“Who you talking to, Ganke?” Miles groused, turning the knob on the sink faucet. Then catching himself, he added, “You know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.”
“Whatever, man. I’m working on my poetry. All three lines have to be between fourteen and sixteen syllables,” Ganke explained through the vinyl shower curtain. “So you gotta count ’em out.”
Miles cupped his hands under the spigot and splashed water on his face. “Why?” he asked.
“What you mean, why?” Ganke snatched one side of the curtain back, just enough to push his face through. “Because my people said so.” Then he snatched the curtain closed again, and yelled, “SIJO!”
Miles and Ganke flip-flopped back to their room, got dressed—hair-brushing, sneaker-brushing—split a pack of cold Pop-Tarts, and headed out to class. But before they left their dorm, Miles doubled back. Just for a moment. He walked over to the closet and opened the door, Ganke still in the hallway waiting for him. He peered into the pile of clothes and shoes. There in the dark corner was the red-and-black skin he usually carried with him every day, now balled up underneath a mess of BVA sweatshirts, unmatched socks, and spotless sneakers. He stared at it for a few seconds before reaching through the junk and yanking out the mask. He held it up, limp like a melted face, then, shaking his head, stuffed it back down into the pile of leather and laces. Not today.
At Brooklyn Visions Academy students only had four classes a semester, but those classes were ninety minutes long. So if you had bad classes, they were extra bad. But at least Miles got to start the day with math.
Calculus, one of Miles’s favorite classes, was taught by Mr. Borem, a skeletal man with olive skin and a nose like an ice pick. “Calculus,” Mr. Borem had said on the first day of class, jacking his pants up to his navel while pacing across the room, “is the mathematical study of change.” But after that speech came the real glory of math, at least to Miles—numbers and symbols and letters. The sweet sight of one plus one equals alphabet. A challenge that Miles was always excited about facing.
After that—chemistry with Mrs. Khalil.
Then, while half the students had first lunch, Miles and Ganke headed to Ms. Blaufuss’s class.
The thing about Ms. Blaufuss was that she didn’t really look like she was supposed to be teaching at BVA. Where was the blazer? The over-starched button-up? The khakis? The “sensible” shoes? She did have the glasses, though, but they weren’t the Brooklyn Visions Academy glasses—the wire circles or the plastic rectangles. No, Ms. Blaufuss wore cat-eye frames, bright yellow as if they were made of lemon rinds. Her hair, a choppy short cut, was always tousled. Sometimes she wore dresses, but usually she wore jeans rolled at the ankles, loose blouses, long sweaters scrunched to her elbows, high heels Monday through Thursday, and sneakers on Friday. She had a tattoo on her wrist of a semicolon, and one on her forearm of a slice of pepperoni pizza.
“Mr. Morales, welcome back,” she said, as Miles and Ganke entered the classroom. Her room was covered in posters of writers, most of whom Miles had never heard of before. He took his seat. Ganke sat behind him. Winnie Stockton, a sko-low—which was what the kids on scholarship called themselves—from Washington Heights, sat in front of him.
“Hi, Ms. Blaufuss,” Miles said, a slight twinge of embarrassment in his voice. He knew everyone knew he had been suspended, and more importantly he knew everyone thought they knew why. The kid who had to pee so bad he was willing to be punished for it. When really he was the kid who is Spider-Man. Well, as of the night before, the kid formally known as Spider-Man.
“Yo, Ms. Blaufuss.” Ganke followed up, excitedly, “I’ve been working on my sijos.”
“Yeah, he has.” Miles shook his head, but stopped shaking it when Alicia Carson sat down at the desk beside him.
Alicia. A beautiful lump in his throat. All brains, brown skin, and braids. A slightly crooked smile and just enough of a lisp to be charming. She smelled like vanilla, but Miles knew there was also a touch of sandalwood, probably a spritz of some kind of perfume just behind her ear. His mother loved sandalwood. Burned sandalwood incense to kill the smell of fried fish in the house all the time.
“Hey, Miles,” Alicia said.
“Hey, Alicia.” In the corner of his eye, Miles saw Ganke bouncing his eyebrows like a creep. Miles talked to Ganke about Alicia all the time, and, being the best friend he was, Ganke was always trying to convince Miles that she liked him back and that he should make a move. But Miles wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He wanted to, but all the cool he thought he had was currently balled up into a spandex mess in his closet.
“Okay, everyone, settle down.” Ms. Blaufuss stood in the front of the class with just her fingers tucked into her jean pockets. “I hope everybody had a good weekend. I hope you all took a moment to breathe in the poetry all around you.” The poetry all around you. Normally statements like that made Miles cringe, but Ms. Blaufuss could get away with it. “We’re going to be working on sijos all week, using the first ten minutes of class to write. It doesn’t have to be perfect or even finished, but I want you to build your syllabic muscles.” Ms. Blaufuss curled her arm as if flexing her bicep. “Now, does anybody wanna throw out a prompt we should use?” Chrissy Bentley, who was sitting on the other side of the room, flung her hand up. “Chrissy?”
“Dogs.”
“Dogs?” Ryan Ratcliffe scowled.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with dogs?”
Ganke leaned forward and whispered in Miles’s ear, “Dude, I can’t write a sijo about a cockapoo. Not gonna do it.” Miles held in his laughter.
“Okay, so Ryan, what do you think is a better prompt?” Ms. Blaufuss asked.
“I mean…” Ryan wiped one hand over the other as if he were washing them. “Love.”
The class groaned. Seriously? Ryan “Ratshit” Ratcliffe was the kind of dude who never left his dorm without splashing his neck in old-man cologne that smelled like black pepper. Plus he had the I look like I might be on TV thing down. Blue eyes. Face like it had been chiseled out of stone. Teeth like they’d been specially made from elephant tusk. Dude was so TV. So gross.
“Love, huh?” Ms. Blaufuss said. “Okay, well, how ’bout we do love, but we keep it open. That way, Chrissy, you can talk about how much you love your dog. Ryan, you can talk about how much you love—”
“Yourself,” Chrissy dropped in. The class rumbled with muted laughter. Ryan was too cool to even be fazed.
“Or whatever you want.” Ms. Blaufuss pinched back a chuckle. “Everyone can use the love prompt any way they desire, okay? Ten minutes, starting…now.”
The class instantly quieted. Ms. Blaufuss darted over to Miles and squatted beside his desk.
“Has Ganke explained any of this to you?” she whispered.
“He…sorta.”
“I tried,” Ganke said, too loud.
“Shhhh,” from someone in the class.