Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…

Chapter 4 And Just Twenty-Four Hours Before That…

State your name.

My name’s Pendarvis Brown.

And how would you describe high school in three words?

Easy. Hard. Whatever.

State your name.

Ronisha Webb.

And how would you describe high school in three words?

Only three words?

Yes, Ronisha. Only three words.

Hmmm, if I can only use three, I guess I gotta go with What the—

Ronisha.

What? I was gonna say hell.

Hell still counts as a cuss word.

No, I really mean school is hell. Like the opposite of heaven. Hell.

Oh… um, okay.

State your name.

You know my name.

State your name.

Dodie.

Your full name.

Big Dodie.

Come on, Dodie.

Okay, okay. Dodie Parr, superstar.

And how would you describe high school in three words?

I was in my room trying to block out Denzel Jeremy Washington’s metronome of barking while flipping through the videos I’d recorded earlier in the day, now downloaded onto my laptop. The clips were of my classmates delivering their three-word descriptions of high school. This, of course, was a way for me to block out the fact that I had homework, which wasn’t nearly as interesting or as entertaining as seventeen-year-olds trying not to cuss in a yearbook video. That was Mr. Sanchez’s one rule. No cussing. He said that if anyone got too spicy, he would pull the plug on the whole idea of a digital yearbook. So most of the videos were of tongue-bitten teens, each trying to find the right words to replace the real right words that Mr. Sanchez would’ve seen as wrong words.

I hadn’t recorded mine yet, but if, for some reason, I had to do it in that moment, my three words probably would’ve been about the one thing I was constantly trying to avoid. Homework. Homework is trash. And I have a theory about why it even exists. I’ve heard teachers say that when they get home, they have to grade tests and quizzes, read essays and figure out report cards and all that. So since they have to take work home, they make sure we have to take work home too. And the reason that’s dumb is because all that does is add more work to the work they gotta take home. So basically, I’m saying that whenever teachers try to punish us, they just end up punishing themselves more. Which means homework actually serves no one. Trash. But I had it nonetheless.

In this case, it was English homework. And just when I thought I’d put together the perfect cocktail of distraction, a bigger one fell in my lap. Well, actually, it sat on my bed. But first it knocked on my door.

Two medium and a drag, my sister’s knock. Everybody in my family’s got one. My father’s is four soft, followed by one medium. He typically uses his fingertips. My mother’s is three medium with knuckles, then three medium with tips. For balance, she says. And Gammy’s is one medium, which is all she can muster at her age.

“Hmm?” I groaned from the bed. There was no reason for me to give Nat a formal Come in.

“You dressed?” Nat asked, peeking.

“Of course I’m dressed. I live with three other nosy people.” It came out sharper than I meant it. Homework does that to me.

“You talk about us like we spies,” Nat said, now pushing the door open.

“You talk about y’all like y’all not,” I shot back.

“Damn. Somebody’s in a mood, huh? Don’t act like we don’t all respect your space, Nee.” Nat closed the door behind her.

“Respect? That’s funny. You know why Ma’s knock is the longest?” And before Nat could answer, I stormed on. “Because she thinks that if she knocks long, it’ll give me enough time to get decent, since she’s coming in whether I want her to or not. She even be in here when I’m not home. Looking around for… whatever.”

“I’ll talk to her. That’s… ridiculous,” Nat grumped, sweeping sneakers out of the way with her foot.

“Hold on, hold on,” I cautioned. “Before you sit, do you know anything about The Canterbury Tales?” I folded my arms as if I were waiting to determine if my sister deserved a seat.

“Of course I do.” Nat eased down on the bed. The edge of it. But only after brushing it with her palm in case there was some sort of leftover little-brother debris.

“?‘The Franklin’s Tale’?” I held up the book, which had been lying next to me, butterflied and face down. Before I gave up and started combing through the senior videos, I’d been reading the first line of the prologue over and over again. No matter how many times I read it, it wasn’t making sense.

“Oh, nope,” Nat said. “?‘The Knight’s Tale’ is my jam.”

“Probably because it’s the first story in the book.”

“And… as far as I got.” Nat yikes’d her face and shrugged.

“Well… I’ll just ask Savion. Thanks for nothing.” I set the book back on the bed. “Seriously, what’s the point of having an older sister if you can’t help me cheat? Ain’t these the same classes you took in school? It’s not like we learning something different.”

“First of all, yes, I took this class, but I had a different teacher, so the assignments were different. Second of all, if you think I remember everything from high school, you’ve lost your mind.”

“Or maybe you’ve lost yours.”

“Fair. Maybe. But I know better than to question the type of big sister I am. Especially since I’m the type that teaches her little brother not to mess up his friendships fighting over girls.”

“I don’t even know what—” That has to do with anything is what I was going to say before she cut in.

“That’s from ‘The Knight’s Tale.’?” She bounced her eyebrows and tapped her forehead. “See? Ain’t lost all of it.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m also the type of sister who lets her brother sneak-drive her car late at night even though he don’t have a license.”

“I got a learner’s,” I snipped.

“But not a license. And you know why I did it? Just so he can go fumble around with his girlfriend.” Nat went into know-it-all mode, which is basically big-sister mode, and made the face to match. “And, on top of that, kept it a secret.”

“Okay, you got that one. But—”

“Oh, I’m not done.” Nat slipped her hand under her butt, slid her phone from her back pocket. “I’m also the kind of big sister who wants to show some pictures of what I worked on for you today at the shop.” Nat unlocked her phone, passed it to me. On the screen was an image of a metal mold of… something.

“What’s… this?”

“That is the casting mold for Aria’s door knocker.”

Suddenly the image dented into the mold became clear.

“Ugh,” I yuck’d. “That damn dog’s face.”

“Yep,” Nat confirmed. “It probably won’t be ready by graduation, but it’ll definitely be good to go before she leaves for college. She’ll have a Natalie Benton original, courtesy of you.” She poked my nose the way she used to do when she first started working in the shop. Back when she would smear a black smudge on it. Sister pranks. Workshop jokes. Door-knocker-maker humor.

See, besides my dad being in the bingo business, my mom’s side of the family is in the door-knocker business. Four generations deep. My great-grandfather started it a long, long time ago as a way to give Black people and poor people some front-door fashion. A bow tie for the abode. An ornament on the door of what were sometimes run-down establishments as a way to say ain’t no run-down folks inside. I never got to meet my great-grandfather, but I was told this story by my grandfather, who I called Grandy.

Grandy inherited the shop after his father passed. Grandy is also who made it an actual business and named it Wednesday’s Door Knockers. A couple years ago, after Grandy died, my mother took over the shop and hired my sister, who will probably inherit it someday. Even though nobody really needs a door knocker no more because… doorbells. Even though a lot of people really don’t even use doorbells no more because… cell phones. But still. Decoration is decoration, like a brass whole note (that looks like an eye) on a pink front door.

A few months ago I’d asked Nat to make Aria a special door knocker to take with her to college. Something to hang on her dorm-room door. A small thing to remind her of home. I wanted it to be chicken tenders, but they don’t translate to brass very well. Then I thought about doing a different take on the door knocker that hangs on the door at her house. The whole note. But make it a quarter note. One beat to represent her… as her. But I thought it might hit too close to home. Then I thought maybe my face would be a cool gift, but both my mother and sister made it clear to me that that wasn’t a good look. As if Denzel Jeremy Washington’s mug was somehow better.

I’m cuter than him. I don’t care what nobody says.

“For the hammer part, I’m gonna make a long tongue!” Nat was way too excited about this. I mean, to me, it was a door knocker. Sure, it was for Aria, but still just a door knocker. But for Nat, who’d been apprenticing for years, this was her first big project as a door-knocker maker.

“It’s cool. I mean… I think she’s gonna love it, which is all that matters,” I said. Which was all I could think of saying because that picture, which was going to eventually be a glossy hunk of metal, was a symbol of an inevitable—and hopefully temporary—separation between Aria and me. Because she was going to college. She hadn’t made a choice about which school she was going to yet, but Aria had options. Lots of options. And most of them were out of state.

We don’t talk about it. We tried. But we can’t. So we don’t. And for now, that’s fine.

Me, I’m not going to college. At least not regular college. And that’s fine too. School ain’t really my thing, not because I’m not smart, but because nobody can convince me The Canterbury Tales is somehow going to help me pay rent. Or that me being able to read Middle English—hast and thou and thy—will for sure make me a better fit for film school. Which is what I really want to do. Film school. But not right away because I gotta get money to afford that, and I’m pretty sure “The Franklin’s Tale” ain’t gonna make me more hirable. Not to mention, I’m already hired. Was born hired because I’m going to work at the bingo hall. I’ll learn the business, stack my bread for tuition, and maybe even buy a camera before studying how to make a movie. A forreal movie. Who knows, my first flick might be about the bingo hall. Not the players, but the bingo business itself. And after it becomes a hit—maybe an Oscar, but at least a Golden Globe—I might even use some of my money to open up a whole casino with a movie theater in it. And on the sign, high up in the sky, will be my face like a beacon calling out to Aria, reminding her where the jackpot is. Bingo!

But a door knocker of a dog will have to do for now.

“Yeah, I think she’ll like it too!” Nat was saying while glancing down at the floor. “You know what else she might like? If you… maybe think about… cleaning up in here—”

“Nat, what you want?” I know my sister. She does everything she can to not come into my room. Unless she wants something.

“I told you. I came to show you the mold.”

“Okay, I saw it, so—”

“And… to talk about tomorrow,” she finally admitted. “Sorry. But… yeah. How you feeling about it?” And just then her phone rang. And without having to say who it was, I knew it was a boy. One of the many. Had to be, because she grinned.

“Pause for the cause,” she said, springing from the bed. “Give me three minutes, then we’ll get to it.”

The it Nat was asking about was mine and Aria’s. Our it. Our… moment. And the only reason Nat was asking about it was because I’d told her about it. Because she’s… Nat. I guess a better way to put it is to say Nat ain’t just my older sister; she my older best friend. My older homegirl—a literal homegirl—who has always had deep-enough pockets to hold my secrets. To walk with them without risk of them weighing her down, or falling out. I told her months ago what Aria and me were planning. Then told her again a week ago. Then told her again yesterday. So she was asking because it was on her mind—I made sure of it. Plus, she of all people knew it was on my mind too, and the distractions—the dog barking, the videos, even the homework—were really just ways to not think about it so much.

With Nat now on the other side of the door—a three-minute mental-health break for me—I lay back on the bed and turned the book of Chaucer’s words into a tent of hithers and thithers over my head. I stretched my legs out, accidentally kicking the laptop, apparently, and, more specifically, the space bar. Because a few seconds later… Dodie’s voice. Again.

Okay, okay. Dodie Parr, superstar.

And how would you describe high school in three words?

* * *

How would I describe Dodie Parr in three words? Not real sure. Or maybe those are the words I would use to describe him at any given time. Sometimes he’s not. Sometimes real. Sometimes sure. All the time, he’s one of the most ridiculous humans I’ve ever known. Tall dude. Too tall for high school, especially to not be an athlete. And especially to be a singer. Not a singer like Turtle, who will probably grow up to be an opera star. And not even a singer like Aria, which is a… bad singer. Dodie is the singer, the lead singer, of a punk band. Which means Dodie is a screamer. And he got a nose ring. And a tattoo of a cheeseburger on his hand, because the name of his band is Knuckle Sandwich. And he always got on sunglasses, even in school, which means he’s always being told to take them off, which means he’s got an ever-growing list of lies he launches at teachers and administrators explaining why he don’t have no choice but to wear them. From dilated pupils to triple pink eye, even though he only has two eyes. He rocks a bald head, and a bald face, and got bald tires on his bucket—a red Honda—he affectionately refers to as “Cherry.”

One of the moments he could be described as sure is every morning when he picks me up for school. This morning was no different. Dodie (and Cherry) pulled up at seven like usual. He honked the horn, which turned Denzel Jeremy Washington into a siren of barks.

“Ma, I’m gone!” I grabbed my backpack and headed for the door.

“Have a good day!” Ma yelled from the bathroom.

Weekday mornings are all the same. My dad sleeps late because the bingo hall stays open until midnight, and by the time he counts the money and locks everything up, he usually doesn’t make it home until one in the morning. Two on the busy nights. So he’s always snoozing when I’m leaving for school. Pillow over his head to mute the mayhem of the morning.

Gammy, on the other hand, is awake before Jesus. And dressed as if she’s expecting him to stop by for breakfast. She’s always sitting on the couch, dog on lap, coffee in hand, watching an old movie. This one called Mississippi Masala is her favorite, but I’ve never seen it all the way through because she always watches it in the morning, while waiting for someone—usually my mother—to walk with her down to the cemetery to visit her husband. That is… until the day Jesus actually shows up to do it. This is an everyday thing.

Ma spends forever in the bathroom in the morning, even though she knows Gammy is waiting for her. She takes a shower. Then takes a bath. Then takes another shower. She says it’s important to ease into the day.

And Nat usually stays at one of her boyfriends’ (who are not her boyfriends) houses and comes home right after Gammy and Ma have already left for the daily graveyard visit. This is to avoid their judgy eyes and those nosy noses that always wrinkle with curiosity and suspicion.

Dodie honked again, rushing me.

“Bye, Gammy,” I said, smooching her forehead. She could barely hear me over all the barking. Then I was out the door.

When I plopped down on the passenger side of Cherry, I was greeted first by Dodie’s sly grin.

“Mornin’,” I said. Dodie turned down his music.

“Good morning to you,” he replied. “How you feeling?”

“I’m feeling like you need to give me your three-word description,” I said, straight to the point.

“Of me? Oh, that’s easy.” Dodie reached for the rearview mirror, turned it toward himself to check his face, then acted shocked by what he saw. “Beautiful Black boy.”

“You know what I’m talkin’ about, D.” I reached back and grabbed the seat belt, yanked it across my chest.

“Okay. How ’bout this? You got my word that I’m gonna drive slow enough for you to not have to strap yourself in like that. You got my word, you won’t die. You got my word that I’m the best driver you know. Boom. Three words.”

“Safety first,” I murmured. “And that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your yearbook video. You never said what your three words to describe high school would—”

“Sorry,” Dodie interrupted while turning up the radio. Guitars. Drums. Screams. “I can’t hear you!” Dodie put his cruddy Honda in reverse. Denzel Jeremy Washington barked a cuss-out in the living room window as we backed onto the street and pulled away.

I gazed out at the neighborhood I’d grown up in. This old Black suburb with no sign or gate, just a name that was nowhere to be seen but everyone knew was Paradise Hill. The fresh-blooming trees that used to be bases for hide-and-seek. The jagged sidewalks I’d raced on. The oil-stained streets I’d learned to ride a bike on. The park I had my first fight in, Nat in my corner, cheering me on. The asphalt burns that still scar my elbows and knees and tell the stories of my fuckups, get-ups, and stand-ups. The junk-drawer mix of neighbors who all know each other, some through friendship, others through enemy-ship, but there’s no beef a barbecue grill can’t cure. Neighbors whose sons used to be my heroes, and, more importantly, whose daughters used to be my crushes. My almost-first kisses never made real just because I was too shy to say or do anything. Most of those girls still live around here but are more like the sister type now. Not a sister like Nat but sister-ish. And none of them can believe I got a girlfriend. Me, nervous Neon.

I rolled my window down, let some of Dodie’s cheap cologne out, the same cologne my grandfather used to wear. But Dodie rolled the window back up.

“I need air,” I confessed.

“I understand that, but I need your ear!” Dodie screamed over the music.

“My ear for…” I turned the dial on the radio to lower the volume. “My ear for what?” As soon as I took my hand off the knob, Dodie reached for it to turn it back up. Then he grabbed his phone.

“I want you to hear something. Knuckle Sandwich’s new shit.”

“I’m good,” I deflected. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was down to hear it, but not until we weren’t… moving. As long as Dodie had to search his phone for the song while also driving, I didn’t want to hear nothing.

“No, no, you gotta hear it, man. Definitely our best yet,” he said, scrolling and scrolling, until I took the phone from him, annoyed.

“I’ll find it for you. Just… drive.”

Even though I’d now taken over music duty, he still hadn’t taken his eyes off me. Worst driver ever.

“The name of the song is ‘Empty the Clip.’?”

“?‘Empty the Clip’?” The confusion in my voice came from the fact that Dodie was the furthest thing from street.

“?‘Empty the Clip,’?” Dodie confirmed, nodding, already satisfied. Then, noticing my concern, added, “Relax. It’s a love song.”

I tapped the cell phone screen, and the song started playing. The bass heavy and fast. A scratchy guitar came in, shrieking. And then came Dodie’s voice. Like I said, his singing voice is more of a tire screech.

I won’t lie. I tried to ignore the song. Not because I didn’t want to support Dodie. I did. And I do. I go to his shows and jump around and all that. But to ride in the car with him on our way to school and to see him singing his heart, lungs, and whole stomach out was just awkward. It was like he was throwing up… sound.

I tried to roll the window down midsong, but Dodie had locked the windows, slick. And two minutes later, when the song finished, he asked, “What you think? It’s a hit, right?”

“I mean, maybe.” I mustered up some encouragement. “But I just don’t… get it.”

“Get what?”

“What it’s about.”

“What you mean? You ain’t hear it?” Dodie snatched his phone out the cupholder I’d set it in and restarted the tune.

This time I cut the whole radio off. The whole damn thing.

“We don’t have to listen to it again. Just tell me what it’s about,” I insisted.

“Emptying your clip.” Dodie glanced at me and then realized I wasn’t picking up what he was putting down. “You don’t know what emptying your clip is?”

Dodie stopped at the red light at the end of the block. Looked at me, which became me looking at me through the reflection in his shades. Then he tilted the frames down so that he could make sure I saw the disappointment in his eyes.

“Look, I know I said it was a love song. But really, it’s a lesson song. Listen to this lyric: If you don’t want a faster date, then it’s best you masturbate.” Dodie added some vibrato on the end of that one, for extra effect. Slapped my shoulder a few times for extra extra effect. “You know, you know!” And all I could think about was whether or not the hand he was using was… the hand he used. Which, by the way, was funny, because Dodie always swore he never jerked off because he never needed to.

I wanted to call him on it. But I didn’t. No need.

The thing about Dodie is, this is who he was all the time. A lover in his own mind. But I ain’t never known Dodie to be with nobody, except for Lana Spuddy. And that’s new. And he too scared of her daddy to try no punk mess. All that screaming and jumping around ain’t happening. But Dodie talks big. Talks like he’s been with everybody and their mama.

Been like that since middle school. Dodie moved to Paradise Hill halfway through seventh grade, and when he arrived, he was super shy. So, since I was a shy boy too, I basically took him under my wing. I’m kidding. At that point, my wings were too short to shelter anybody. Plus, he wasn’t like any other bird I’d ever seen. Dodie was featherless. Completely bald, yes, even back then. And if it wasn’t for what he said on his first day when Mr. Mercer made us all go around the room introducing ourselves, I would’ve thought he just had funny fashion sense. You know, trying to be different or something.

“Okay, Dodie, now it’s your turn,” Mr. Mercer said, prompting him to do what the rest of us had already done, which was to say our names and something interesting about ourselves. My fun fact was that I was… uncomfortable… around dogs. It was the only thing I could think of. The bingo hall wasn’t interesting to me yet. Neither was the door-knocker shop. Plus, both felt like things I could be teased about, and if there’s one thing I’d learned back then, it was that the only thing worse than being teased is being teased about your parents. But dogs? Plenty of people got problems with dogs.

Dodie stood up.

“My name’s Dodie Parr,” he said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “And I got alopecia, which is why I don’t have no hair. So… yeah.”

“Well, Dodie, that makes two of us,” Mr. Mercer said, patting his bald spot. “But mine isn’t from alopecia. It’s from old-opecia.” No one laughed. Not even Dodie. Because in the seventh grade, a bald head wasn’t a joke. It was joke bait. “Anyway, um… welcome. We’re happy to have you.”

I don’t actually remember how me and Dodie met, even though Dodie always says I came up to him and told him I ain’t have no friends either, which is a lie because I definitely had friends. Not a lot, but I had some. However, what I do remember is how he told me he didn’t need friends because he had girls. Even though he didn’t. Told me he’d come to this school because he got kicked out his old school for getting caught getting a blow job in the back of the school bus. And I wasn’t the only person he told that to. It was practically the second fun fact about him and would’ve been the first—the one he would’ve proclaimed in his introduction—had this not been school. Knowing Dodie, he would’ve written it across his head in permanent marker if he could’ve.

Thing is, no one believed him. Matter fact, I distinctly remember our class’s designated rich girl, Bria Crestlake, roasting him, telling everybody that she thought all that girl did was kiss Dodie on the cheek, which would’ve equaled a blow job because his bald head looked like a dick. Literally. Like a penis. And Dodie’s response was, “How you know what a dick look like?”

And she said, “None of your business.”

And he said, “If you ever want to make it my business, just say so.”

And she said, “Boy, I don’t invest in small businesses.”

Everyone laughed. Except Dodie. And me.

There were a couple reasons I didn’t laugh. The first was that I had no idea what invest meant. Bria’s daddy wore blue suits and shiny shoes, so it made sense that she would use words like that. Invest. But not me. And the second reason I didn’t laugh was because I didn’t know whether or not I was a small business owner. I mean, I had never really seen nobody else’s business at that point. And because I didn’t find what Bria said funny, Dodie knew—or at least he figured—I wasn’t a bully. Or a follower. Because it would’ve been much easier to just laugh with everybody else.

The other thing that glued me and Dodie together was that his grandmother was Mrs. Monihan. Is Mrs. Monihan. Of course, I didn’t know this when we first met, but I found out when she asked me about him one night when I was hanging out at the bingo hall, chomping down fries.

“Neon, come here,” Mrs. Monihan said, beckoning me how she always did, with one finger in the air. I tossed a fry in my mouth and made my way over to her. “You know this boy?” She held up a wallet-sized photo of Dodie. “He’s new to your school.”

I ain’t have to look long. Dodie was easy to recognize. “Yes, ma’am. I know him.”

And then she did exactly what grandmothers do: told her grandson’s business.

“Well, he’s my grandchild. I love him, but I swear, he a downright fool. Boy got kicked out of his last school for stealing his teacher’s sunglasses. And you know how they caught him?”

I almost choked.

“How?” I asked.

“Because he wore them to school the next day.” Mrs. Monihan knocked on the side of her head. “Anyway, if he acts up, you let me know, hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, before returning to the half-eaten cardboard canoe of crinkle-cuts waiting for me along with the confirmation that Bria Crestlake was right. Dodie was a liar. And, apparently, a thief. At least when it came to sunglasses.

But despite Mrs. Monihan’s request, I never snitched on Dodie. Not once in all these years. And that fool been acting up since I’ve known him. Been talking wild and beating his chest like he some kind of Casanova. Like he invented lovemaking and everything that goes with it.

Apparently, nobody knew nothing about kissing until Dodie came along.

Apparently, nobody knew nothing about touching until Dodie discovered oranges in the cafeteria and decided to let us know how to caress a breast, even though I told him he looked like he was in the grocery store, feeling for freshness.

“I am,” he said, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

The same way his grandmother believed she was the high priestess of bingo, that she was born lucky, Dodie acted the same way. Only difference was, Mrs. Monihan actually won occasionally. I still don’t know if Dodie knows anything about sex. If he’s ever even had it. But he loves to talk about it, and he especially loves to sing about it. Scream about it.

Especially, especially in the car on our way to school.

“One more time, from the top!” Dodie said, turning the radio back on and starting his new song over again. Correction: his new love song. And before the second verse, he started pounding his pelvis against the steering wheel.

Let me explain. It’s Dodie’s dance move. His only dance move. If there’s any kind of music, and especially if there’s music he’s singing, he’s doing this move, which is just a series of humps and body rolls typically seen from R there was just no way to prepare for it. No way to be ready. And years later, just the memory of it sent a collective shiver down our spines.

“Oh. I think childbirth is beautiful,” Aria said matter-of-factly.

“It definitely is. But in a ugly kind of way,” Tuna grumped, popping a Cheeto in her mouth.

We went on about health class for a few more minutes, which was really us talking about how other than the birthing video, all we remembered was how we had to repeat the words penis and vagina over and over again, as if us pronouncing the words properly would help us use the body parts they’re describing.

“It might as well have been English class,” Savion joked.

“Please. Penis and vagina are way easier to understand than what Mr. Gowan just assigned, even though I’m sure you’ll love it,” I griped to Savion. “The Canterbury Tales.”

“Emphasis on can’t,” Dodie joked.

“Emphasis on bury,” I countered.

“Emphasis on yearbook.” Aria trumped us both, refocusing the group. From there, we filled each other in on where we were with our yearbook work.

Each of us had a separate assignment. I gave my video update. Status: I’d gotten 203 videos over the last seven months and only had thirty-nine to go, including mine and Aria’s and the rest of Dodie’s.

Dodie was working on the music for the site because it was the only thing we knew he’d actually do.

Savion was doing the writing and had come up with a list of random captions using quotes from poems. Blind loving wrestling touch to introduce the wrestling section.

And Go home and write / a page tonight to introduce the creative writing club. And I knew the horse meant knight for the chess club.

(It should be noted that Dodie would always tease Savion about this and say that Aria should award him the superlative Most Likely to Graduate a Virgin. To which Savion would respond, I don’t see nothing wrong with me being a virgin. Do you? And Dodie would shut up before he got body-slammed.)

Fred was working on the site’s layout. Coding and all that was his bag. He told us he was creating a drop-down menu where each grade could be selected individually. Aria was, of course, coming up with Senior Superlatives, which, of course, I was helping her with. And Tuna was doing all the artwork. At least, she was supposed to be.

“Tuna, what you working on?” I asked. She held up her sketchbook. It was of a naked woman, but not like a naked woman just to be a naked woman, but the kind of naked that comes from modeling for artists. But there wasn’t no models around.

“That’s gorgeous,” Aria said. “But I don’t know if Sanchez will let us use it for the yearbook.”

“Sure we can.” Dodie chomped at the bit. He lowered his shades and peered over the top of them. “I mean… I think… who is that?”

“It don’t matter,” Savion said. “She ain’t Lana.” Lana don’t go to school with us either. I know her from the neighborhood, but the rest of them know her from Dodie constantly talking about her. About how she looks better than every girl in our school, whatever, whatever, whatever.

Dodie sucked his teeth, pushed his glasses back up. “Me and Lana just getting going. It’s still new. Nothing serious yet. So, Tuna… who is this?”

Tuna glared at Dodie, bothered, which was her usual look whenever she put eyes on him. Either that or confused, like he was the most abstract piece of art she’d ever seen.

“She is exactly what she’d be to you. A figment of my imagination.”

“You right. A sweet fig meant for my imagination.” Dodie kissed his fingers, and I immediately had flashbacks of him squeezing those oranges.

“Please, you wouldn’t know what to do with a girl like this, Dodie. Cut it out.”

“Oh yes I—”

“Stop.” Tuna held her hand up, closed it into a fist as if trapping Dodie’s voice.

“Whatever. I—”

“Aht, aht.” Now she put a finger to her mouth.

“I—”

“No,” she snapped. “Shhh.”

The rest of us laughed at the whole exchange. It’s a thing Tuna and Dodie do often, this constant back-and-forth, bickering and chipping at each other. But it’s always love. Just a different brand of it. Honestly, the running joke between me, Aria, Fred, and Savion is that Tuna and Dodie will probably end up living together one day. For whatever reason.

When Aria finished her food, I stacked our trays. And before I got up to drop them in the cleaning bin, I leaned over and asked her if she was feeling any better.

“Much better,” she said. “I had another meeting with Mr. Truss.”

Mr. Truss is the guidance counselor. Nice guy. No help.

“Did he crack the code of your future?” I ran my hand along her back, the soft cotton of her T-shirt interrupted only by her bra, like a speed bump.

“Of course not. But we had a good time talking about all the possibilities. According to him, I could be the president of the United States.” Aria dug around in her purse, pulled out a piece of candy. Popped it in her mouth.

“You’d get my vote.” I held my hand out for candy delivery. She went back in her bag.

“Yeah, but my mother probably still wouldn’t be impressed,” Aria said. “But, hey, at least I got to skip AP Psych.”

“Sike, sike, sike!” Dodie hollered, standing up. His sunglasses now at the tip of his nose.

“What?” Aria was startled and missed the joke. We both did.

“Nothing,” Savion said, holding the bottle up to his mouth before turning away from us to spit in it. “Just that Dodie still tripping about that girl. It’s a picture, bro. Just a sketch.”

“Literally. Art,” Fred joined.

“Right! Like I said, if this was more than a sketch, if she was real, you wouldn’t do nothing but fumble anyway, Dodo!” Tuna jabbed.

“You must be sniffing… them pencils if you believe that,” Dodie jabbed back.

“Sniff, sniff, sniff!” Tuna… sniffed.

“Well, give me your sketchbook, and I’ll show you what I’d do.” Dodie reached across the table, but Tuna recoiled.

“I know you don’t think you ’bout to mess up my work.”

“I’m not. I promise. But y’all ain’t gon’ keep talking about me like I ain’t the best lover at this table. I mean, I’m the writer of the new hit love song, ‘Empty the Clip,’ which I will be playing for y’all as soon as school is over. Meet me at Cherry and prepare to be turned on.”

“Pass.” From Savion.

“Yeah, me too. Pass.” This from Fred.

“Pass, pass, whatever.” Dodie shooed their rejections away. “It’s already been Neon-approved.”

Savion, Fred, Tuna, and Aria whipped their heads toward me. Aria’s slightly cocked. Tuna’s slightly tilted.

“I don’t know if—” I tried to explain that I hadn’t actually approved anything. But Dodie barreled on.

“Pass me the sketchbook, please.”

Tuna finally handed Dodie the book, and from there it went all… weird. He did his best to explain foreplay. And if I hadn’t already finished eating, I would’ve cut the rest of my lunch short. No one had asked for it. Because don’t nobody want to hear Dodie talking about no play. Not two-play, three-play, foreplay, four-ply toilet paper, nothing. But Dodie, trying to prove a point, went on talking about how he starts at the lips.

“I start at the lips,” he said, puckering.

“Ugh.” Tuna grimaced. But Dodie went on about how he moves down to the neck.

“Then I move down to the neck.”

“No marks,” Tuna said. “No need to broadcast romance.”

“Some girls like that,” Dodie asserted.

“Most girls don’t,” Tuna replied. Dodie went on about how he moves down to the breasts.

“Then I move down to the ti—um, the breasts.” Dodie started squeezing the air. Tuna looked like she wanted to squeeze his neck.

“They’re boobs, not Hacky Sacks,” Tuna said.

“What’s a Hacky Sack?” Dodie asked.

Tuna tried a new example. “What I’m saying is, they’re not… stress balls.”

“What’s a stress ball?”

Tuna looked around the table at the rest of us, waiting on a co-signer, but me, Savion, and Fred were clueless too. We were one big shrug. Aria, noticing our blank stares, just let out a sigh.

“Be gentle,” Tuna finally said, annoyed. “All that hard squeezing ain’t cool. Just be gentle. These ain’t water balloons.”

“Water balloons!” Dodie’s lightbulb went off. But then he thought about it, and the bulb dimmed a bit. “But… I don’t squeeze water balloons because they’ll bust.”

“Exactly. And if you squeeze some girl’s boobs like that, she’ll bust you… dead in your face.”

Aria almost spat lemonade all over the place, but Dodie ain’t care. He just kept… going. Down. To what he called the… volvo.

“You mean the vul—” Aria started but caught herself. “You know what, never mind.”

“I learned that in Ms. Rambleton’s class,” Dodie boasted. “I think I was in the AP version of sex ed. Clearly.”

Clearly.

* * *

All of this happened before I got home and holed up in my room. Before I tried drowning out the barking dog with the impossible language of Chaucer, and before I tried to distract myself from Chaucer with the senior videos, and before I was interrupted by Nat, who came to remind me of the real thing I was trying not to think about.

She’d finished her phone call and come back into my room.

“My bad, Nee,” she said, hitting the space bar on my laptop, stopping the video. I felt the bed shift under her weight as she returned to her seat on the mattress’s edge. I didn’t budge until she snatched the book from my head. She repeated, “How you feeling… about… it?”

“Like I was born for it.”

“Nee, seriously. Come on.”

“Aight, aight.” I turned my elbows into kickstands. Propped myself up. “I’m… not scared, but I’m… I don’t know.”

“Nervous?”

“Yeah. Kinda nervous.”

Nat’s eyes softened. And she ain’t look surprised at all. If anything, she looked… relieved. Because nervous, for me, was normal. Nat was used to it. Knew how to deal with it. When we were kids, she would let me sleep in her room whenever I needed to because, well, I was a little nervous about being in the dark. Not just because I couldn’t see, but because the dark seemed like something in and of itself. Like it had a fur that bristled against me. And when Curtis Whitestone said he wanted to fight me because his mother spent all the rent money at the bingo hall, Nat was the one who went with me down to the park—not to defend me, but to gas me up so I could defend myself. She told me fighting was in our blood and no one in our family ever lost. And that it was a gift we had.

And then… I lost. And she carried me home. And iced my eye. And told me she lied, and I still don’t know if she had actually lied or if she was lying about lying to make me feel better about losing like that. And even just six months ago, when we first moved Denzel Jeremy Washington into our house, and he chased me around the living room, nipping at my ankles with his glass-shard teeth, it was Nat… who barked back at him. Shut him right up.

“About what?” she asked now, tapping my knee.

What was I nervous about? Um, everything. I had no idea what it would be like to be inside someone else. What it would feel like. If it would hurt Aria. What if I put the condom on wrong? What if it broke, and Aria got pregnant? My dad always told us not to bring no babies home. And what would happen after? What if I lost it and started tripping? What if I became addicted? I heard there’s nothing better. Which means there’s nothing worse. What if I… hated it?! What if, for some reason, our bodies just didn’t work together?

What was I nervous about? Everything.

But, for some reason, all I could say was, “Well, first of all, what if I can’t get her bra off?”

That’s what I said. It had been bothering me since lunch. Actually, since way before that. The clasp seemed like such a contraption, complicated even through the back of her shirt.

“What?” Nat scratched her head with a single fingernail. Patted the spot afterward.

“Her bra,” I confirmed. “What if I can’t get it off?”

“What if you can’t… get it off?” she mumbled. Then pinched her jaw, trying to squeeze her laugh.

“I’m serious!”

Nat’s eyes went soft again. “I know you are.” She inched closer. “Listen, this is gonna sound unromantic, but it’s real. Nee, she can undress herself. It’s okay. As a matter of fact, it might even be kinda hot.”

I ain’t think about it that way.

“Okay, that’s fair. But then Dodie was talking today about foreplay and how you gotta kiss the lips, the neck, the boobs, and then you gotta go—”

At this point, Nat was back standing. She took a deep breath. “Dodie said what?”

“That there’s four points to foreplay, and—”

Nat put her hand up. A halt. “You listening to Dodie? Oh… God. There are actually a lot more than four. And usually, boys focus on whatever’s sticking out. But trust me, the fastest way to turn a girl off is to turn her into just a body. And the easiest way to turn her into a body is to only focus on the obvious. There are lots of other erogenous zones. Hot spots. Lots. Like fourteen of ’em. But not everybody likes everything. So—”

“Fourteen!” I interrupted her interruption. “How am I supposed to remember all that?”

“You don’t have to.” She laughed and flicked my toe. “This ain’t no test you taking. Listen, this will be a moment where y’all can work it out together. Who knows? Might find out you like the backs of your knees kissed.”

“Probably not.”

“You might. She might.” Nat shrugged. “The point I’m trying to make—and this is the best advice I got—is, just say the things. Say it all.”

“Say what?”

“Everything.” Nat’s voice, which had been steady, now rippled into a beg. “Tell her you nervous, Nee. Because… I’m sure she’s nervous too. It’s normal. And once y’all get that out in the open, you can relax. And breathe. And maybe even laugh.”

“I don’t know about all that,” I grunted.

“I hear you. God forbid you actually enjoy it, right?” Nat cracked. But I didn’t break.

“Come on, Nat. I’m not in the mood.”

“You not? You mean to tell me this whole time I’ve been wasting my good breath and even better wisdom for someone who’s not even in the mood?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” She cocked her head to the side and glared.

“Seriously, I’m not playing. You think everything a joke.” I looked down at my knees, a natural response to the gravity of embarrassment. Ashy.

“Okay, okay.” Nat calmed the press. “Hey, I’m being forreal. No more jokes. I promise. At least for the rest of the night.”

“Thanks, I guess.” I glanced up at her and sneered. Nat is Nat. I know that and love her for it, even when I hate it.

“No problem,” she said all cavalier. Then added, “Anyway, you got any other questions, or am I dismissed?” She raised an eyebrow, smug-mugged.

Of course I had other questions. More than a few. More than she knew.

“Maybe later,” I said, picking up The Canterbury Tales. I laid back. Opened the book. Closed it. Then opened it again.

“Right. You got work to do.”