CHAPTER 6
A FEW DAYS later, I wait outside the supermarket while Dan dips in to get stuff for his mom.
My neighborhood is cool for people-watching. Right now, a college-aged guy who looks mixed like me flies down the street on one of those expensive electronic skateboards with just one wheel in the middle. He swerves to avoid hitting a skinny white guy with a beard standing at the bus stop.
“Watch yourself!” The skinny bearded guy has to jump out the way.
He’s one of lots of young white guys on this street who my parents joke about and call beardos. I see how many I can spot.
Right now, one’s walking by with a woman carrying a yoga mat. A beardo in sandals walks his dog, and another pushes a baby stroller. One comes out of the corner café with a tray full of cups.
Me and my dad went into that café once, and when we saw that the smallest-size coffee cost five dollars, we never went back. Nowadays our neighborhood has lots of these expensive cafés.
A cop car parks near the bus stop and two white male cops get out.
All of a sudden, I want to try to do what Dan did outside the factory. So when one cop makes eye contact with me, I wave and say hi.
The cop’s stare asks, You talking to me? He elbows his partner and nods in my direction. His partner shrugs.
Okaaaay, I think. No friendly nods. That did NOT work for me the way it worked for Dan.
Maybe their stares mean nothing. Maybe they’re just trying to figure me out. But they could’ve at least said hi back. I feel uncomfortable now, so I go in the supermarket.
I’m up and down aisles until I finally spot Dan at this cookie display in the bakery section. He’s at one of those glass displays where you bag the cookies you want.
He opens the case, takes a cookie, and starts chewing.
I walk up on him. “Stop.” I thumb at the white man stacking a display who eyes him. “Dan, don’t you need to pay first?”
He just keeps chewing. “My parents do this. They sample stuff to see if they want to buy it.”
The way he chews makes this cookie look extra good!
I check back, and that man has no reaction.
I guess it’s fine to sample.
I bite. “Dang. This is goo—”
The white man is up on me. “Excuse me. Did you pay for that?”
My jaw drops.
How’s he only talking to me? Dan is right here chewing too. “I’m . . . we’re just sampling this.”
That man eyes me like I’m a criminal.
“Come with me. You have to pay for that.”
He starts walking me toward the registers and talks real loud and braggy to a nearby white co-worker. “This boy tried to steal a cookie. I’m making him pay for it.”
I’m embarrassed. I feel powerless. And I can’t believe he just left Dan there, eating a cookie.
Then Dan catches up to us. “Mister, what are you doing? Don’t you see me? I was right there, eating a cookie too.”
This man stares at Dan like Dan speaks a foreign language. “What?”
“Why didn’t you stop me like you stopped my friend?”
“This is your friend?”
“Yeah!”
“How do I know you ate a cookie?” the man says. “He has one in his hand. You don’t.”
Dan opens his mouth. Cookie mush is still on his tongue. “See?”
The man is SOS.
Dan says, “If you let me go, you gotta let him go.” Then he speaks in the same tone as when he yelled at Junior to leave us alone. “Or if he’s in trouble, I should be too!”
The man waves Dan off. “Okay, take your friend. Both of you go home and don’t come back to the bakery. This is my department.”
It feels like the whole supermarket’s looking at us now, and I feel lower than dirt.
Dan acts the opposite. He might as well be the boss here. “I’ll leave after I get what I came for.” He shakes his head. “Like this is your aisle. Like you own the store.”
“It is my aisle.” The man points to his shirt label that says BAKED GOODS.
Dan waves him off. “Free country.”
I’m telling you. I would neeeeeeeever talk to a grown man that way. I whisper to Dan, “Let’s just bounce.”
He walks back into the aisle and snatches something off the shelves from his mom’s list before we head to the register.
Outside the supermarket, we wait at the corner for the light to let us walk.
“I noticed,” Dan says.
I’m still in my head replaying what happened in the store. “What?”
“What you said. About being Black. About sticking out. Being a target. I noticed.”
I nod, feeling what happened in that store was so foul.
Dan looks back at the supermarket, then at me. “I know that’s why that man did that. You want me to tell someone he did that? My parents?”
I look past Dan at the supermarket. Then back at him. “Nah. It’s dead.”
Dan had my back in there. He didn’t have to, but he stepped up for the same punishment as me. He’s always been my boy with a lot of things. It’s cool he was my boy with this too.