MOST DAYS AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD nothing changes. As summer tips toward fall, the weather starts its slow tilt coldward.
I’ve realized now that Sam has good days and bad days. On the good days he wants to talk and do things. On the bad days he just wants to hold my hand and walk. More often than not, I let him. But things still have to get done.
Today we head toward the Panther office together. He rests his arm across my shoulders and I think about things like kissing. My arm goes around his waist and suddenly we take a little detour.
Sam leads me into the narrow alley between Charlie’s Soda and the check-cashing place. We know from the past that if you go far enough in, beyond the Dumpster, the garbage smell goes away and it’s just nice and quiet.
We sit on castaway milk crates. He holds my face in his hands and kisses me. My arms around his back. His hands on my waist. Kissing. Kissing. After a while he’s leaning me back against the bales of flattened cardboard at an awkward angle.
“Wait—” I put my hands on his shoulders.
He gives me this misty-eyed stare. “Come on.”
“Come on, what?” I wet my lips. He watches. Leans back in.
I hold his shoulders, force him to look at me.
“It’s the only thing that feels good,” he whispers.
“I know.” I let up, let his lips meet mine again. It erases the world around us. The slight garbage stench, the pressures of the neighborhood, the memories of Steve.
No words. No plan. Just what feels right.
Which is exactly what makes it all wrong.
“Stop.”
He does, drawing away from me altogether.
“What are we doing?” I ask him. “I mean—”
“Let’s go to the office,” he says, standing up and starting down the alley.
I swallow. “What?”
He’s halfway to the Dumpster already, leaving me behind. I’m stunned motionless.
“Can that actually happen?” I blurt. “Can you just start kissing me and then act like it never happened?”
Sam doesn’t say anything or even look back. If it seemed like a good day at first, it’s a bad day now.
Sam beats me to the office by better than half a block. I, for one, am walking slower because I feel the need to pull myself together. Mainly so I don’t make a fool of both of us by blowing up at him in front of the whole office.
I see him go in the door, and by the time I get there he’s already disappeared into the back room. So be it. I flop into one of the desk chairs.
Rocco hefts a twine-bound stack of newspapers onto the desk in front of me. I hand him scissors from the drawer and he slices the bundle open. Says, “You got a copy of the new issue yet?”
“No.”
“You got a quarter?”
I shake my head.
“Okay.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls one out. Lays it on the table between us. “You try and pay me back if you can, okay?”
“Sure.”
Rocco picks up the paper and opens it to about the middle. He takes the scissors from the desk and carefully cuts out a big corner. Spins it and spreads it with his fingers so I can see.
“Read this,” he tells me. “Tell me if there’s anything you don’t understand.”
“Okay.” I reach for it. Start to slip it into my school bag.
“No, read it now. Then you got to fold it in your pocket. Every day, all the time. You feel me?”
Rocco folds the rest of the paper neat while I struggle with the words on the page.
The Pocket Lawyer of Legal First Aid:
What you need to know if you are arrested.
1. Remain silent.
2. Do not resist arrest.
There are fourteen points on the list. It’s going to take me a long time to get through it, and Rocco’s sitting there waiting.
I take the rest of the paper and tuck it under my arm. “Okay, I get it,” I tell him.
“You sure?” Rocco pats his pocket. “I got mine right here.”
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back.” There’s usually some way to get a touch of spare change. Anyway, the other day Leroy was talking about how buying the paper is an investment, in knowledge and awareness. I guess he meant it’s not like buying an ice cream, because you don’t just enjoy it for a minute. It lasts.
Sam emerges from the back room, comes over to us. He catches me with his sad eyes and it makes me wish he would just come out and say whatever it is that he’s holding behind them.
“Hey, man.” Rocco drums his fingers on the desk. “I’m headed over to the clinic in a minute. You want a ride there?”
“Naw, I’ll walk,” Sam says. “Stuff to do around here first.”
“No hurry. I’ll wait for you.”
“No,” Sam says, kind of sharp.
“He has to walk me home too,” I say, trying to cover. Sam won’t ride in a car anymore unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s because Steve died in a car; he was sitting in the passenger seat, in fact, when he was shot to death by some cops that pulled them over. Raheem was driving; Sam was in the back. He saw it all happen. No way to erase a memory like that. Raheem told me it’s the worst thing he’s ever witnessed in life, and after where we come from, that’s saying something. It must go double for Sam. I tried for a long time to get him past the things he sees when the door closes behind us. When the brakes ease on and he clenches his eyes like it’s happening all over and over. I’d hold his hand, but nothing doing.
I should know, things like that have a way of coming back, even when the worst and more has already happened and every last tear has been squeezed out of you.