Tuesday
On Tuesday morning, everything changed—for real.
Spray painted in wide, loopy neon-blue letters like a script of stars so bright they glowed in the day, and stretched so large it covered the entire sidewalk at the foot of the front stairs, was a graffiti tag. A tag so huge every single student, teacher, administrator, staff member, parent, and visitor to Springfield Central had to step over or around, and could not miss:
RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY
Everybody was staring at it, taking photos of it, posing with it, and definitely talking about it. As soon as I saw it, I felt a ball of shredded nerves unwind and whip around my stomach. Oh shit! And my first thought was, probably just like everyone else’s: Who’d done it?
At first you could tell the teachers were deliberately avoiding discussing it, but it was pretty much all we (the students) talked about between classes or at lunch. I say “we,” but I was still trying to take Coach’s advice and ignore all distractions, so when it came up, I tried not to engage. But it was frigging impossible. At lunch, kids were taking food from the cafeteria and heading out to the front steps, eating and talking while sitting near the giant graffiti tag, but I avoided that and looked for some of the guys on the team in the cafeteria. We’d always sat together at lunch, only in fragments, never the whole team together, but with the impromptu gathering out front, everything had shifted.
Only Guzzo, Dwyer, Hales, and Reegan sat inside—the four other white guys on the team. Guzzo looked up and saw me in line. He waved me over to their table, and although he’d ignored me all day yesterday, his interest now kind of ticked me off. See, that wasn’t Guzzo’s style. Usually, he’d let others call the shots. But today he was too insistent, beckoning me like he was some kind of Mafia boss and I was supposed to hustle right over to him.
And besides, once I had my sad, soupy Sloppy Joe on the tray and looked out over the rest of the cafeteria, I realized it wasn’t just the basketball team divided up this way today. Paul had once told me about how the city’s demographics had changed over the last thirty years, and why that mattered for his job. “It’s harder to be a cop here now than it used to be,” he’d said, and his facts had been so particular I couldn’t help but think of them now as I looked across the deserted tables in the half-empty room. Thirty years ago the city had been 84 percent white, Paul’d told me. Now, not counting Hispanics and Latinos who identified as white, Springfield was 37 percent white. Strange how some of that stuff just sticks to you, especially the shit that suddenly feels so real. Because right now, only about half the high school who had lunch fifth period sat in the cafeteria that day. The white half.
I would have stood there like an idiot, feeling those nerves in my stomach start to spin again, if I hadn’t felt a push from behind.
“Hey,” Jill said.
“Hey.”
“Where you sitting?”
It was probably the first time since I’d been in high school that I’d ever been asked that question. I’m not a total fucknut. I know for some people, especially at the beginning of high school, where to sit and who you’ll sit with is a big deal. Not everyone feels like they automatically belong. Not everyone feels like wherever they go they’ll be welcome. But I did. I’d always just walked into the cafeteria and sat wherever the hell I wanted. In fact, I did that pretty much anywhere I went unless the seats were already assigned.
“Um.” I paused. “Not sure.”
“Yeah, but you know what’s weird? I want to go sit outside.”
“Me too,” I said, only realizing when she had said it that that’s what I really did want to do. “But would that be weird?”
“I just said it was weird! But I don’t think anyone out there would mind.”
Huh. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’d been thinking of the guys inside. “No,” I said, nodding to Guzzo’s table. “Those dudes.”
Guzzo probably realized what we were talking about, because he got up and walked over to us. “You two going to stand there all day? Come sit down.” And once he had come over, it felt impossible not to follow him, so we did.
Dwyer, Hales, and Reegan got lost in a conversation about their fantasy basketball league teams while Guzzo pressed us. “Seriously,” he said. “You two are spending a lot of time together.”
Jill laughed. “You guys are all family to me.”
“Quinn’s not,” Guzzo said, looking at me, but in an odd way. “Not really. Or is he?”
“I’m right here, man. No need to be all cold about it.”
“I’m not the one who ran away from the barbecue.”
“Jesus. Seriously? You’re crying about that?”
He opened his mouth to say something more, but Jill interrupted him. “Guys, you’ve been at it since Friday. I’ve seen it.”
This shut us both up. I bit into my hash brown, but it was so greasy, I just ended up shoving the whole thing in my mouth. While I chewed, Guzzo gave me that look again. “Quinn’s the one acting weird.”
“Come on,” Jill said. “It’s not only him. You are too. But why not? I would be too if I had been there and seen Paul whaling on Rashad.”
“What the fuck?” Guzzo threw his plastic fork down on his tray. “Shut up about that.” Hales glanced over skeptically, and Guzzo leaned in close to us. “Did you tell anyone else?” he asked her.
“That you were there?” she said. “No. Is it a secret?”
“Of course!” Guzzo said. His hand clenched into a fist. “You told her?” he said to me. “Are you fucking demented? Nobody should know about this. Not even my brother.”
“What?” I said. “Man, we aren’t in any trouble. We didn’t do anything.”
“You really are stupid,” Guzzo said, picking his fork back up and pointing it at me. Red bits of Sloppy Joe dripped from the tines. “Don’t tell anyone else we were there. The force, they’re worried for my brother. They’ve given him some time so he can stay off the streets. There’s probably going to be a lawsuit because there’s always a lawsuit these days. Look, whatever, how the hell is he supposed to do what he needs to do if he gets sued for just doing his job?”
“Listen to you!” Jill exclaimed, leaning in now too, agitated. “You sound like our mothers. But tell that to Rashad’s family. Rashad’s absent today. Again. I mean, I know that guy too.”
Guzzo looked disgusted. “You don’t know him,” he said, waving her off. “You just like thinking you know him because now he’s a celebrity. A celebrity-victim, or whatever. That’s bullshit.” He gestured to the doors behind us. “You need to get outside before next period? Was that where you were headed before I called you over?”
I glanced at Jill. “Dude,” I said to Guzzo. “Come on. It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“It already is like that, asshole,” Guzzo said. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “You know. Paul was just trying to help someone inside the store. That’s what he says. And then there’s the whole stopping people from stealing thing.” He was breathing heavy. Fighting to find words. “And, by the way,” he finally said, pointing at me, “Paul’s staying with us, you know. If you’re curious. Remember him? My brother? The dude who fucking raised you. Feel free to drop by. I mean, you are like family. Isn’t he, Jill?”
For once in her life, Jill didn’t shoot back the last word, and Guzzo stalked off without looking back at either of us. I was about to get up too, because I was sick of it all—I hadn’t started it, why the hell did I have to be in the middle of it? But as I pushed my own chair back, Dwyer grabbed my arm.
“Listen, man,” he said. “You’ve got to fix this. We got to get the team straight. We’ve got scouts coming, man. This is too big. This is our life, man. Our futures. Don’t be a dick about it. Like Coach said. Leave it at the door. All of it, you know?”
What he said stuck with me for the rest of the day. Yeah, I was thinking about the damn scouts too—of course I was! The kind of doors a scout’s praise might open. The kinds of scholarships a kid like me needed when Ma was working night shifts over at Uline. I knew it was my future, and Dwyer’s, and everyone else’s, too. How could I not? It’d been on my mind in one way or another since I’d started working out with Paul—back when he was taller than me, not just bigger, flicking his wrists and teaching me how to sneak a crossover right in front of my opponent. Those hands. There was so much history slapping hands and saying yes to Paul.
As what Dwyer had said to me replayed again and again in my head, it began to say something else, too. Like maybe I was hearing what Dwyer was saying under his breath, between his words. He almost sounded scared, or not scared, but nervous. It wasn’t Dwyer. It was fear. It seemed to follow me like my shadow these days, but I recognized now how it was trailing everyone else, too.
At practice, Coach had us running like crazy. Hales got so winded he puked in the trash can by the door to the hallway. “Boot and rally,” Reegan yelled to him. He wanted to laugh but he was too out of breath. The rest of us crouched with our hands on our knees, or folded on our heads, trying to avoid cramps, and Coach paced in between us like he was a doctor walking through the asthma ward.
“Game ready,” he lectured. “The team that makes its free throws when everyone is tired and strung out is the team that wins its games.” Then he broke us into groups at the six baskets around the gym and told us to keep score. Ten free throws each, switching shooters every two shots. The score mattered. He didn’t say it, but this was part of the evaluation to see who would be a starter. Who could get points on the board at the beginning of the game, and at the end of the game, when his legs were jelly and his lungs a fire collapsing. A scout might be the key to your future, but you had to be on the court, in a pressure situation, sticking it to the other team, in order for the scout to even see you. Then you had to make the shot. I missed my first shot, but it was the only one I missed. There were plenty of seven out of tens, some lower. Only English scored a perfect ten.
We spent another hour practicing some plays, putting them into action in little scrimmages, and then Coach sent us to the weight room in pairs. We didn’t have to keep score here. Not for his sake, at least. Of course we kept score among ourselves.
Nobody could press or lift or squat nearly as much as Guzzo and Tooms and Martinez, so they always had their own competition, and the rest of us had ours. I paired up with English, and we started on the leg machines while the big guys hit the bench. He and I didn’t say much at first, but as we moved around the room to different machines, we got into what was really on both our minds.
“Hey, man,” I asked. “You know who wrote that graffiti?”
“Why are you asking me?” he said.
“He’s your friend, man.”
“He has a lot of friends.”
“Come on, man. I’m just curious. I’m just asking.”
“Nah. It can’t be ‘just asking.’ It never is.”
“Fine.” I put another five pounds on either side of the bar for him, and then kept my voice low as I continued. “Guzzo’s pissed. He thinks someone did it to make a statement.”
English cocked half a grin as he lay down beneath the bar and began his set. “Of course. That’s the point.”
“No, but like, it’s saying that Rashad is innocent, so that makes his brother guilty.”
English put the bar back up on the rack and sat up. He looked at me like I was nuts. “Man, Rashad didn’t do shit.”
“Yeah, but what if Paul was just doing his job? Then no one’s guilty.” But even as I said it, I felt like I was Guzzo suddenly, or someone in the family, his family, and I wished I wasn’t. “Ah, never mind. Let’s just forget it.”
“Forget it? Forget my friend is in the hospital?” English stared at me, pissed. “Since when is beating the shit out of somebody who hasn’t done a damn thing just doing your job? Man, there’s no way I’m going to pretend it didn’t happen.” He leaned back, looked at the ceiling, and pressed the weight back up. “I can’t.” He brought the weight down, and then up again. “I won’t.”
He lifted the bar again quickly, but on the eighth rep, he struggled.
“Look,” I said, reaching out, ready to help him with the next rep. “I just wish this wasn’t happening. I mean, for everyone’s sake.”
He fought to get the ninth rep more than halfway up.
“You need a hand?” I said, putting my fingers beneath the bar, helping him lift it slightly.
“Fuck no,” he spat. I pulled my fingers back but kept them close. He pushed the bar up slowly, then lowered it and began the last rep. He grunted and got the last one up and onto the rack.
“Maybe he got out of hand?” I just had to say. “Maybe he was on drugs.”
“On drugs? What are you? Seventy-five? Since when have you ever gotten off your ass, let alone thrown a punch, when you were stoned, man?”
“Meth?”
“Only white people do that shit.”
“Fuck you, man.”
“No, fuck you, Quinn.” He stood and pointed at me. “Why does it automatically gotta be Rashad’s fault? Why do people think he was on drugs? That dude doesn’t do drugs. He’s ROTC, man. His dad would kick his ass. You do drugs, asshole.”
“Just a puff here and there, man, come on. I don’t do drugs.”
“I’ve seen you smoking a blunt. Metcalf sold you that shit. Metcalf—a white dude, by the way. Man, that shit could have been laced with crack, or fucking Drano. You don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout.”
“Look, man, I’m not trying to say anything bad about Rashad. I’m just saying that spray painting ‘Rashad is absent again today’ on the concrete in front of school is like, I don’t know, extreme. He’s not dead.”
“But he could be. You have no idea. You have no idea, Quinn. The point is, he could be. Then what? Is that what it would take to look at this thing differently? You need him to be dead? Shame on you, man. I had no idea you were such a dick. You want to forget all this. Maybe you can. But I won’t.” He stood and caught his breath. “What do you know, anyway? White boy like you can just walk away whenever you want. Everyone just sees you as Mr. All-American boy, and you can just keep on walking, thinking about other things. Just keep on living, like this shit don’t even exist.” He waved his hand in my face and blew a breath out the side of his mouth. “Man, I’m done with you.” Then he sauntered off slowly, making sure I knew he was dismissing me, leaving me looking like the idiot I was.
When Coach called us back out to the court, I was now not just physically wiped, but mentally wiped too. I was getting a drink of water at the fountain and Guzzo came up behind me. He jabbed me in the back and I coughed up the water. He laughed. “Thanks,” he said, grinning. “I mean it. I heard all that with English. Thanks for having Paul’s back.”
An unexpected wave of anger surged through me. That hadn’t been my intention at all. I’d seen what Paul had done. I didn’t think it was right. But I hadn’t thought the spray paint was right either.
“Maybe somebody should spray paint something else tomorrow,” Guzzo said. “Whaddya think it should say?”
“Don’t,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
Guzzo slapped the wall with his open palm. “I don’t fucking get you, man. One minute you’re in there defending my brother and the next you are basically telling me to fuck off. You’re demented.” He stomped off to join the huddle at half-court.
Thank God Coach didn’t try to get us all together in a rallying cry, because I sure as hell wasn’t up for it, but neither was anyone else, probably. Instead he broke us into two teams of five and put the others on the bench, ready to sub in. I was on the same team as English, and before we began I pulled him aside.
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry, man. I sounded like an idiot.” He didn’t say anything back. “No, seriously. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be a dick. I’m just trying to figure this all out. Rashad’s your friend. But I get what else you’re saying too. So—I’m sorry.”
“Man, you have no idea how many times you’ve sounded like a dick. You think it was just today? Look,” he said, passing me the ball hard. “Just don’t miss when I give you the ball.”
But I did. When we got into the scrimmage, I popped free and missed the first open shot. I got another chance on a fast break, and I could have passed, but I forced a difficult shot because I’d missed the last one. I missed that one too. Coach called me over. “Where’s your head?”
“Up my ass,” I blurted.
“What?” He grabbed my arm. “What did you say?”
“My head,” I said. “It’s up my ass. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“Maybe a couple suicides will wipe the shit off your face. Do them. Two. Along the sideline. Now. Go.”
I didn’t have to look at Guzzo to know he was smiling all smug, watching me out of the corner of his eye while he continued playing. I think English was maybe smiling too.
And for the first time since I could remember, as I sprinted up and down the court, I didn’t have my father’s voice in my head. I heard my own. I wasn’t telling myself to PUSH, or to go FASTER. Instead I thought about the guy who’d just said all those things to English. The guy who hadn’t meant to sound hurtful. The guy who was just trying to walk down the middle and not disturb anybody, basically give some meaning to what I’d seen in the street outside Jerry’s. And here’s what I realized I was saying beneath it all: I didn’t want my life to change from the way it was before I’d seen that.
When I finished the suicides, I had to hold my hand against the wall to catch my breath. English was frigging right. The problem was that my life didn’t have to change. If I wanted to, I could just keep my head down and focus on the team, like Coach wanted, and that could be that. Isn’t that what I wanted?
Then why did it feel so shitty?
I had to squat down and touch the floor, feeling suddenly nauseous, nauseous at the idea that I could just walk away from everything that was happening to Rashad, everything that was happening to Paul, everything that was happening to everyone at school, everything that was happening to me, too. I could just walk away from it all like a ghost. What kind of a person did that make me, if I did?
Those were Ma’s words, and when I got home, I found myself, for the first time in a long time, also admitting that I wished she was home and not working. Of course, that made me feel like a goddamn kid, so I made myself feel like I was worth something by helping Willy with his homework. He was glad for it, but probably not as much as I was that he needed me and I could actually help him figure out his fractions.
Later, though, my mind drifted back to Rashad, and I totally blew dinner. It should have been simple. I’d made mac and cheese with tuna, peas, and hot sauce more times than I could count, but I overcooked the pasta and there was way too much hot sauce. Willy fanned his mouth after the first bite.
“Ahhh,” he said. “Are you trying to kill me?”
I improvised by shredding some extra cheddar cheese into our bowls, and guiltily, I felt glad that he had his headphones on—though Ma would have killed him for that stunt at the dinner table—because my thoughts would not let up. Now I was thinking about how, if I wanted to, I could walk away and not think about Rashad, in a way that English or Shannon or Tooms or any of the guys at school who were not white could not. Even if they didn’t know Rashad, even if, for some reason, they hated Rashad, they couldn’t just ignore what happened to him; they couldn’t walk away. They were probably afraid, too. Afraid of people like Paul. Afraid of cops in general. Hell, they were probably afraid of people like me. I didn’t blame them. I’d be afraid too, even if I was a frigging house like Tooms. But I didn’t have to be because my shield was that I was white. It didn’t matter that I knew Paul. I could be all the way across the country in California and I’d still be white, cops and everyone else would still see me as just a “regular kid,” an “All-American” boy. “Regular.” “All American.” White. Fuck.
But then, after dinner, as I was helping Willy with the last of his math homework, I realized something worse: It wasn’t only that I could walk away—I already had walked away. Well, I was sick of it. I was sick of being a dick. Not watching the damn video was walking away too, and I needed to watch it.
I borrowed Willy’s headphones, plugged them into my phone, loaded up YouTube, and I watched it right there at the kitchen table. It was the shaky video taken from across the street at Jerry’s and I was immediately back at Friday night, watching it happen all over again. There were two other videos too. I watched Rashad’s body twisting on the concrete sidewalk. The video was taken from too far away. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I couldn’t hear Paul. I heard the noise of the street just as I’d heard it that night, and I felt a zip line of fear rip right into the pit of my stomach. On Friday I’d been down the street, watching. But there, at the Formica table, I had a front-row seat. Close to Rashad and Paul. I could almost see myself hovering just beyond the frame of the shot. I texted Jill and told her how bizarre it was to see it.
TUESDAY 9:43 p.m. from Jill
FINALLY. NOW EVRYBDYS SEEN IT
We went back and forth a few times, and then I just got fed up.
TUESDAY 9:55 p.m. to Jill
HEY. CAN YOU TALK?
TUESDAY 9:56 p.m. from Jill
WHA?
TUESDAY 9:56 p.m. to Jill
NO. I MEAN IT. ON THE PHONE. TALK?
TUESDAY 9:57 p.m. from Jill
WHATEVER
TUESDAY 9:57 p.m. to Jill
LIKE, I NEED TO TALK.
She buzzed a second later, and I got up, slid the headphones across the table to Willy, and left the kitchen. We said our hellos and all that as I walked into the living room.
“I feel so gross,” I said. “I keep telling myself it isn’t my problem. But it is. It is my problem. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah, but it isn’t only your problem. It’s everyone’s problem.”
“But I still don’t know what to do. Like, tell the police?”
She paused, and I heard her breathe. “Maybe.”
“Jesus.” Telling the police meant telling Paul’s friends. Meant Paul’s friends telling him what I was doing.
“But everyone’s seen it, Quinn. It’s all our problem. But what is that problem?” Then it was my turn to be quiet, and I shuffled over to the couch and sat down. “What is it?” Her voice rose. “Excessive violence?”
“I don’t know. Unnecessary beating. Uh . . . shit, police brutality?”
“Yeah.”
“And, you know. The way it’s all working out. It’s more.”
“Like who was sitting where at lunch?”
I looked at the carpet between my feet. “Yeah.”
“And whose lockers they looked in first for spray paint cans?”
“Yeah. Shit, really? That happened?”
“That’s what I saw. Three black students, boys, in a row. Then Martinez. They skipped me!”
“Fuck!” I let the air in my cheeks fill and then slowly blow out. “So yeah. Like all that.”
“Like Paul’s white and Rashad’s black.”
I just sat there staring at the door to the kitchen like a dumbass zombie trying to find some words.
“Paul says he did what he did because he was protecting some white lady in the store,” Jill added.
“What?”
“Yeah. That’s what my mom says. But, uh, really?”
“Seriously.”
“You think it would have been the same if the lady wasn’t white, or if Rashad wasn’t black?”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously, what?”
“Why is it taking me five minutes to say the word racism?”
“Maybe you’re racist?”
“Don’t joke. This is serious.”
“I’m not.”
“I’m not racist!”
She hesitated, and I sat there, stinking in my own sweat, needing her to say something. Eventually she did.
“Not like KKK racist,” she said. “I don’t think most people think they’re racist. But every time something like this happens, you could, like you said, say, ‘Not my problem.’ You could say, ‘It’s a one-time thing.’ Every time it happened.”
I wanted to say something, but it was like my head just pounded and every word that came to mind just shook and fell back into my throat.
“I think it’s all racism,” Jill said for me.
“And if I don’t do something,” I finally mustered, “if I just stay silent, it’s just like saying it’s not my problem.”
“Mr. Fisher spent our whole history class talking about it. If anybody wanted to talk about it more after school, he would. Me and Tiffany talked about it all day, so we went. There were a bunch of us there, and Fisher’s helping us figure out what to do.”
“I wish I could have gone. But I had basketball. But I have to do something!”
“Let’s see what other people are doing tomorrow.”
We said our good-byes, and I sat there on the couch, staring into the kitchen looking at Willy. His head bent down so close to the paper he was scribbling his answers on, the red headphones like beacons on either side of his head—it was like he was buried deep within his own little world. I felt like I’d been doing the same damn thing the last couple days—trying to stare so hard at my own two feet so I wouldn’t have to look up and see what was really going on. And while I’d been doing that, I’d been walking in the wrong direction.
I didn’t want to walk away anymore.