the tigers and the monkeys clowning around and the poor little shy ones. Some of those popular girls got claws like tigers. They like to tear people apart. You don’t want nothin’ to do with them. High school can be a terrible place. You’re trapped there with a bunch of weirdoes, and you can’t get away.”
“Don’t let your father scare you, Chelsea,” Mom advised. “Most of the kids in your freshman class will be nice and friendly.” She glanced at Jaris for support. “Isn’t that so, Jaris?” she asked.
Jaris cleared his throat. He wanted to make Mom feel good and agree with her. He tried to forget about Marko Lane and Jasmine Benson. “Yeah, Mom,” he granted, “most of them are okay.”
Pop grabbed a soda and headed back to the garage. He turned his radio up loud. He loved jazz, and the music was so loud it seemed the air itself rattled. Pop didn’t care. The pickup truck disappeared down the street.
“Mom,” Chelsea remarked suddenly. “I bet you were really popular in high school. I mean you’re smart and pretty. I bet you had no trouble making friends.”
Mom flushed. She wasn’t used to such nice compliments from her daughter, especially lately. “Thank you, Chelsea, that’s sweet,” Mom said. “I had a lot of fun in ninth grade.”
“Weren’t there ever any mean girls?” Chelsea asked.
Mom smiled weakly. “Well, this girl Marion,” she explained, “she had a boyfriend. I made the mistake of talking to him at a beach party. I didn’t even know he was her boyfriend. She and two of her friends followed me into the restroom later on. They cornered me in there. They pulled my hair, and they ripped my new T-shirt. They punched me. I was so scared.”
“What’d you do then?” Chelsea asked eagerly. “Did you and your friends get them back?”
“Oh no, Chelsea!” Mom objected. “That’s wrong. I didn’t want to get a big fight going. I just totally avoided them after that.”
Chelsea looked disappointed. She and Jaris went down the hallway. Partway to their rooms, she remarked, “If some girls beat me up like that, I’d get them back.”
Jaris grinned. “That’d feel good,” he advised. “But it wouldn’t make things better. But listen, chili pepper. Anybody gives you trouble at Tubman, you got somebody to help you, okay? I got your back, chili pepper. Don’t you ever forget that.”
Chelsea grinned and gave Jaris a quick hug.
Jaris went into his own room to read over the AP American History material. Ms. McDowell had passed it out at the end of his junior year. Jaris wanted badly to get into a really great class and do well, but he had doubts. He kept on wondering whether he could compete with people like Oliver Randall, Alonee Lennox, or even Sereeta. He always thought Sereeta was smarter than him. In fact, Jaris thought everybody in the class would be smarter than him. He made good grades, but he worked harder than anybody else he knew.
Jaris’s cell phone rang. “Hello, Jaris?” said Sereeta, Jaris’s girlfriend. She didn’t sound happy. Jaris had loved Sereeta ever since middle school. But she didn’t return his feelings until the middle of their junior year. Sereeta’s divorced and remarried parents didn’t want her around for many of her teenaged years. Now she lived with her grandmother, and that was better. But she was constantly reaching out to her mother, looking for a closer relationship. A few weeks ago, Sereeta and her mother took a wonderful trip to San Francisco, and Sereeta was overjoyed. For a little while, she had a mother again, but Jaris feared it wouldn’t last.
“Hey Sereeta, what’s up?” Jaris asked, fearing the answer. He hoped against hope that she was just looking to get together with him, if just for an hour or two. They often sneaked off together to the beach.
“Jaris, are you really busy?” Sereeta asked.
“Uh no. I don’t go to work at the Chicken Shack for a few hours. Why?” Jaris responded.
“I hate to ask you to do this, Jaris,” she murmured. “But I didn’t know who else to call. My mom, she’s a little bit . . . you know, sick. She’s downtown, and she misplaced her wallet. She’s like stuck in this restaurant, and they’re giving her a hard time. She just called me on my cell phone, Jaris,” Sereeta’s voice broke a little. “Mom was crying. The people there, they’re talking about calling the police and stuff. I just don’t know what to do, Jaris, but I really hate dragging you into this.”
“Sereeta, listen, take it easy,” Jaris assured her. Jaris’s brain started spinning. Sereeta’s mother had a serious drinking problem, and it kept getting worse. She swore she was getting help. She even said she was attending meetings, and they were helping her.
Poor Sereeta, Jaris thought. How making this call must have humiliated her. How it must have torn her apart. “Sereeta, I’ll pick you up right away at your grandma’s house,” Jaris told his girl. “We’ll go down and give your mom a ride home, okay? Just take it easy.”
“Thank you, Jaris,” Sereeta sighed. “Grandma’s car is in the shop again. I have no way of . . . I’m so sorry to be asking this.” Her voice broke again.
“No, no, don’t worry about it, babe. I’m leaving right now,” Jaris told her. He grabbed the keys to his car and rushed down the hall.
Mom saw him. “Honey, you look upset. Is everything all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, Mom,” Jaris replied, stopping in his tracks for a second. “Sereeta’s mom got stranded downtown. She, uh, misplaced her purse or something. We’re picking her up.” Then he was out the door. Mom had a strange, knowing look in her eyes, but she said nothing, mercifully.
No way in the world did Jaris want to tell Mom what was really going on, even though Mom suspected. Everyone in town knew that Olivia Manley, Sereeta’s mom, was a drunk. Still, Jaris wanted to give the woman a shred of privacy and dignity now that she had fallen one more time.