“Hello?” I say nervously.
“Can you come outside?” Darius asks, with his voice sounding much deeper than in person.
At the same moment, another call comes in. It’s Warren. I tell Darius to hold.
“What up, Z?” Warren sounds way too cheerful for so early in the morning. “I’m working out over here at the Irving Square playground. You good to shoot some ball?”
I laugh. “Yeah, that’ll be cool. Just hold on a minute. I gotta get rid of somebody.”
I switch over to Darius. “I can’t. I gotta meet Warren in a few,” I say without hesitation.
“Warren?” I can feel him bristle. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. You caught me off guard last night, but Warr—”
“You know what, I really don’t want to hear it. I’m good. I’ll see you around the way, Darius. And thanks for getting me home safe.”
With that, I switch over to Warren and tell him to meet me out front in a few minutes. I can’t wait to see him and tell him about Howard.
The minute I step outside my door, Warren shows up on my stoop with that smooth smile of his. But even as I sit, listening to Warren crack jokes about the guys on the courts and other people we know from around our way, I can feel something tugging at me across the street. It’s a soft pull, like someone touching the bottom of my shirt, or a light tap on my shoulder.
I glance up at one of the Darcy house windows, and I spot Darius looking at us. I quickly look away. Warren has his back to the house, and while he checks his phone, I look back up at the window. I stare at Darius for a moment, and he stares back.
“Zuri Benitez,” Warren says. “I wanted to see you again.”
At the same moment a text comes through my phone. It’s Darius, again.
Then another text comes in. “What does he want?” I say out loud.
Warren glances at the windows across the street.
“He wants you, Zuri,” Warren says with a smirk. “Just ignore him.”
My phone keeps buzzing, and I watch Darius type quickly. I can’t ignore him, because his texts keep flooding my phone.
I’m sorry
But I really need to tell you something
Warren isn’t a stand-up guy
I would never lie to you
Please believe me
“Why don’t you just tell him to come over here,” Warren says, and I almost jump. He’s trying to look over my shoulder, and I shift away.
Believe you about what? I respond. Just tell me what’s going on.
I watch Darius pause and read my texts. It’s like I can see his jaw tighten from across the street. Then he begins typing again.
Gigi is in boarding school because Warren took sexy pictures of her He sent them to his friends
“What the fuck?” I gasp.
Then they got around to the whole school
That’s why she’s staying with our grandmother
He fucked up her reputation
But please keep this a secret
I really don’t want anyone to know
I look up over at Darius, and our eyes lock. I try to process all this information about Warren, the boy who’s sitting right next to me. Has Warren been lying about everything? Is this the reason he almost got expelled? I can’t believe it. But then I think about Georgia. She’s mad sweet. Photos getting around isn’t something you just make up. My stomach stirs. If anything like that happened to one of my sisters . . . I can’t even finish the thought. I’d hate Warren too, if I was Darius.
I see him typing. The three dots hover.
Zuri? he writes.
I pause.
I promise not to tell, I write back.
“Yo, Zuri. What. Is. Going. On?” Warren says.
I turn toward him, but I can barely look him in the face. My blood is boiling.
“Is it true?” I ask Warren point-blank. I narrow my eyes at him.
“Zuri, is what true? What just happened?”
“What you did to Darius’s sister.”
“Damn, is that what he just told you? Seriously, I can explain.”
I get up from the stoop and start pacing, my mind buzzing. “The only thing you need to explain is how you were nasty enough to take pics of a fifteen-year-old girl. What the fuck, Warren?”
“So it’s like that, huh?” He gets up too. He’s a step above me, and now he towers over me. But I refuse to be intimidated.
“Get the fuck outta my face, Warren!”
Warren glares at me, but he does what I say. The gate slams shut behind him, and he walks down the street without looking back. I feel all the air leave my body, and it seems like my heart is screwed on backward. I went from catching feelings for Warren to cursing him out in the span of a minute.
I look up and see Darius is still standing in the window. He nods at me, once. I bite my lip as I nod back. Darius steps away from the window. I sink down onto the steps and cover my head in my hands.
“What’s going on?” Janae calls out from upstairs.
My sisters are watching from the bedroom window. Madrina’s curtains are open. And maybe the whole block had their eyes on me, Warren, and Darius.
And that’s when I know for sure that those boys moving onto this block has changed everything.
Twenty-One
WHEN I REACH Madrina’s door, it’s already slightly open. I can see her colorful walls covered in bright artwork: fake Picassos, African masks, Caribbean art, and even the stuff my sisters and I made in grade school, framed and placed beside all the other eclectic knickknacks Madrina has around her home. It was Madrina who gave me my first poetry journal, who encouraged me to write down everything I saw.
“Madrina!” I call out, and my voice echoes. I need to talk to Madrina about this boy. That kiss. Those photos. And this thing I can’t quite describe that’s swimming deep inside me.
I search the kitchen, the bathroom, and finally I hear a faint voice coming from behind the closed door of her bedroom. I knock first. Then I open the door to find Madrina lying in her bed.
“Madrina, what’s wrong?” I ask. I rarely come into her bedroom because never, ever have I seen her laid up in bed in the middle of the afternoon.
The lump beneath the blankets shifts, and she mumbles something.
“Madrina?” I take slow steps toward her bed.
She pulls back her covers, and for the very first time in my whole entire life, I’m seeing my madrina without any makeup. She’s a little darker and her face looks smaller. The wrinkles on her forehead are like ocean waves, her eyes are deeper and piercing, and her thin lips stretch into a weak smile when she sees me.
“Zuri? Cómo ’tás?” she says. Her voice is still deep and booming, but it comes from a shallow place now.
“Why are you in bed?”
“Because I’m resting,” she says, and turns over to her side to face me.
“No riddles, Madrina. Tell me straight up. What’s going on?” I crouch down beside her bed so that we’re eye to eye.
“You’re so bossy, you know. The bossiest of all your sisters,” she says, smiling.
“I get it from you, Madrina. Where’s Colin?” I take her hand and squeeze it. It’s cool, smooth, and dry.
She squeezes my hand back. “Zuri. You’re also hardheaded. You have all these walls around you that it’s like your heart is locked up in some room.”
I pull away from her. “You want me to get you some water? Did you have something to eat yet?” I’m too worried about Madrina to even tell her about what happened with Darius on the drive from D.C.
She starts to get up from beneath the covers. She’s wearing a flowery nightgown, and for the first time, I suddenly see how thin she’s gotten. She’s still a little chunky and soft, but it’s different. For the first time ever, she looks frail. She opens a drawer in her nightstand, pulls out a fifty-dollar bill, and slides it over to me.
“Keep the change,” she says, and gets up from her bed.
I take the fifty dollars from her with no questions asked. And no answers, either. I watch her for a long minute as she struggles to pour the boiling water from an electric kettle on her nightstand into a mug. Her hand is shaking like I’ve never seen it before. I quickly get up to help her, but she shoos me away.