Campus Convenience: The store that’s sure to bore. Miles’s job was part of the work-study program, and it was basically a way for him to get free room and board so that his parents could keep a roof over their own heads. Rent in their neighborhood was going up yearly, and there was always the fear that their landlord—a man named Caesar that no one ever saw—would sell it, which would leave Miles and his parents scrambling for housing. Miles had seen it happen before. A man named Mr. Oscar used to live at the end of the block. Been there Miles’s whole life. Until a FOR SALE sign went up beside his stoop. Until people started standing around outside, looking up at the windows, scribbling in notepads, typing on cell phones. Until Mr. Oscar wasn’t there anymore.
Whenever Miles thought about this, he pictured his mother and father crammed up in the dorm with him and Ganke, his mother trying to microwave plátanos on Sundays. Miles, sleeping head-to-toe in Ganke’s bed, while some new family moved into his home. A family like Brad Canby’s or Ryan Ratcliffe’s. A family that ate off good china every night.
It was a ridiculous image. But it was enough motivation to keep Miles going to work.
But the thing about Campus Convenience is that it conveniently didn’t sell anything any actual teenagers wanted. No phone chargers, no nail polish. Just notebooks, tear-off or spiral. Pens, felt-tip or ballpoint. Pencils, no. 2 or mechanical. And of course, sausage in a can. And Miles’s job was to ring up the teachers and students who would pop in to buy something. Which meant Miles’s job was to do nothing. Because no one wanted sausage in a can.
Miles stood hunched over the counter, his life raft in a sea of one-ply toilet paper and three-hole punchers. There was nothing to do, no one to talk to, and what made it worse was the music—saxophones crooning a perfect soundtrack to a workplace wasteland.
So Miles did what he always did at work: homework. He’d finished his chemistry and breezed through his calculus before leaving the dorm. And no history assignment, as usual. Mr. Chamberlain made it so that the entire grade was based on tests. No extra credit. No special assignments. Just listen and…regurgitate.
So it was just Miles and the sijo. The prompt, a piece of cake and a knife in the gut at the same time: write about family. It had been giving him trouble since he’d started it, hours before. But before he could, again, try to tap into his inner Edgar Allan Poe, he remembered the envelope in his back pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the return address he hadn’t bothered to look at on his way out the door.
Austin Davis
7000 Old Factory Road
Brooklyn, NY 11209
Miles Morales
Brooklyn Visions Academy
Patterson Hall RM 352
Brooklyn, New York, 11229
Miles slipped his thumb along the closure and slowly tore the envelope open. Slipped the letter out, unfolded it, revealing line after line of penciled words, written in all capital letters.
MILES,
IF YOU’RE READING THIS, THAT MEANS MY GRANDMA REALLY DOES KNOW HOW TO USE THE INTERNET. SHE TOLD ME SHE WAS GOING TO SEARCH FOR YOU. AND NOW YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHO I AM AND WHAT THIS LETTER IS ABOUT. MY NAME IS AUSTIN. MY FATHER’S NAME WAS AARON DAVIS. IF GRANDMA IS RIGHT, AARON DAVIS WAS YOUR UNCLE, WHICH MAKES ME YOUR COUSIN.
Miles’s eyes scanned which makes me your cousin over and over again, mainly because he didn’t know his uncle had any children, and also because he didn’t have any other cousins. Which makes me your cousin. Uncle Aaron had a son? Which makes me your cousin. Miles kept reading, other words jumping off the page like fifteen and locked up and if you write back.
Locked up.
Cousin.
Austin.
And when Miles reached the end of the letter, he started over, and read the whole thing again. His saliva turned sour, a syrup oozing slowly down his throat. He didn’t know what to think, if he should even believe what he was reading. He couldn’t. This couldn’t be true. How could Uncle Aaron have a kid and Miles not know about it? Did his father know? He had to. But maybe not, because he and Aaron never spoke. But still…he had to. Besides, Miles talked to Aaron all the time. Well, he used to, before…before. Wouldn’t Aaron have said something? Wouldn’t there have been something to give it away? A picture? Something?
A loud thump snapped Miles out of his haze. A group of obnoxious students walking by the store had banged on the window. Miles instinctively folded the letter as if he had been caught doing something wrong. But once he set his eyes on the fools in the BVA it-crowd, he relaxed. Didn’t really seem like the poetry types, but he assumed they were heading to the quad for the event anyway—everybody loved Alicia and her crew. He figured at least one of them would pop into the store, maybe for candy, water, sausage in a can, a stupid joke, a random rich-kid taunt which typically sounded like gold-plated fart noises…anything to shake up the boredom. But nope. They kept walking, leaving Miles with his thoughts, with the contents of the letter, with the idea of Austin—and Aaron—all dancing off beat through his mind to the sound of smooth jazz.
He unfolded the letter again. It had been folded in thirds to fit into the envelope, and it was obvious that Austin had struggled to get it right from the different creases making veins across the paper. As soon as the letter was open again, there was another bang on the glass. But this time it was Ganke. His face was contorted against the window, as if he’d had a run-in with the crew that had just walked by. He kept his face mashed on the glass, his lips sliming up into a smile as if they were made of lava. Then he unstuck himself and yanked the door open.
“Sorry to interrupt. I know this is the busiest time of your shift,” Ganke said, standing in front of the counter with his arms spread, turning in circles.
“Shut up.” Miles folded the letter again. “Ain’t you supposed to be doing homework?”
“Yeah, well. I got most of the chemistry done and started working on my sijo. But the prompt is…I don’t know…kinda got me stuck.”
“Family?”
“Yeah, man.” Ganke’s voice slipped from silly to serious. “Like, what am I supposed to write? My-fah-ther-and-muh-ther-have-bro-ken-up-and-I-am-sad?” Ganke counted on his fingers. “This is a true statement, but not exactly my best work.”
“I feel you. I was working on it earlier, and was struggling, but after reading this, it seems even more impossible.” Miles extended Austin’s letter to Ganke.
Ganke took the letter, unfolded it, and began reading. His eyes darted across the page, spreading wider with each word. “Who…?” Ganke glanced up from the page. “Who is this from?”
“You read it. Apparently my uncle had a son. Named Austin. Who’s fifteen. And in jail.” All fact, no feeling.