CHAPTER 1 #2
"And what'd he do?"
Rodney almost smiled, caught himself. "Snitched."
"I told the teacher to stop it, that's not snitching," Varnell said, quieter now, less like a threat and more like a fact he was tired of repeating.
Ms. Odom looked over at him. "Varnell, why you sit by yourself?"
He hesitated. Ain't nobody asked him that directly before, not in a way that expected a real answer.
"I don't know. People look at me funny. Skin, hair, whatever. Easier to just not deal with it."
Rodney's leg stopped bouncing. He looked over at Varnell for the first time since they sat down — not glaring, just looking, like he was doing math on something.
"You ain't white though," Rodney said, less like an accusation this time, more like he was working it out loud.
"I know I ain't."
"Then what you mixed with?"
"My pops is white. My moms Black. I ain't never met him."
Rodney nodded slow, filing that away. Ms. Odom let the quiet stretch, not rushing to fill it — she knew when to let two boys find they own way to something.
"Y'all fight like y'all trained," she said eventually. "Either of you box?"
"Nah," Rodney said. "Just fight a lot."
"I used to watch it with my uncle," Varnell said. "Before."
"Before what?"
He didn't answer that one. Ms. Odom didn't push. She wrote something else down, then looked up at the clock on the wall.
"Alright. Here's what's gonna happen. Y'all gonna shake hands, and for the next two weeks, if either one of you got a problem with the other, you bring it here instead of your fists. That's the deal, or it goes back to Dr. Richardson and it's a suspension. Your choice."
Rodney looked at Varnell. Varnell looked back. Something had shifted in the room, small but real — the kind of thing that don't announce itself, just settles in quiet.
"Fine," Rodney said, sticking his hand out first, which surprised Varnell more than the punch to the jaw earlier did.
Varnell shook it. "Fine."
Ms. Odom checked the clock again. "Fourteen minutes. Not bad." She waved them toward the door. "Go on before the bell get y'all in trouble for being late too."
They walked out together, quiet, neither one sure what to say now that the anger wasn't holding the conversation up no more. Rodney bumped his shoulder into Varnell's, light, almost by accident.
"You got a mean jab, man."
"You got a mean tackle."
Rodney laughed, short and surprised at himself. "I box sometime. My cousin got a gym on Bergen."
Varnell looked over at him. "For real?"
"Yeah. You should come through sometime. See if that jab worth anything outside a fight."
Varnell didn't answer right away, but something in his chest loosened up a little, same as it had following the other kids down the block that morning. Not friendship yet. Just the start of something that hadn't decided what it was gonna be.
The rest of the day moved slow, the way days do after something big already happened before first period even ended.
Varnell caught a few looks in the hallway — a couple heads nodding at him he'd never got nodded at before, word already moving quick as it does in a building full of kids with nothing better to spread than gossip.
Rodney passed him in the lunch line, didn't say much, just threw up two fingers in a little wave.
Varnell threw his own two fingers back, unsure but willing.
By the time the last bell rang, the cold had gotten meaner, wind cutting through the thirteen blocks same as it had that morning, just angrier about it now that the sun had started dipping.
Varnell kept his head down, hands jammed in his pockets, replaying Rodney's hand shooting out first for that handshake.
Wasn't nothing dramatic about it, but it sat with him the whole walk home, turning it over like a stone in his pocket.
His building came up on the left, brick gone dull with age, a couple of the hallway lights out on the second floor same as they'd been for months.
He climbed the stairs two at a time out of habit more than excitement, unlocked the door, and stepped into the quiet.
Vanessa wasn't home yet — wouldn't be for a couple more hours, her shift running long most days now.
He dropped his bookbag by the couch and looked at the referral slip still folded up in his pocket, the one detailing his two weeks of mediation.
He thought about hiding it, then thought better of it.
She'd find out one way or another, and lying about it would only make it worse.
He fixed himself a plate — leftover rice, a little bit of chicken he microwaved till the edges went hard — and sat at the same table he'd eaten breakfast at that morning, television humming low in the background for company.
The apartment held onto a particular kind of silence when it was just him in it, one he'd gotten used to a long time ago.
He didn't mind it most days. Today it sat a little different, though, like something in him had shifted without asking permission.
He pulled out his homework, more out of routine than motivation, and worked through it half-heartedly while the sky outside the window went from gray to black.
Somewhere around seven, keys jingled at the door and Vanessa came in, coat still on, bag over one shoulder, looking like the day had taken something out of her she wasn't gonna get back with sleep.
"Long day," she said, more to herself than him, dropping her bag on the counter.
"Yeah," Varnell said. "Me too."
She looked over at him properly then, catching something in his voice. "What happened?"
He slid the referral slip across the table without a word. She picked it up, read it slow, her jaw tightening a little more with every line. Fighting. Suspension waived. Peer mediation, two weeks.
"Varnell."
"He started it, Ma. He was messing with me, kicking my chair, saying stuff."
"I don't care who started it," she said, though her voice had already lost some of its edge, tired taking over where anger might've gone.
"I care about you not getting kicked out another school.
You know I can't—" She stopped herself, pressed her fingers to her temple a second, then let out a breath. "We can't keep doing this."
"I know."
She looked at him a long moment, something softening in her face despite herself. She pulled out the chair across from him and sat, still in her coat, and reached over to smooth down a piece of his hair that never did what it was told.
"You good though? For real?"
Varnell thought about the fight, about Ms. Odom's questions, about Rodney's hand out in front of him. About things he wasn't sure how to explain yet, even to himself.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm good."
She held his face a second, like she was checking for herself, then let go and got up to microwave her own plate, the conversation closing the way most of their conversations did — not resolved so much as set down gently, to be picked back up some other day.
Varnell finished his homework in the dim light of the television, the referral slip sitting folded on the table between them like a promise neither one of them had said out loud yet — that tomorrow would ask something different of him than today had.