The Infinite Moment of Us (7 page)

so awesome. I know.”

“Uh-huh. Is that why the ladies love you?”

Dev gave him a point and wink. “They do love me,

my brother, and I love them. Wanna know why? Because

I’m—”

“So awesome?”

“You better believe it,” Dev said.

Charlie did.

“Dev? Charlie? Everyone ready?” Pamela asked, peeking

into the van. She wore heels and her nicest dress.

“All set,” Charlie said, and Pamela looked at him with

such pride that Charlie’s heart constricted.

“My sweet boy,” she told him. “A high school graduate!”

“
Almost
a high school graduate,” Dev pointed out. “Hell, they might give him the boot at the last second.”

“Oh, they will not, and, Dev, watch your mouth,”

Pamela scolded. “And, Charlie, you
are
allowed to smile, you know. You look so serious!”

For Pamela’s sake, Charlie smiled, and Pamela’s face lit

up. She leaned into the van and gestured for him to come

closer. Physical affection was hard for him, but for Pamela,

Charlie would do almost anything. He hugged her awk-

wardly and steeled himself for the big wet kiss he knew

was coming.

The seniors congregated by the main building while their

families and friends and parents and guardians got settled

in the chairs set up on the lawn to watch the ceremony.
To
be signed by your parent or guardian
, forms always said, and they said that for Charlie. Charlie was the kid with the

guardians instead of the parents. Whatever.

You have family out there just like everyone else, he

told himself, thinking especially of Dev. Family is how
you
define it.

“Du-u-ude,” said Ammon, Charlie’s best friend. He came

toward Charlie at half speed, his strides and the pumping

of his arms exaggerated. He was pretending, Charlie could

only assume, to be a track star whose triumphant passage

across the finish line was being rebroadcast. “Supah slo-mo,

yo?”

Ammon held up his hand, still moving through molas-

ses, for a high five. Charlie slapped his palm, and Ammon,

mercifully, returned to normal mode, or what counted

as normal for him. Ammon had a baby-smooth face and a

skinny frame. To compensate, he wore the most jacked-up

shoes on the planet. Today’s pair, jutting from beneath his

black gown, were red DC high-tops, puffy and enormous.

“Oh yeah,” Ammon said, grinning and bouncing from

foot to foot. “We
did
it, uh-
hu-uh
, we
did
it, uh-
hu-uh
.”

“We haven’t done it yet,” Charlie said. “If you’re talking

about graduating, that is.”

“Details, details,” Ammon said. “But very soon we will

be bona fide high school graduates, my friend. And you

know what that means.”

“Do I?”

“Girls love a bona fide high school graduate.”

Charlie arched one eyebrow. “Do they?”

“Oh, they do, believe me,” Ammon assured him. “And

speaking of, there’s a big party tonight. Big, big, big. It’s

at P.G. Barbee’s house, and, news flash, we will both be

attending.
Both
of us. So repeat after me: ‘Yes, Ammon. I will be there, Ammon.’”

“P.G. Barbee?” Charlie said skeptically. The Barbees

were rich. So rich, they bought a new boat as soon as the

old one got wet—that’s how Chris put it. Mr. Barbee had

hired Chris to do some cabinetwork for them not long ago,

and Chris had returned from his on-site visit with tales

of gleaming hardwood floors, chandeliers bigger than tri-

cycles, and lawn jockeys that may or may not have been

ironic. Charlie didn’t ask, because Chris would have found

the question puzzling. “Ironic?” he’d have said. “Whaddaya

mean
ironic
, Chahlie? They were, you know, those thingies.

On the lawn. Little black kids playing polo or sumpin’.”

“You’re not getting out of this one,” Ammon said. “It’s

a graduation party.
Our
graduation party, and it’s going to be epic.”

“Epic.”

“Yes, epic, which means we should dress sharp to make

ourselves stand out, yo?”

Charlie marveled, and not for the first time, at the

unlikeliness of their friendship. Ammon danced, snapped,

and wore shoes the size of small islands. Endless streams

of words flowed from his mouth. He said things like “yo,”

and not ironically. But Ammon was a loyal friend, and kind.

He wanted good things for Charlie, even when Charlie

resisted.

Ammon pointed at Charlie. “So, eight o’clock? You and

me? Yeah? Yeah?”

Charlie was giving legitimate thought to responding

when Ammon’s features twisted and flattened. Charlie

knew without looking who was approaching.

“Hey, babe,” Starrla said, draping her arm over his shoul-

ders. She molded her body to his and traced his jaw with a

bright red fingernail. “You lookin’ good.”

Charlie peeled Starrla off him. She was still in her reg-

ular clothes, which today consisted of a tube top and a

skirt—though was it a skirt if it barely covered her ass?

Charlie hated himself for noticing. He didn’t know how

not to notice, and he hated himself for that as well.

“Ain’t my boy lookin’ good, Ammon?” Starrla asked.

Ammon didn’t answer. He didn’t like Starrla, and Star-

rla didn’t like him.

“I’m not your boy, Starrla,” Charlie said. “Don’t you

need to go put on your robe?”

Starrla pouted. “Too hot for a damn robe. Too hot for

this damn ceremony. I says we just get out of here. Wanna?”

“You’re supposed to put your robe on, Starrla,” Charlie

said. “You’re supposed to put your robe on and go over

there.” He gestured toward the other end of the building.

“That’s where the girls are. See?” Without making a con-

scious decision to do so, he searched for Wren, spotting

her next to a large terra-cotta planter. She was up on tip-

toe, using the planter for balance as she turned her head

one way and then another.

Her eyes met his. They widened. She smiled, and Char-

lie smiled back, foolishly and happily.

Starrla laughed.

Cursing himself, Charlie wrenched away his gaze.

Wren’s face fell, but he couldn’t think about that right

now. Right now his biggest concern was Starrla, because

although Starrla didn’t want Charlie (not the way Char-

lie wanted to be wanted), she didn’t want other girls to

want him, either. She certainly didn’t want him wanting

any other girl.

“Oh, sugar,” Starrla said. Her voice was a purr, but her

eyes were feral. “That girl you were staring at? No, sir. That girl ain’t done one wrong thing in her life, and she ain’t

gonna start with you. Ain’t I right, Ammon?”

Ammon shifted. He glanced at Charlie.

“It’d take a crowbar to pry that girl’s legs apart,” Starrla

went on. “She think she better than us, that’s why.”

She is, Charlie thought, his heart aching.

But before Starrla had ruined things, before
he’d
ruined things, Wren had looked at Charlie from across the crowd.

It had happened. It was true, and for that brief moment,

Charlie had felt seen.

“All right, everyone, line up,” the vice principal said. He

whistled through his fingers. He was wearing a suit. “Guys

over here, girls over there, and remember to
walk slowly
.”

“I likes it slow,” Starrla murmured. “I also likes it fast.”

“Miss Pettit?” the vice principal said. “Miss Pettit, go get

your gown on.
Now
.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” she said, dropping her gangsta-

speak. “Have a cow, why don’t you?”

Her high heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk. Charlie

grabbed her elbow, saving her from tripping, and she said,

“See? My hero.”

The seniors, once they were seated in the plastic chairs

that wobbled on the lawn, formed a semicircle in front

of the makeshift stage and podium. The boys were on the

right. The girls were on the left. Charlie had a clear view

of Wren, when he gave himself permission to take it. The

sunlight, dappled by overhead leaves, brought out every

shade of brown imaginable in her hair. Unlike Charlie, she

seemed to be paying attention to the parade of speakers,

but Charlie couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Was she

amused? Moved? Melancholy at the end of things, or eager

for a new beginning?

He could stare at Wren all day, but he didn’t want her

to catch him. Also, his side of the lawn had no tree cover.

His black gown was stifling. His tasseled mortarboard was

a black square on top of his head, absorbing every ray of

the bright Georgia sun, and the heat made his thoughts

wander.

This kind of heat, this stifling, smothering heat, had

bad associations for Charlie. It brought up memories of

his mother, his biological mother. She was young when

she’d had him. Young and scared and desperate. Two jobs

but never enough money, and certainly none for child care.

“I expect you to be quiet and behave,” Charlie heard her

telling him, and he pictured a skinny little kid—him—

being pried off the faceless woman’s leg and pushed firmly

into a cramped garage. Maybe she said it once more before

yanking down the garage door, staring hard at her three-

year-old son. “Stay here and be quiet for Mommy.”

Garage doors were heavy, and they could be closed

with some amount of speed, but surely Charlie could have

ducked beneath it and tried to get to her. He hadn’t. “
Stay
,”

his mother had said, and like a good dog—or if not a
good

dog, a dog who’d learned about cause and effect—he’d

obeyed.

He was in there for a long time, day after day. August,

in Atlanta, was brutal.

He must have cried out eventually, or hit his small fist

against the door, because they found him, didn’t they? A

neighbor discovered that it was a “who” and not a “what”

making such a racket in the garage behind the apart-

ment units, and after that, Charlie was placed in the care

of Atlanta’s Child Protective Services.

For several years, he lived in a facility called Saint

Joseph’s with other unwanted kids. Once, a social worker

brought him jelly beans and gave him a thick and wonder-

ful book called
The Boys’ Guide to Automobiles
.

Another social worker, a flat-eyed man named Dave, sat

with the kids in the “family” room. Dave didn’t make the

kids do their homework like he was supposed to. Instead,

he let them watch movies. He jammed DVDs from his per-

sonal collection into the crappy DVD player connected to

the even crappier TV. He sat back, grunting occasionally

during scenes of men shooting. Men shouting. Men hurting

women in ways Charlie didn’t understand.

Charlie swore to himself that he would never be like

that.

Then came a series of foster families. Some placements

worked out better than others. But none of them was for-

ever. And he was lonely. He tried not to be. He tried to be

strong and self-reliant. If he could figure out how to stop

needing anything (or anyone), then his loneliness would

go away—that was his hope. But it never quite worked out

that way.

He got better at being alone, but the loneliness stayed.

He got better at hiding his loneliness, or so he imagined.

For long stretches of time, he’d be convinced he was pull-

ing it off, that finally he’d gotten it down, but invariably

some kid would look at him funny, or get up and move to

another table in the cafeteria, and he’d think, Do I stink? Is my hair greasy? What am I doing wrong?

Once, a girl smiled at him, and her friends immediately

closed ranks, shutting him out with glares.

“What?” he heard the girl say from within their smal

circle. “I feel sorry for him. Don’t y’all?”

Shame nearly drowned him.

In seventh grade, Charlie was placed with Chris and

Pamela.

In eighth grade, Charlie met Starrla, when the two of

them, along with half a dozen other misfits, were shuffled

once a week to a mandatory support group for kids from

troubled homes. Starrla sniffed out his neediness and was

drawn to it. Her attention was a drug. Charlie couldn’t get

enough.

One day, sitting in a secluded spot behind the middle

school, Charlie hunched his shoulders and ripped apart

clumps of grass and forced himself to tell Starrla about his

past. Just a little to start with. Even so, he felt as if he

throw up. But she’d given him the most private parts of

herself—back then, he’d believed that sex meant the same

thing to her that it meant to him—and if he were any kind

of a man, he should do the same.

“Ew,” she said when he finished talking.

Startled, he glanced up at her.

She scrunched her nose. “What did you do when you

needed to take a dump?” she asked. This was before she’d

taken up her forced bad grammar. “Did your mom leave

a pail in there, or what? Who had to empty it? Did you?”

Charlie lost all words.