Secret Saturdays (8 page)

“Ayo, cripples, do the crip walk,” Sean said to them.

He spoke loud enough for the kids' teacher to hear. He was lucky she was busy reading her
Daily News
. If she had heard him, he would've gotten in trouble. What was wrong with him? He never picked on handicapped kids. Now it was like Sean made fun of any kid with something wrong with them.

Another big change I caught was how lately Sean's disses were always a lot meaner.

At our lunchroom table, Sean asked one kid, “Peter, how's your father? Oops, I forgot. You don't have one.”

That same day on the third floor, we passed a water fountain and Sean told this kid sipping water, “William, don't get too close to that faucet. Somebody might bump into you. Knock your teeth out. Then you'll look like your dad.”

Seventh period, we went down a packed stairwell and Sean yelled at this kid Brian. “Brian! Is that a new shirt?!” Sean snapped. “Where you getting new clothes from? Aren't you on welfare because your dad bounced?”

A few times I wanted to ask Sean what was wrong with him. I felt a little bad when he made welfare jokes because I was on welfare. Plus, why was he bullying? But he was becoming so quiet with me that I thought telling him what was on my mind would make him switch off completely and stay cold with me.

Sean treated Vanessa the opposite of how he was with me. He was thirsty to talk to her.

When school let out for Thanksgiving, kids were hanging out everywhere on the block, happy to have two days and a weekend off. They shouted and ran this and that way. In the streets, cars and yellow school buses honked at kids who jaywalked. I spotted two security guards clearing students off the sidewalk. “Go home! Everybody away from the school,” they shouted.

Me, Sean, Kyle, and Vanessa left the building. I stopped for a second near some parked cars because I wanted to talk about our science homework. Science was no joke. It was getting harder and harder.

“What you get on the last science test?” I asked Sean, trying to start a conversation.

“Fifty-five.”

“What?” I said, shocked.

“It's nothing.” Sean shrugged, then leaned toward Vanessa and whispered something in her ear. I gave Kyle a look. “Here these two lovebirds go again.” I knew any minute Sean and Vanessa would step away from us. Boom. They did.

They went one car off from where we stood. Vanessa sat on this silver car's hood and Sean faced her. Almost standing between her legs. Nearly boyfriend-and-girlfriend close. They exchanged words, and she giggled and touched her hair.

At first, me and Kyle were stuck on stupid. Watching Sean. I started thinking about how he acted like his bad science grade was no big deal, but Kyle killed that. “Anyway,” Kyle said, and jumped back into talking science. But while he spoke, my eyes kept going from him to eyeballing Sean and Vanessa. Finally, I stopped Kyle's blabbing.

“You think they together?”

Kyle shrugged. “Maybe.” He kept speaking science.

I was probably annoying him because he was discussing school while I was talking nonsense, but my attention kept going back to Vanessa and Sean. They were in their own world. Kyle soft-punched me in my stomach. “You listening?!” he said.

“Why you hit me?”

“Look.” His face got serious. “Me studying Sean isn't going to help me get a good grade in science. You want to figure out our homework or what?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Me and Kyle got 100 percent into talking science. Before we knew it, Sean and Vanessa came back over and we all bounced for home.

 

Thanksgiving break was four days long. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Me, Sean, Vanessa, and Kyle usually saw each other during the break. This time it was different. Vanessa and her parents went and stayed with family on Staten Island. Kyle and his parents spent the break in Mount Vernon at his cousins' house. I missed hanging out with everybody, but the days went by fast.

Back in school, Sean didn't bring up his Thanksgiving in Philly. When I asked him about it, he said, “It was whatever.”

The first weekend in December rolled around, and me, Sean, and Kyle slept over Kyle's. Around midnight Kyle was on his bed reading comics while Sean sat in a chair next to the window, playing a video game on his iPod Touch. I had just finished writing a new rhyme. “Guys,” I said. “Listen.”

“Whattup.” They nodded.

I read fast in a tongue-twister way, like Eminem battle-rapping in that
8 Mile
movie:

Kyle just nodded and gave me a thumbs-up. His normal chill self and I expected that. But Sean stayed as quiet as Kyle. Totally unlike him. Normally, he'd rap back or tell me what was fire about my rhyme or how to make it better. Instead, Sean just smiled. “Cool,” he said, and turned his video game back on.

Was Sean deaf? My rap was super-hot. What was he so serious for?

All night, Sean was as laid-back as Kyle. He smiled at my jokes but didn't crack any back. Later on, it felt like whenever I looked at him, Sean was either shut down and quiet or writing in his rhymebook. Twice, when he wrote, I grabbed my rhymebook and wrote too so I felt like me and him were doing the same thing.

Even Kyle acted worried about Sean. “He's mad quiet tonight,” he said when Sean went to the bathroom.

“Right?” I said. But before we could talk more about it, Sean was back.

The next weekend, me and Kyle were supposed to sleep over Sean's place. Friday when we got dismissed from school, I looked for Sean so we could ride the bus home together. He was ghost. I thought I'd catch him at the bus stop on the corner of our school. Nope. Only Kyle was there. Vanessa wasn't meeting us. She had heard the girls' basketball team wanted new players so she had gone to after-school tryouts.

“Where's Sean?” Kyle asked me.

“I don't know.”

Kyle looked away and mumbled, “He probably bounced on us again.” He said that so quietly that it was like he was saying it to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Kyle turned back to me. “You try Sean's cell?”

I pulled mine out and tried, but Sean's voice-mail message came on. “No answer.” I slipped my cell into my pants' pocket.

“Let's wait for him for five minutes, then go,” Kyle said.

Soon, ten minutes passed and our bus pulled up. The doors opened and Kyle went to get on.

I stopped him. “Let's wait for Sean for a little lo nger.”

“Why? You see him calling us?” Kyle said, annoyed. “Sean's having fun somewhere. Maybe he decided to take a later bus with his cousin Mark or another one of those seventh or eighth graders he's been hanging with.”

What Kyle said about Sean maybe riding home with one of those kids sounded right. Sean was spending more and more time with them. Me and Kyle squeezed through the crowd of kids and went to the back of the bus. There, he put his iPod earphones in his ears.

On the ride home, I didn't bug Kyle about Sean anymore but I did try Sean's cell again. Twice. No answer. When me and Kyle got off the bus, we said if we didn't hear from Sean by eight o'clock, we'd do the sleepover anyway. At my apartment. When I got home, I rode my elevator upstairs and knocked on Sean's door. No answer.

At eight thirty that night, Kyle came over for our sleepover.

“Where you think Sean is?” I said.

Kyle breathed out heavy. “Maybe Jackie picked him up from school early. Took him to the movies or shopping until late. We'll hear from him later tonight or we'll see him tomorrow. Watch.” Kyle stayed quiet for a few seconds. Was that his way of saying he didn't want to talk about Sean anymore? Did I sound like a scratched CD to him? Stuck on Sean? I switched the topic and asked Kyle if he had heard anything about Vanessa's tryouts. He hadn't.

About an hour later, Kyle was playing his handheld video game. I got off e-mail and called Vanessa. “What happened with tryouts?” I asked her.

“I didn't make it,” she said. “The coaches told me I need to work on my dribbling and layups.”

Even though she said she was okay, she sounded upset.

“Next time, though,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Next time.”

Then I brought up the real reason I called. “You seen or heard from Sean?”

“Nope.”

“He didn't ride the bus home with me and Kyle. We didn't even see him after school. Plus, nobody picks up his phones. Where you think Sean is?”

“Why you up his butt?” she said.

Me? Up Sean's butt? “Stop protecting your man,” I said.

She laughed a fake laugh. Too hard to be real. “You still think I like him? I'm hanging up.”

She did.

I was so heated that I slammed my phone in its receiver, then kicked the whole thing over.

Saturday afternoon, me and Kyle were on the handball courts in the stadium. As Kyle served the ball, he said, “Sean's ghost and I need to get my father's magazines.”

Kyle had given Sean the latest
XXL
and
Vibe
yesterday morning before school. A thought popped into my head. If Sean had to give them back so fast, he wouldn't have time to write down rappers' rhymes for me. Then I realized my thought was dumb because Sean had stopped doing me that favor a while ago. He did that when we were close. Before his secret trips. I smacked the ball and wondered if Kyle really needed his pops's magazines back or if it was just Kyle's way of worrying about Sean.

“You just let Sean hold those magazines. Why you need them back so quick?”

“When I was getting my stuff ready for our sleepover, my father told me to get his magazines back. He didn't have a chance to read them yet.”

Kyle underhanded the ball and roofed it over the wall by accident.

“I'll get it,” he said, and jetted.

Over the weekend, I tried Sean again. His cell and house. No one picked up.

It was the same as the other weekends. Sean jetted. Only this time Sean hadn't lied ahead of time. He just bounced.

Monday morning at school Sean popped up in the second-floor hall as me, Kyle, and Vanessa walked to our first class of the day. Kyle acted as if Sean hadn't gone anywhere over the weekend. It was hard to front too, but I did and acted as if everything was normal.

 

The weekend before Christmas surprise, surprise . . . Sean vanished again.

This time, Jackie was in front of school at dismissal, waiting for Sean in a black livery cab with tinted windows.

“We seeing my aunt in Jersey.” He fixed his black-on-black New York Yankees baseball cap and stepped in the cab and they drove off.

I didn't try calling him that weekend.

 

That Sunday night at bedtime I was only half tired.

My mind kept going from how close me and Sean used to be to how he'd switched up. I didn't know what to do with myself because I couldn't fall asleep. So I got my rhymebook and a black pen out of my backpack and sat at my desk. Sometimes I needed a beat to get my words going, but tonight I didn't need one. I opened my black-and-white Composition notebook and started writing:

By the time I finished that last sentence, I felt more tired. My eyes were droopy. I shut my rhymebook and slid into my bed and pulled the covers over my head. Right before I fell asleep, I thought I needed to do something about this Sean thing. Tomorrow. I'd talk to Vanessa or finally be up front with Sean.