“Did he look like a troll that, if provoked, might grind people up in a tree-grinding machine?”
“What?” Miles stood, walked over to the closet.
“Not important. Anyway, are y’all gonna go back?”
“I think so. I mean, the way I see it, we kinda have to. Austin’s on lockdown.”
“Yeah.” Ganke nibbled on a fingernail. “You know who’s not on lockdown? You. No punishment. I don’t even know how you pulled that off.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Miles inspected his haircut in the mirror hanging on the back of his closet door. “The school didn’t call about the desk, and other than that, I just told my dad the whole story about leaving the store and Alicia, and he told my mother everything, and I guess that smoothed things out.”
“Alicia, who’s probably going to come to the party tonight looking like some kind of gorgeous ghoul. Too bad you’ll be a ghost to her.”
“Nah.” Miles turned to Ganke. “I’m gonna spill the salsa on her.”
“Wait, you’re gonna do what?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, listen, being such a positive figure in your life, I pretty much willed you out of trouble and knew that you wouldn’t be prepared for freedom, so I brought you one of my old costumes.” Ganke reached into his backpack and pulled out a plastic bag. In it was a rubber mask. He handed it to Miles.
“What is it?”
“A zombie,” Ganke explained. “And the best part is, you can dress the way you’ve been dressing for the last few days and it’ll work perfectly. You’re already eighty-five percent there!” Ganke flashed a goofy face.
After running scenarios of what might happen when Miles finally decided to approach Alicia and talking a lot about salsa, both “spilling it” and dancing it, it was time to get dressed for the party. Miles threw on raggedy sweats, an old T-shirt, and the zombie mask. It wasn’t amazing, but it was good enough. Ganke, on the other hand, put on a wool suit, a pink swim cap, and little circle-framed glasses.
“Who are you supposed to be, man?” Miles asked, sizing Ganke up.
“I’m Dean Kushner, pretending to be Mr. Chamberlain,” he said, putting his hands together and closing his eyes. “I’m literally going to stand in the middle of the dance floor like this the whole time.”
Miles howled with laughter.
“Miles!” his mother’s voice came from down the hall. Miles cracked the door.
“Yes!”
“Come speak to everybody. John John and the guys are here.”
John John was a former Marine and lawyer who was one of Miles’s father’s closest friends. He and “the guys” Miles’s mother was talking about were in the living room, same as they were one Saturday a month for as long as Miles could remember. Playing cards. Spades, to be exact.
By the time Miles and Ganke were headed out—about ten minutes after the announcement of John John—the spades crew was settled in the living room, and the game was in full swing.
“Punks jump up to get beat down!” Carlo, an old friend of Miles’s father from his previous life as a street guy, taunted. Carlo was always dressed in a button-down shirt and hard-bottom shoes and had a scar on his cheek that looked like a millipede. He was holding a card in the air, waiting for Miles’s father to play his hand. Miles’s dad laid a queen of clubs down, and Carlo slapped a five of spades on top of it. “Get that mess outta here, boy!” Carlo jeered, raking up the cards.
Next to him was Sherman. Everybody called him Sip because he was from Mississippi. He didn’t talk too much. Miles’s father met Sip the same night he met Rio, at that Super Bowl party. When Miles’s father asked him why he left Mississippi, all he said was, “The dust got too thick.” Miles’s father didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he knew it had nothing to do with dust.
“Uh-huh,” Sip grunted, cutting the cards. “You boys get happy so quickly up here in New York. Sometimes things gotta get warm before they get hot.”
“Sip, please,” John John said, tapping the cards. “You been living here almost twenty years. You one of us now.”
“No I ain’t. I’m a crooked-letter boy to the grave. A city-dweller now, for sure, but trust me, I still know the ways of the South. Still understand patience.” Sip winked at Miles’s father, his spades partner. John John shook his head and started dealing.
Miles and Ganke walked into the kitchen for a quick glass of juice before leaving.
“Oh!” Miles’s mother, who had been at the counter shaking trick-or-treat candy into a bowl, shrieked. “You babies look so cute!”
“Ain’t no babies in this house!” Carlo yelled from the living room.
“They are to her,” Miles’s father said under his breath.
“They are to me!” Miles’s mother yelled back. “Take a look,” she said, presenting Miles and Ganke to the older men at the card table.
“And who you supposed to be, son?” Miles’s father asked. Miles wasn’t wearing his mask.
“A zombie.” Miles flung the mask in the air.
“Well, guess what,” John John said. “You nailed it.”
“Sure did,” Sip followed up with some additional snark while rearranging the cards in his hand.
“And what about you, Ganke?” Miles’s father asked.
“It’s complicated. But basically, I’m me and Miles’s dean, pretending to be our history teacher, Mr. Chamberlain.”
Miles’s mother let out a high-pitched squeal. “That’s funny. But I’m glad it was you and not Miles who tried to pull this stunt.”
“Yeah. He would’ve been suspended, again.” Miles’s father shook his head.
“Kiddo got suspended?” John John laid his cards on the table, facedown, and took a swig of his drink.
“Yeah, his teacher Mr. Chamberlain wrote him up for running out of class for a, um, bathroom emergency.”
“And they suspended him for that? Because the kid had to go, what, one…or two?” Carlo added.
“Doesn’t matter. That seems a bit excessive with the discipline, even to me,” John John said.
“Man, lemme tell you something, I ain’t never met a Chamberlain I liked,” Carlo said, also putting his cards down. “Matter fact, when I was in school, I struggled with a teacher named Mr. Chamberlain too.”
“Did he look like this?” Ganke asked, instantly taking on his Chamberlain pose—hands together, eyes closed.
“Um…nah.” Carlo peered at Ganke. “This dude had a weird red bush. Like Ronald McDonald. And he wasn’t my history teacher. He was my English teacher. But I wasn’t a good reader, you know. And he knew that. But he would call on me anyway. Every single day.”
“Did you tell him you didn’t want to read?” Miles asked.
“Yeah, I told him. I even stayed after class one day and explained that I maybe needed a tutor or something. But he didn’t care. He just kept calling on me, letting the other kids laugh at me, until one day I just started ignoring him. And when that happened, he started writing me up. And it wasn’t long before I wasn’t in school no more at all.”
Miles’s father shook his head. “And how old were you?”