Naquan
Around two a.m. I see him again, walking along the three-point line in those red J’s. Fly as hell, but look about one size too big. He moves slow, a through-the-legs crossover with each step. Tonight he’s working on his handle. When he reaches the corner, he squares his feet and shoots a three. The ball spins through the air and drops through the bare rim without a sound. He collects his rebound and starts the whole thing over again, coming back up the arc in the opposite direction. I stub out my little roach, get up from the bench and say, Yo.
Nothing. Not even a look over. Just keeps dribbling, eyes straight ahead, up from the far corner around the wing.
Yo, my man.
Same as last time and the time before that. As I cross half-court and he rounds the top of the arc, I see it again. The red circle on his white T-shirt never gets any bigger or smaller. It’s always wet. He keeps moving till his back is to me again, clean, like nothing happened.
There isn’t any point to it but I ask anyway, What’s your name, man? He reaches the end of the arc, sets his feet, and rattles in another three.
I want to talk to him. I always try to. But it’s late and I’m high and there’s a tray of Pillsburys in the oven upstairs. I turn and walk back across the courts toward the towers. The sound of his dribble getting softer and softer. Thousands of flies swarming around the big courtyard lights.
It’s summertime and me and Lonnie are down on the blacktop every single day. The summer between eighth grade and ninth, before high school. Lonnie hit six feet and is dunking tennis balls and saying he’s gonna make the varsity his freshman year. He isn’t crazy. Every high school coach in Brooklyn came to see him play last year, pacing outside the lockers, waiting to shake his hand.
I asked her why she keeps watching if it makes her so upset. She said, You gotta know what’s out there if you’re gonna survive it.
We play two on two mostly—Lonnie and me, and two of our boys from school. Or we run full court when there are challengers. There’s these four white dudes from Fort Greene who come down on the weekends—full grown men, mid-twenties maybe. But we take them down most of the time. Lonnie’s too fast, too smooth. He can go left just as easy as right, and he can shoot over most people now too. They’re nice about it though, even when we talk a lot of shit. After the game we all dap up and say, Next week.
The weekdays are long and hot and mostly boring. I wake up around 10:30, already drenched in sweat. I peel the sheets off me, take a cold shower, pour some Rice Krispies in a bowl, and flick on the TV. It’s on CNN from last night, when Mama sat on the couch watching the news and shaking her head like she does every night. She stays up watching later and later these days, which means I have to wait longer and longer to sneak out for a smoke. I asked her why she keeps watching if it makes her so upset. She said, You gotta know what’s out there if you’re gonna survive it.
They’re showing the cave in Thailand where those boys are trapped. A whole soccer team, twelve kids, stuck in a pitch-black cave for a week now. They’re saying they might drill through the rock to get them out, but it’s risky. If it goes wrong, the whole thing could collapse. I blame the coach. What’s he doing with twelve boys in a cave anyway? I flip it to ESPN. It’s the worst time of year for SportsCenter—just baseball, baseball, baseball—but it’s something to do for a little while. The highlights bleed together. After about a hundred home runs and diving outfield catches, I turn it off, lie back on the couch and close my eyes.
Around noon I throw on my shorts and shoes and walk down two floors to Lonnie’s. His place has a bathroom facing the back alley, and we take this big square fan and put it in the window facing outward. Lonnie lights half a blunt and we blow puffs of smoke out through the fan into the alley where they rise up and disappear like little ghosts. He sits on the toilet and I lean against the wall. Whatsup with you and Tina? I ask.
Shit, she won’t use nothing but her hands. Shit’s killing me.
Oh word?
She say she won’t smash nobody till she sixteen. Fuck is that about?
So, you just gotta wait a year.
Maybe you can wait a year bro, but not me. Besides, she do that shit too hard. Like, she not stroking the dick, she choking the dick, you know what I mean?
The truth is I don’t really know what he means. The closest my dick has come to any girl was when I slow-danced with Nakida Thomas at the Nathan Hale prom and she pushed her thigh up against it for a while. But Lonnie knows this, so I just nod and pass him the roach. He kills it, flicks it in the toilet bowl, and flushes.
This summer is the first time I got into smoking weed. We both did. The very first time I was mad nervous. Lonnie rolled a blunt after our last day of middle school. It was wet with his spit and barely held together, but we managed to smoke it, late at night, in the playground next to the basketball courts. There’s a red plastic tunnel for kids to crawl through, and we sat in there with our bodies curved like half-moons passing the blunt back and forth. We pinched a little bottle of Wiser’s from his mom and mixed it up with Coke and drank that too. Fuckin high school, said Lonnie, smiling, raising the bottle to his lips.
After a couple hits, my heart started beating real fast and loud and I could feel it in the sides of my head, my throat. I guess it was pretty obvious that I was losing my shit because Lonnie reached over and put his hand on my knee and said, It’s cool Marcus, you cool. He was right. I looked down at his hand, took a couple deep breaths, and it was cool.
By July we’re blazing pretty much every day. Watching the fireworks on the Fourth, taking the train down to Coney Island, staying up late and watching TV, it all goes better with a fat blunt. Now we’ve figured out a system for selling a little too. Nothing crazy, just enough to keep us in trees, with a little pocket change on top. Lonnie’s cousin Dez is in the crew working the courtyard, but he doesn’t bother with weed too much anymore. He gives us four zips a week and we sell them by the eighth, to our friends mostly, right there at the basketball courts, stashing the stuff in my gym bag. Possession’s decriminalized under an ounce, so Dez told us to never have more than a zip down there at a time. And if you want to score from us, you have to know the code.
Around two p.m. a chubby kid we don’t recognize comes walking across the courts wearing a Muhammad Wilkerson Jets jersey. Yo, I heard y’all have a pretty good run over here, he says.
Who told you that? asks Lonnie.
My boy Rob Moss, told me to check you out.
Can you play? I ask.
I’ll bet you fifty I can drain one from half-court.
Shit, says Lonnie, tossing him the ball. We’ll take that bet.
The guy dribbles a couple times before hoisting one up from half-court. It bricks off the backboard and falls right into my hands.
Damn, he says, pulling a few bills from the waistband of his shorts. Here you go, fellas.
Lonnie goes over and takes his money. That’s a tough break bro, he says, but look, there’s something in that yellow gym bag that’ll make you feel better. Go look under the hoodie.
We came up with it one night playing 2K at Lonnie’s, and Dez laughed at us. Y’all watch too many movies, he said. But it’d worked so far, and it was kinda fun too. At the beginning, we wondered what we’d do if anyone accidentally made the shot. But that hasn’t happened yet.
When I was younger I used to sleepwalk sometimes. One morning Mama came to wake me for school and I wasn’t in my bed. She looked everywhere in the apartment, went down to Lonnie’s and banged on his door, damn near woke the whole tower. I was down in the courtyard, asleep on a bench. She came running outside, and before I even knew what was happening, she picked me right up off the bench and held me to her chest. I must’ve been eight, too big to hold like that, but she didn’t let go. My baby, she cried, her fingers tight around the back of my skull. After that incident she put all these locks on our door, a dozen bolts and chains so complicated that nobody could possibly open them all in their sleep.
It doesn’t matter if you didn’t do nothing wrong, she said, they can still take your life away.
The first time I saw him I thought I might’ve been sleepwalking. Like I’d walked down to the basketball courts, and my eyes were open, but I was still dreaming somehow. There he was, alone on the court, standing at the free-throw line, knees bent, ready to shoot. I knew who it was immediately. Mama’s been talking about him for years. Marcus, don’t you forget about Naquan. Do I have to remind you what happened to Naquan? You know who wishes they could still go to school right now? I know, I know, I say.
Mama knew him growing up, told me he loved to play basketball and run around with his friends. Just like you, she said. They killed Tamir Rice when I was ten, and she sat me down and told me stuff like that happens all the time, told me the whole story about Naquan. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t do nothing wrong, she said, they can still take your life away. Then she laid out the rules. Some of them were obvious, like don’t play with guns. Not even a water pistol, she said. And some of them, I thought, were a little crazy. Don’t walk around with your hands in your pockets. Don’t wear your hood up at night. As soon as you see a cop coming toward you, put your hands above your head.
But that’s Mama. She’s always been real worried like that. When it got cold out, she’d wrap me up in so many layers I looked like the Michelin man. When I went over to a friend’s place, she’d tell me to call her as soon as I got there. And every time there were gunshots in the courtyard, she wouldn’t let me go out for a few days.
On Thursday it’s pushing a hundred degrees and I swear the blacktop is melting my shoes, so Lonnie and me grab towels and walk down to the pool. I squint through the afternoon haze and the sweat stings at my eyes like onions. Lonnie stops at the bodega to buy a sweet tea and some swishers. I open the ice cream freezer and let the cold air mist my face.
We stop for a smoke by the Gowanus Canal. There’s a big red warehouse and a back lot with junked cars stacked on top of each other like pancakes. The sign reads Automagic Automotive. We huddle together to block the wind as Lonnie opens the pack of swishers with his teeth and grinds up a nug of weed between his thumb and middle finger. I hold the swisher open while he loads it up.
We sit at the edge of the Canal with our feet hanging over the black water, puddles of white foam floating slowly by. The brick wall on the opposite side of the Canal is covered in graffiti and I wonder how anyone even managed to paint it. The wall drops straight down into the water, so you’d need some type of rope system to hang down from the roof, or one of those flyboard things that lets you hover above the water like Iron Man. One tag in sloppy white block letters catches my eye, I Just Died Send Help. Lonnie does a quick look around for cops before lighting up.
By the time we reach the pool I am flying. I can feel the skin tighten on my face, like there’s something inside me pushing out into the world. I remember hearing how people used to climb the fence to go swimming here at night. Now there’s barbed wire around the top, little trapezoid shaped razors sticking out from the coil, glinting at the sun. There’s a big line to get in, almost around the block, but we spot Tina and another girl up near the front, and Lonnie slides in right next to them. Yo T, he says, wrapping his long arms around her from behind and kissing her on the cheek, way to hold a spot.
I’m not holding shit for you, Lonnie. I’m here to chill with my cousin.
They’re both wearing a version of the same thing—jean shorts, white tank top, bikini visible underneath. Tina’s is red and her cousin’s is black.
You ain’t gonna introduce us? says Lonnie.
Tina sighs. Monique, this’s Lonnie and Marcus. We went to school together. This’s my cousin Monique. She’s visiting from Baltimore. Monique nods and smiles shyly. Hi, she says. When she looks at me, I can tell she is looking at my hands.
When I read that story I couldn’t help thinking about myself. Like somebody had dipped me in a big pool of paint, but they were holding me by the hands when they did it.
I’ve had it since I was six, so I’m used to it by now—the stares, the questions. White blotches on my fingers, the backs of my hands, my forearms. A couple on my back too. Like a jaguar, Mama would say. Other people said other things. Reverse milk cow. Broke Michael Jackson. Bleach stain nigger. I heard it all. Some whackjob minister told me I had the stigmata. When I first started getting the spots, I thought maybe it was cause my dad was white. Mama and Aunt Nikki had a good laugh about that. Your daddy was a lot of things, but white was not one of them, Aunt Nikki said.
In school we learned about Achilles, how his mama dipped him in the river Styx when he was a baby to make him immortal. Except she was holding him by the heel, and you know the rest. When I read that story I couldn’t help thinking about myself. Like somebody had dipped me in a big pool of paint, but they were holding me by the hands when they did it.
The concrete pool deck burns the bottoms of my feet. We find a spot on the outer edges and lay our towels down in a line. Lonnie pulls off his shirt and sprawls out next to Tina. He is all ropy muscles, big veins running up his arms and disappearing into his chest. I end up next to Monique, who unbuttons her jean shorts and slides them out from under her. She folds them neatly and puts them under her head. Her dark curls make a little cloud around her face. Her skin is smooth and glowing in the sun.
Not going in? she asks.
I must’ve seriously zoned out because I suddenly realize that Lonnie and Tina are gone already, Lonnie dragging her by the hand, weaving through the maze of towels toward the blue water.
No, I’ll go, I say. Just chillin for now.
She doesn’t say anything. She lies with her eyes closed, her face straight up at the sun. She has a skinny gold chain around her neck, more like a gold thread, with a little gold cross on the end.
You been to Brooklyn before? I ask.
Mhm. I come some summers, visit Tina.
How far’s it from Baltimore?
Like, three and a half on the bus.
You like it down there?
It’s fine, I guess.
I nod, looking out at the pool, searching for something else to ask her. My mind’s a blank and I wish I’d just gone straight in with Lonnie and Tina. All of a sudden she sits up, pulls off her tank top, and starts walking. You coming?
I’ve been swimming at the Douglass and DeGraw pool since I was a toddler. People around the neighbourhood call it the Double D. A lot of my friends still don’t know how to swim, but Mama taught me early. Seventy percent of the world is water, she said, you need to know how to move in it.
If I try to pinpoint my very first memory—like the first thing I really remember, not just something I was told—I think it was in this pool. I must’ve been four. Mama stood in the shallow end and held her palm under my chest and said, Kick kick kick. She moved her hand away and I started to sink, but she caught me again and said, Don’t worry, I’m here, just keep kicking.
One time a girl saw me in the pool and told all her friends to get out. You don’t wanna catch those weird spots, she said. For a while I used to wear a long sleeve shirt in the water cause I didn’t want people seeing my skin. It didn’t help. Lonnie gave it to me straight on that. Walking back home one day he said, Look man, I know what you’re tryna do, but you’re only making it worse. I’m your best friend and even I think you look like a faggot in that shirt.
I take a dive off the pool’s yellow lip and glide along the grainy bottom. Even though the chlorine stings, I like to swim with my eyes open. People’s legs all around me like upside down trees, the sunlight coming through the water in blades. I surface in the centre of the pool and spot Monique over by the right edge. She stands against the wall, her elbows resting on the side, just looking out over the action. I dive down again and swim over to her, keeping my strokes smooth and long. I think of how Lonnie moves on the basketball court. Effortless.
I pop up in front of her and say, Yo.
Yo, she says.
Tina ditch you?
She shrugs. I think she’s over there with your friend.
I look over and see Lonnie holding Tina horizontal above his head like a weightlifter, one hand between her shoulder blades, one hand under her ass. She shrieks as he launches her into the water. The lifeguards give each other a look but they’re not gonna do shit. They know the deal.
You’re a good swimmer, says Monique, matter-of-fact.
Thanks, I say. You like to swim?
Honestly I don’t really know how. I mean, I can sorta float, and I like being in the water, but I wouldn’t call that swimming.
I could teach you.
Oh yeah?
Sure, it’s easy. All you gotta do is kick. I grab the ledge next to her and kick my feet behind me. And claw. I turn around and cup my hands and show her a few yards of freestyle. You try it, I say.
She looks a little uneasy but says, Okay, and pushes off the wall. She starts kicking, slapping up big rainbows of water. She tries to get her hands out in front of her, but she’s fighting too hard to keep her head up, so the stroke turns into more of a doggy paddle. She reaches out and grabs my hands and her feet find the bottom.
Oh my god!
Nice, that was really good, I say.
She laughs and gives me a splash, Don’t bullshit me.
I smile and force myself to look her in the eyes. They are gold and green with rings like ripples.
Your skin, she says. How long you had that?
Oh… I look down at the backs of my hands, the white spots shaped like tropical islands, and I hate them all over again. Long time, I say.
My brother had it too, she says.
Seriously? I never met anyone who has it. How old’s your brother?
He’s dead.
Shit.
Not cause of his skin though, don’t worry. He got shot.
I’m trying to think of something to say that doesn’t sound dumb when all of a sudden it’s raining. I look up and the sky is ash grey, the tops of the Gowanus Houses barely visible. Damn, says Monique, my stuff. She wades back to the edge and lifts herself out of the pool and I watch the water slide off her back, drip down her legs. Be there in a minute, I say.
The rain starts really coming down hard and the lifeguard gives three sharp whistles and yells, Everybody out. As people climb the ladders one by one, I hang back a bit and tread water with my eyes just an inch above the surface. The pool empties. The raindrops hit the water and bounce back up like a million basketballs dribbling at once.
We head back to Lonnie’s because he says it’s the closest place and the girls go along with it. I lend Monique my towel on the way and she thanks me and wraps it around her head like a turban. I don’t even bother to put my shirt back on, just drape it over my shoulder and let the rain drum down on my skin.
The basketball courts are deserted, puddles forming in the spots where the concrete sags. In the lobby the elevator is down again, two strips of yellow caution tape stretched across the door in a wonky X. Motherfucker, says Lonnie, punching the up button a few times anyway. C’mon, let’s go. He leads the way down the hall, the exit sign glowing red at the end.
And they put these big, bright lights in the stairwell so it’d be easier to tell a real gun from a fake one. Then they named the playground after him. Not right away, but a few years later.
The stairwell smells like cigarettes and piss. Damn Lonnie, this shit is nasty, says Tina. It’s good for you, he says, you should take the stairs more often. He starts to run, taking the steps two at a time, his wet shoes squelching on the concrete. You asshole! she calls after him.
This is the stairwell where he was shot. Coming down from the rooftop, running down the stairs with the toy rifle in his hands. Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. was thirteen years old. Shot in the stomach, rushed to the hospital, died overnight. They closed the roof since then, boarded up the door. And they put these big, bright lights in the stairwell so it’d be easier to tell a real gun from a fake one. Then they named the playground after him. Not right away, but a few years later.
The lights buzz. My legs burn. Me and Tina and Monique keep our heads down the rest of the way up.
On the ninth floor we hear Mo Bamba blasting all the way down the hall. Lonnie left the door open a crack and we come in and find him hunched over the coffee table, rolling a blunt on a Reader’s Digest. Yo lock that shit behind you Marcus, he says, and I do.
Lonnie tosses Tina a towel and the girls dry themselves off. Monique takes my towel off her head and her curls pop out like toaster strudel. She returns it to me soaking wet, but I say thanks and wipe my hair, my face. I catch the smell of something sweet I can’t place, mangos maybe. You got some T-shirts or something Lonnie? asks Tina.
You two look so sexy in them bikinis though, he says.
Tina rolls her eyes and starts walking down the hall. C’mon Monique, let’s find something dry.
I sit down across from Lonnie, who bobs his head and sings along as he scoops weed in the blunt. Young Sheck Wes I’m like the fuckin Green Goblin. He loves this song. We must’ve watched the video a hundred times this summer, Sheck rolling around Harlem in a power scooter, throwing money in the air. I smile thinking about it and he says, Yo, that Monique is nice bro.
Yeah.
Got a fuckin ass on her. Fuckin Khloe K, high caliber ass.
Yeah.
She like you.
Nah man.
What nah? I saw y’all in the pool, splashin each other and shit.
She’s just bein nice man.
What about the towel?
What towel?
She wore your towel bro!
C’mon, that don’t mean shit. She only here cause she gotta stick with Tina.
Don’t be stupid Marcus. We got two hours till my sister home and we gonna—
Yo, yo, I cut him off as I hear a door open and Tina and Monique come back down the hall. Tina wearing one of Lonnie’s old AAU jerseys like a minidress and Monique in basketball shorts and a big white Nike T-shirt that says Say No To Slow.
Yo, says Tina, can you put on Scorpion?
Lonnie’s smile is all teeth. Bitches love Drake, he says.
We’ll go to different high schools this year. Lonnie will take the Q all the way down to Lincoln, where he’ll play ball in the same gym that Stephon Marbury, Lance Stephenson, and Sebastian Telfair played in. I’ll walk up past Barclays Center and go to Brooklyn Tech. Mama made me take the SHSAT last October and I was as surprised as anybody when I actually got in. I do okay in school, but never Honor Roll or anything like that. She invited Aunt Nikki and made a tray of fried chicken and macaroni, key lime pie for dessert. I asked if I could go to Lincoln with Lonnie and she laughed and said, Are you crazy?
Obviously we’ll see each other on nights, weekends, but it’s hard to imagine it’ll be like it is now. He’ll have new friends, his new team. If he does make varsity, he’ll have ball five nights a week. He has his gifts and you have yours, Mama said. I know it’s hard to see it now, but you will.
Lonnie sits on the toilet, Tina on his lap. Me and Monique sit side by side on the lip of the tub. Lonnie takes a greedy rip off the blunt and says, Come here girl. Tina leans back into him and he blows a thin stream of smoke into her mouth, finishing it with a kiss. Tina giggles and Lonnie says, Nice right?
Tina shrugs, Kinda tickles.
Lonnie pulls on the blunt again and keeps this one for himself, filling up his lungs and holding his breath like he’s about to go underwater. Yo T, he says, exhaling, why don’t you give Monique a little shotgun kiss.
Tina slaps his chest, You a nasty motherfucker Lonnie.
What? Why you trippin?
We cousins! Besides, I ain’t no lesbian. How bout you give Marcus a shotgun kiss if you like it so much.
Monique laughs and so do I. Lonnie deadeyes Tina and says, Yo, don’t even joke about that shit. But that only makes us laugh harder, and even Lonnie can’t help a smile. This is what he likes most about her, more than her hot-combed hair or her full-grown tits. Tina doesn’t take shit from anybody, not even him.
We pass the blunt around till our eyes water and the bathroom fills up with smoke. The fan is going full blast out the window, but with four of us in there and Lonnie blowing big ass Wiz Khalifa smoke rings, it can’t keep up. The place is fully hotboxed and Lonnie and Tina look much farther away than they actually are, Lonnie nibbling on her neck and whispering in her ear. His hand runs up her thigh and his fingertips disappear under the hem of his old yellow jersey. Tina smiles and nods and gets up from his lap. We’re gonna go hang the wet stuff to dry, she says, you good Monique?
Monique looks up, her head drooping to one side, her eyes red around the edges. Yeah, yeah, I’m good, she says.
Lonnie stands and puts an arm around Tina’s waist. You heard the girl, he says, gotta go do the wet stuff. Tina brushes his hand away and shakes her head. Lonnie winks at me and follows her out the door. Oh wait, he says, popping his head back in for a second. Turn the shower on hot when you leave, we gotta steam all this fuckin smoke out.
Me and Monique end up on the couch like we’re watching a movie. She has her legs curled up on the cushion, knees bent toward me but not touching me. I sit with my feet on the floor, my thighs sticking to the fake leather. The rain sounds like waves. It smacks the window and runs down in long, fast streaks. The shower hisses. If I close my eyes, I can mistake the sound for TV static. But really we’re not listening to the storm. We’re listening to Lonnie and Tina in the next room.
Is it on? she says.
It broke.
Well, damn Lonnie, get another one.
Fuckin things make my dick soft.
Their voices seem to echo, like they’re at the end of a long tunnel, but that could also be my high talking.
Okay, okay, he says, I got it.
She moans, long and high-pitched, and he makes a sound like when he drives to the rim and gets fouled.
Go slow Lonnie, go slow.
The bed rattles against the wall, shaking the old framed photo of Lonnie and Sheila and Dawn in their church clothes. I check the clock, suddenly paranoid that Sheila will burst through the door, but it’s only been like forty minutes. Time does this when I’m blazed. Slows down, stretches out.
Mama used to ask me if I wished I had a sibling, and I would say no. But the truth is I was always jealous of Lonnie for having two older sisters. He said he hated it but I think it made him better with girls. Like he knew where they were headed. Besides, Dawn and Sheila are cool. They did everything first, so by the time Lonnie got around to doing it, his mom couldn't really say shit. It’s different for me. I would never dream of sparking a blunt inside the apartment, or bringing back two girls half naked from the pool.
I want to ask her about her brother, if she ever sees him, if he ever just appears right in front of her, like she could reach out and touch him again. But her eyes are closed so I don’t say anything.
I glance over at Monique, her eyes puffy, a little smile on her face. The bed is shaking faster and Lonnie is saying a bunch of dumb shit I’m sure he picked up from porn, like, That pussy so wet girl, and, Let me see them titties bounce.
Oh god just shut up and finish, Tina gasps. Monique puts her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. She looks at me and we both try to laugh without making a sound.
When I lean in and kiss her, her lips don’t move. She doesn’t move away, but she doesn’t move closer either. Is that okay? I whisper. She waits a moment and whispers back, Yeah, do it again.
I lean in again and close my eyes and it happens, properly this time, my first kiss. I can’t believe it but I know it’s real.
Sorry—she pulls back. I can’t.
I’m sorry, I shouldn’ta—
No no it’s just… Jesus, I’m so high. I’m too high. I…
I smile. Me too, I say.
I’m fucked up.
Yeah, me too.
She looks down in her lap. It’s my first time.
What?
Getting high.
Oh, I say, deciding to keep my own first to myself. I put my hand on her knee. It’s cool, you’re gonna be alright. Want me to get you something, some water?
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. Can we just sit and watch TV for a minute?
Yeah, for sure, I say. What you wanna watch?
Anything, doesn’t matter.
She leans over and rests her head on my shoulder. I catch that smell again, tropical and sweet like a Coco Helado. My hand is still on her knee and she puts both her hands on top of mine and squeezes. Her nail polish is baby blue and chipped around the edges. I grab the remote with my other hand and flick on the TV—the usual daytime shit, a soap opera with two white ladies standing over a coffin. I flip some channels, but she isn’t watching anyway. She’s looking down, her fingertip tracing the largest spot on the back of my hand, the one in the centre that looks like a raindrop. She goes round and round, slow and gentle. It tickles a little but I don’t dare move it.
I want to ask her about her brother, if she ever sees him, if he ever just appears right in front of her, like she could reach out and touch him again. But her eyes are closed so I don’t say anything. Even the local station is showing the boys in Thailand. They’re saying the rescue mission’s got more than ten thousand people now, divers and soldiers and doctors from countries all around the world. They decided to teach the boys how to swim. The soccer team will be tethered to experienced divers, the news lady says, as they attempt to make the two-mile journey out of the cave.
The water looks dark and muddy, like the Gowanus Canal without the trash. I wonder how they’ll teach them, how they’ll explain what’s about to happen. Jumping into the cold water and everything going dark. Feeling your way through the tunnels like a blind person. Fighting the current that rushes in your ears. Probably best to keep it simple. Just keep your mask on. Keep breathing.
