“Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma,” Celia sang.
“Wepa!” Miles mother hooted, taking his father by the hand.
“See, son, after you spill the salsa, then you hit her with a spin move,” his father boasted. “Works every time.”
A few hours later, as Miles sat in his room doing his weekly sneaker clean—a toothbrush to the sole—there was a knock at his door. Miles figured this was when they would drop the hammer. His father was known for doing things like this. Waiting a full day, laughing and joking and acting like everything was fine before—bam! Grounded.
“Come in.”
And just as he thought, it was his father. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. “They’re looking good, man,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“So, we need to talk.” Miles sighed, but his sigh was cut short by his father’s next words. “About tomorrow. I just wanted to check in with you, make sure you were still up for it. If you’re not, that’s totally fine.”
“For the prison? Yeah, I’m up for it.” Miles, relieved, set his shoe down. “You still up for it?”
Now Miles’s father sighed. “Yeah.” He came over to the bed, took a seat. “Let’s just make sure that we’re good with whatever happens. In case we find out he’s not who we think he is. Or if he says something upsetting. Prison, it…does things to you. Trust me, I know.” Miles could hear the discomfort in his father’s voice, could hear his throat drying. But Miles didn’t respond. Just looked at his dad and nodded. His father slapped his hands on his own thighs and rocked up from the bed. “Okay, that’s all I wanted to say.” He leaned down and kissed Miles on the forehead. “Good night.”
As he opened the door, he turned back. “Oh, and thanks for the pizza.” A sly grin wiped across his mug. “Though an anchovy or two would’ve been nice.”
With the weight of the day heavy on Miles, sleep slipped into his room as his father slipped out. It wasn’t long before Miles was overcome by it—dream state—and when it happened, it happened seamlessly. Miles didn’t remember lying down, or snuggling in. Just sitting on his bed, then suddenly, as if in a blink, sitting on a couch. A leather couch. But not in his house. That house. The one Miles had never been to, but knew so well. The small window of his room, now palatial with off-white linen curtains snatched closed. His bare feet on mosaic tile floors. The smell of dirt, and wet, and tobacco smoke. Strands of cat hair floated through the air like tiny spirits.
“You know the issue I have with you, Miles?” The voice came from the seat beside him. He hadn’t noticed anyone sitting there, despite how large the chair was. It was Mr. Chamberlain. All yellow and flimsy-skinned. All mustache and chapped lips. He sat with his hands together, his nails bitten down to the cuticles. “It’s your arrogance. You believe that you can really save people. That you can do good. Superpowers don’t belong to branches that come from a tree like yours. Because your tree is rotten at the roots. You, my man, are meant to be chopped down.”
Miles couldn’t speak. It was like his tongue had been cut from his mouth. In a panic, he slid to the far end of the couch, the leather grunting with each inch. Just then, a white cat pounced onto the backrest. Miles looked at it. Then back at Mr. Chamberlain, who had now become an even more ghostly figure. Long white hair hanging from his chin. Sharpened nose. Teeth like grilled corn kernels. “Spider-Man.” The man spoke, his voice haunting, his smile disgusting. “You don’t know me, but I know you. And I will come for you.”
“You don’t know me. I know you!” Miles’s father yelled playfully down the hallway. Miles woke up, his heart beating like a wild animal trying to break free from his chest. “If you come, Rio, Miles is gonna come home with cuts in his eyebrows and parts all over the place.”
“Ha! Jeff, this ain’t the nineties. Kids aren’t getting cuts in their eyebrows anymore.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, you would let the boy do whatever he wanted.”
“Well, that’s because it’s his hair, papi.”
“Yes, I know.” Knock, knock, knock. “Miles, get up, man! We need to get you a haircut before we head up to the jail.” Miles’s father continued down the hall. “Yes, baby, I know. But he goes to that school, and I just don’t want them saying nothing crazy about our boy. Let’s just keep it clean until summer. Then I don’t care if he shaves his eyebrows off!”
“Why you keep talking about eyebrows?”
Good morning, Miles said to himself, his hands covering his face as his eyes adjusted to the sun pouring in through his window. But one eye wouldn’t open. He rubbed it and rubbed it until it watered, but the tears still didn’t flush out whatever it was. He went to the bathroom; using two fingers to pull the skin around his eye in either direction, he used his other hand to pick out whatever was in his eye. He held it up in front of the mirror. A long white hair.
Which led to a long hot shower.
But not long enough before his mother was banging on the bathroom door.
“Miles, we have to pay for that hot water!” And “Miles, your father’s getting impatient, and you know what that means!”
That meant that Miles’s father would eat Miles’s breakfast. Just out of spite.
Eventually, Miles shook off the strange nightmare, finished scalding his skin, got dressed, scarfed down breakfast—eggs and microwaved waffles—kissed his mother, watched his father kiss his mother, then set out on Saturday Mission #1: The Barbershop.
“Listen to what I’m saying to you.”
“No, you listen to what I’m saying to you. I been comin’ here since I was a kid, and now you got me paying thirty dollars for a daggone cut, House? A number one with a shave? Thirty dollars?”
“Well, that’s fifteen for a cut, fifteen for a shave. Ten for kids. And eight for geniuses.” House nodded at Miles.
“Uh-huh. Robbery.” The complainer groaned.
“Robbery? You know what, y’all jokers kill me. Michael Jordan says, today I’ve decided to charge three hundred smackers for my sneakers, and y’all don’t never have a problem buying those spaceships for shoes. Out here looking like your feet are in the future and the rest of your dusty butt is still in the hood. But the one minute”—House, the owner of House’s Cut House, put a finger in the air—“the one minute I raise the price on haircuts, everybody whinin’ and cryin’. Not to mention, ain’t nobody getting their butts whipped over a fresh fade.”
He was cutting the hair of a man dressed in construction clothes—dirty jeans and clay-caked boots. He ran the clippers over his head, hair rolling off in clumps, snowflaking to the floor.