On a Clear Day (25 page)

Drego didn’t fool anyone. He was all street and all mean-smart. He
sensed moves, like a boxer or a dancer. I thought
he fought against
his feelings. I wondered, when he was alone, maybe sitting on the john or lying awake at
three in the morning, if he thought about the woman he had hit in Miami, or the people
he had dealt with down there. I knew he looked at the kids who had been killed as just
that—kids who had been killed. I knew they ate at his soul.

Javier. Smart, hurting. He held a memory of Ellen, of the life that could
have been. How hard must that shit have been? To never have had that slice of life that
you thought would have been fulfilling, and be doomed to forever long for it. Ellen was
as much a part of Javier as the Bronx was part of me. I relied on the Bronx, pretended
that I didn’t love it, but I kept coming back. I kept coming back.

Anja was so cool. She found people out. We were all naked to her. When she
looked at me, I thought she saw deeper than anyone I had ever met. She knew who I was,
where I lived, where all my flaws were hidden, and how my juices flowed. Yes, I sweated,
and I peed, and I cried, and she knew all of it, all about me. Her knowing made me glad.
It was good to have someone who knew you without having to climb over the mountain of
what you had to say, or the disguises you put on or the dances you did. She saw people
for what they were, naked and alone, and needing each other. I thought she was a good
person. Maybe a saint. Maybe just her knowing so much about me, where the truth lay in
me, let me love her.

Mei-Mei. She had invented herself, had given herself all kinds of crazy
skills, and knew everything. It was so stupid for me to say that I would like to fight
her, but I kept
thinking about it. Just one punch to that cute
little face would have done me so much good.

She was also bitchy, which was the only part of her I liked.

Michael. Brought us into his magical world and stepped back so that we
could each bring our own melodies and rhythms to the jam. We each saw the illusions on
the wall and made our own interpretations, but in the end we pulled it together, learned
to respect each other, and stopped the great beasts of almighty profit from devouring
more of us. At least we had done it for the moment, at least for this time, and for the
few places in which the shadows had been made brighter.

In a perfect world, a boy-meets-girl kind of world where there was
blushing and sneaky looks across the room and body parts coming together in hot moments,
I could have sweated Michael big-time. There was something about him that called my name
even if I was half scared to answer him. If I had gone off with him to climb the
mountain, I don’t know what I would have told Mrs. Rosario when I got back.

Michael, Drego, Tristan, Javier, Anja, Mei-Mei, and me, we were a good
team. Together, we’d learned what we could do. C-8 had backed off from acquiring
another company. For now. We had won. But I thought we might have learned not to
question what we had won.

Some of the medical people from CTI were finally speaking out. And there
was a three-page blog out of Johns Hopkins about how more research was needed to verify
the prostaglandin findings.

I wondered if I was still young enough, still hopeful
and innocent enough, to think about going to medical school.

And then there was Lydia, who was smart. The way she looked at me and
Anja, reaching out to us intellectually, wanting to have faith in her intelligence, it
meant a lot to me. Little girls need to grow up to be smart, involved women. Little
boys, too. One day, if Lydia found out all that we did, it would be worth it to me.

But we did some bad shit too. How bad? Bad enough for me to run back to
the Bronx and sit in my little den and boo the fucking hoo all over the place and wonder
who I was again.

We killed. Stop. Don’t fancy the shit up. We killed, left bodies
lying in the streets in the name of peace. The fact that I could still find my soul in
the middle of all my doubts didn’t help for more than a few minutes at a
time.

In the end, I hoped we were better, that we were more righteous than the
drug dealers and the money lords and all the fools running around allowing themselves
the luxury of ignorance. How much is two plus two? Can you really not know?

Maybe the Gaters were the real enemy. People who closed their eyes to what
was happening, who allowed themselves to unknow what they damn well knew, who allowed
their petty comforts to come at a price that thousands—millions of
people—had to pay. The real enemy was their indifference.

Maybe. Who knows?

Hey, and what would I do? Go back to my math, to
my
numbers, to my equations, trying to make sense of it all. If Michael called me today, or
tomorrow, I would probably go back to him. I’d use my skills and hope I was on
the right side. It’d be a chance to be, to live, to stake out my humanity. Maybe
Michael would look at me and see something—someone—Dahlia—as being
very special. Maybe he’d fall in love with me so hard, his nose would bleed and
he’d come begging at my feet. I could use some of that.

The sky was becoming lighter. A broad beam of light promised sunshine. I
could see the clouds now, and they were breaking up. Perhaps it would be a clear
day.

In the window opposite me, the woman disappeared, and then she reappeared
with a pillow. She put it on the windowsill and put her arms on it.

I waved to her. My arm was still hurting.

She waved back.

W
ALTER
D
EAN
M
YERS
’
S
fiction and nonfiction books have reached millions of young people. A prolific author of more than one hundred titles, he received every major award in the field of children’s literature. He wrote two Newbery Honor Books, eleven Coretta Scott King Author Award and Honor Books, three National Book Award finalists, and the winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. He also received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults and was the first recipient of the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was a 2010 United States nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Award numerous times. From 2012 to 2013, he served as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature with the platform “Reading is not optional.”

When asked about his readers, Walter would often say, “Young people are some of the best people I know.” In Walter’s short-story collections
145th Street
and
What They
Found
, he celebrates a community of people in a Harlem neighborhood. His novels
Hoops
and
The Outside Shot
appeal especially to basketball fans. Walter set
On a Clear Day
in the future and gave it a global context because “it’s never too soon for young people to bring their awareness and energy to the world’s problems.… [Ultimately] the teens in
On a Clear Day
want to make a difference.” In his most-beloved books, Walter explored the theme of taking responsibility for your life while reminding readers that everyone
always
gets a second chance.