WE BURST FROM THE CROWD ONTO THE sidewalk, heaving deep breaths. “What were you thinking?” Patrice screeches at me. “I’m not going back in there.”
“What was I supposed to do?” I feel bad about breaking our deal, but Leroy Jackson’s the highest-up Panther I’ve ever personally met, and he looked me in the eye and said, “Go find some change.” Handed me a whole ten-dollar bill. I couldn’t say nothing to that but “Yes, sir.”
As quickly as we can, we skirt the police barricade and cross the street away from them. Although there’s really no getting away. The line of cops looks thicker than ever. It’s late afternoon, and I remember what Raheem said about the sun going down.
“I’m going home.” Patrice’s voice strays to a higher pitch.
“Go home, then,” I tell her. “You too.” Emmalee raises her eyebrows at me. “I can handle it myself.”
“I don’t want you going back in there either,” Patrice wails. “Did you see how they were looking at us?”
I keep my voice level. “I can do it. It’ll probably be faster, even. I’m small. I’ll slip right through them like a slice of night. They won’t even see me coming.” I try to smile.
Patrice is skeptical. She fixes me with a look that says she knows better, and she probably does, but I already told Leroy yes and took the money, so what am I going to do?
“It’ll be okay.” I do my best to reassure her. “I’ll just go home with Hamlin and Raheem.”
“Fine,” Emmalee says. “I don’t want to stand around here any longer.” She’s right. Too many cops. We stand out like a whole fist of sore thumbs.
Patrice hugs me like she thinks I’m going to die in a minute. I hope she’s being overdramatic, but I hug her back because you really never know. I wait until they disappear around the corner, then I make my way along the sidewalk in the other direction. Looking for a store, a Laundromat, whatever I can find.
Leroy’s ten-dollar bill is still clutched tight in my fist. Today, more people than normal are paying with dollar bills and expecting change, he said. I smooth it out and try to act like a person who’s supposed to have ten whole dollars in her possession.
I luck out. There’s a corner store at the end of the block. I duck inside, wait in line behind a bunch of demonstrators buying cigarettes and pop.
When it’s my turn the fat white clerk glares at me, gnawing the life out of a toothpick with his jaw. “What do you want?”
“I need a roll of quarters,” I say, holding up the bill. He looks at me, at the money, and I can see it settle over his face. Suspicion. It’s like he knows by looking that it’s not that usual for me to have ten bucks in my hand. I want to be angry, knowing exactly why he thinks that, but I can’t quite get there ’cause it’s also kind of true.
Clerk looks me up and down. “Ain’t got none to spare.” Toothpick moves to the other side of his mouth. “Get along out of here.” He shoos me with his hand. I flee back to the street, but I try to look calm the second I get out there. Can’t go running out of a store with all these cops around. Not smart.
Walking farther, I quickly learn that getting change is a bigger deal than I realized. Two whole blocks and four stores later I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever get a different kind of response. The last guy yelled at me good. “I don’t do favors for your kind. Nothing in the law says I have to.”
I want to cry, want to give up, but Panthers don’t back down from nothing. I go on, my footsteps carrying me where I least wanted to have to go. A real bank building. There’s one right there on the corner, with a nice clean sign out front. It looks exactly like the sort of place I’m not supposed to go. I’ve never even been inside a bank before, but it is where they keep all the money. I take a deep breath.
The wooden doors are tall and heavy, carved with fancy ruts and swirls. Big, round gold metal handles. I slip inside. It’s cool in here. Fans blowing and clean white walls that go high. Big glass lights that hang from the ceiling like bakery birthday cakes upside down. The floor is interesting. There’s one big rug that goes all the way to the wall on all sides, but then there are other small rugs on top of it. A square one by a row of chairs, and a long skinny one that leads right up to the counter. I walk along it, feeling like I’m entering a royal palace.
Except I’ll never pass for the sort of girl who fits in a place like this. I figure most royalty isn’t sweat-dirty with frazzed-out hair and only ten whole dollars.
The woman behind the counter says, “Can I help you?” The sign above her head says TELLER. So I go up and tell her.
“I need a roll of quarters, please.” I hold out the ten dollars.
She takes it and holds it up to the light.
“It’s real,” I blurt, then wish I’d kept my big mouth shut. Saying too much can get you in trouble, Raheem says. Don’t I know it. Still, this is advice I’m not good at following.
The teller smiles. “I know. See?” She holds it where I can see. There’s a little shadow face next to the big face, in a space that’s supposed to be white. “It’s called a watermark. All the real bills have them.”
“Wow.” I’m relieved. Of course, I knew it was real all along, but the bill’s already in her hand, and I don’t know how I’d get it back if she didn’t believe me.
She puts the bill into her drawer and pulls out a roll of quarters. She slides it toward me. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” The quarters are wrapped in smooth paper. They’re a touch heavier than I would have thought. “This was hard to get,” I admit. She seems like a nice person. She helped me.
She smiles again, this time in a way that seems a bit sad. “Well, now you know where to go.”
“Thanks,” I say again. I pivot on the carpet, start my royal exit. This time, I feel taller. Much more princess-like. Before I push back out into the heat I look back at the teller, wondering what it would be like to go to work in a place where people are rich enough to buy rugs to put on top of the rugs that are already there.