It was O’s turn to shrug. “It was not a big thing. She just said that sometimes she gets headaches and a shimmering light in her vision. An aura, she called it. She said it gives her a sense that something is about to happen.”
“Really.” What was Mimi doing telling this black boy things she hadn’t told him? They had only spoken for a minute at recess—she’d obviously packed a lot in. She must have wanted to. Ian was not interested in her headaches and her premonitions, but he didn’t like others gaining access to privileged information about her.
“Anyway, you were saying about Dee…and Casper.”
“Right.” Ian forced himself to snap out of the swelling rage that threatened to overturn the trap he was carefully setting. “Casper is the most popular boy in the whole school. And Dee is—put it this way, if they were in high school they’d be voted Homecoming King and Queen. You know what that is?”
O nodded.
“They go together.”
“But she is with me.”
“Sure she is…except she’s not feeding you her strawberries, is she?”
O shook his head, like a bear puzzled by a wounded paw. “Dee is not going to change that fast over me. We have only just started going together.”
“Sure, sure.” Ian made as if to back off. “You’re right. Forget I said anything. Besides, Dee’ll probably bring in strawberries again anyway. You can have some then.” He paused. “It is strange, though, that she didn’t come straight to you when she got back to school. Are you sure you’re going together?”
“Are you saying that she has dumped me? Already? Between the lunch bell and now?” O’s voice was starting to rise.
“I’m not saying that,” Ian soothed him. “I’m just saying: keep an eye on her. And watch yourself with Casper. Sure he acts nice, but that doesn’t mean he is nice.”
Ian could have said more, but there was no time—Dee had spotted O and was rushing across the playground to him. “I managed to come back early,” she said when she got to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I told my mother there was a rehearsal for the end-of-the-year play, and she believed me!” Dee had the incredulous tone of someone who is not used to lying and is surprised that it worked. “Hey, maybe you can be in the play too.”
“What are you doing?” O asked.
“Shakespeare—A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We’ve been rehearsing for a while, but there are lots of parts. You could be a fairy, or one of the peasants putting on a play.”
“What part are you playing?”
“Hermia—one of the lead girls.”
“Doesn’t she fall in love with one boy after another?” Ian interjected. “She’s fickle like that. Lucky boys.”
“Only because of what you do. It’s just magic,” Dee explained, as O’s face darkened. “It’s a comedy, so it turns out all right at the end.”
“Who do you play?” O demanded of Ian.
“He plays Puck,” Dee said. “The head fairy who makes all the mischief happen. Now, look what I’ve got.” She held up a paper bag. “Strawberries! The first of the season. I brought some for you.”
“Only for me?”
“I didn’t know if you’d had them before. Do they grow strawberries in Ghana?”
“I have had them—in New York, in Europe. Not Ghana.”
“Well, try one. You won’t believe how sweet they are.” Dee reached into her bag and held out a glistening strawberry, bright red, in a perfect heart shape.
“I am not hungry.”
Dee laughed. “I eat strawberries because I like the taste. Doesn’t matter if I’m hungry.”
Ian was watching with satisfaction. The simple power of his words had transformed the black boy into a cold statue, the white girl hanging off him, carried along by the giddiness of her emotions so that she seemed willfully unaware of any change in her boyfriend. Ian waited to see the hurt enter her like a knife.
But then, O relaxed. “All right.” He took the strawberry, grasped it by the leaves, and bit into it. After a moment he smiled. “Wow. That is good. Very good. Your mother grows these?”
Puzzled surprise crossed Dee’s face, mingling with the pleasure she’d had at O’s response. “How did you know that?”
Ian stepped forward. “Can I try one?”
“Oh. Sure.” As Dee pulled a strawberry from the bag and dropped it into his outstretched hand, Ian studied O. His smooth brow furrowed again, those lines deepening as Ian bit into the strawberry and let the juice run down to his chin. It was good, Ian could tell, even though he was not fond of strawberries, or anything sweet.
“Did Casper like his strawberries too?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Dee frowned, matching her boyfriend. “Yes. Come on, let’s go over to the trees.” She directed this only to O, taking his hand and pulling him toward the sandpit and the cypress trees, leaving Ian alone.
Not for long, though: Rod scuttled over from where he had been waiting by the arm wrestlers on the pirate ship. “Did it work?” he asked, his longing look following the couple. “It doesn’t look like it did!”
Ian considered O and Dee, holding hands under the trees as she fed him another strawberry; and Casper, watching Blanca with a proprietary air as she jumped Double Dutch. They were like characters in a play who needed an extra scene, a thread to pull them tight. And Ian held that thread. It would be satisfying to take them all down—not just the black boy, but the golden boy and golden girl of the school too. Casper and Dee were like the Teflon pan his mother used to fry eggs in—nothing stuck to them. He had never been able to touch them—they were on a level above Ian’s kind of activity. Everyone admired them in a way he would never experience. It would be an end-of-school present to himself if he could conquer them. Of course, there was a clear danger that he could fall with them; but the risk of that was as exhilarating as the power he wielded.
He glanced at Rod, so eager to take part, and made a quick decision. “Go over to Casper and say something to him to make him hit you,” he improvised. “But don’t say anything about me telling you to if the teachers ask you afterward. Which they will.”
Rod’s mouth dropped open. “What? Why? I don’t want to get hurt! And what does Casper have to do with it, anyway?”
“It’s indirect—the best way. The black boy won’t know you or I have anything to do with it.”
“To do with what?”
“We need him to think Dee is two-timing him with Casper. The best way to do that is to get Dee to talk about Casper a lot to O. To defend him. It’ll drive O crazy. He’s already a little suspicious of Casper. This will push him over the edge.”
Rod shook his head as if dazed. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about—it’s too complicated. Why don’t we just hit the black boy?”