jersey signed by four pro players. Half of them don't even play no more, but it's the one thing he's got that means something to him. He always keeps it folded up in a shoebox, taped shut, in the back of the closet underneath a pile of clothes. Nobody's allowed in.
But all rules are off these days with DJ.
One morning, I slip that box out from under the clothes pile, shove it in my backpack, and take it somewhere else. I wait about a week to tell DJ. He's lying on the couch, flipping through channels one night, with a bag of chips sitting on his chest.
“You missing something,” I start by saying, and he flies off the couch like he can read my mind. His hand slams into my chest while he's going past.
“You better not have touched nothing of mine,” he swears.
I'm waiting for him when he gets back. “You keep Markese and the others away from our project this time,” I tell him.
He gets up in my face. “You gimme that shirt back,” he yells.
We keep on repeating the same words over and over, like a CD that's stuck, until my uncle comes slamming out of the bedroom where he was sleeping and tells us both to get out of the apartment, or he's calling the cops.
If I could've drawn a picture of DJ's face as he left the apartment, there would have been flames shooting out of his eyes and smoke coming out of his nose and mouth.
But I'm not gonna take any chances this time, not even with my own brother. I lean over the railing of the stairwell and shout that he'll get his jersey back in one piece when the tetrahedron is done. “As long as it stays in one piece—you know what I mean?” I holler. A door slamming is all the answer I get.
SHARICE
I decide it's time to take a chance. I tell Rhondell that she can hand me the yellow or the blue pieces one afternoon when we're working after school, folding and gluing the little tetrahedrons like usual.
Rhondell gives me a quick look. “You sure?” she says. “Because I've got plenty of purple if you want them.” She pushes a stack of purple shapes toward me.
“No, I'll take the yellow,” I insist. “I'm okay with yellow.”
See, I've been trying to change some of the beliefs I have about things (such as the colors blue and yellow). All blue cars don't cause what happened to my mom. For instance, Aunt Asia drives a blue car, and it's about fifteen years old with 174,300 miles and a lot of rust—and nothing has happened to it yet. People are always honking when I'm riding in the car with her because she drives it so slow. You want to scrunch down in your seat sometimes, when people honk their horns and go zooming past, like you're a big blue turtle holding up the whole road.
And when Aunt Asia took me to see her third-floor apartment (at the top of a house) for the first time, to talk about how I might feel about living there, all I could see was yellow when she opened the door. The walls were the yellowest yellow you could imagine. “Isn't that the color of sunshine?” Aunt Asia said, clasping her hands behind her back and happily studying the walls. “That's why I picked it. If I couldn't have an apartment with lots of windows, at least I'd have sunshine, that's what I figured.
“And it won't hurt my feelings if you don't want to stay here after seeing my small place, so don't you worry about that,” she told me, twisting her bracelets nervously on her arm and giving me an uncertain look. “It's just me and this little place, and I know it isn't much to offer. Other homes they'd put you in would probably be a whole lot nicer than this.”
While she showed me all the things that were wrong with her place—the leaky refrigerator with the towel underneath, and the stove with only one burner that worked, and the rusted bathtub, and the bathroom sink that only ran cold—I thought about how all the things that were wrong with her place were still better than the few things that were right in the other places.
During the tour, I didn't say a word about the
But all rules are off these days with DJ.
One morning, I slip that box out from under the clothes pile, shove it in my backpack, and take it somewhere else. I wait about a week to tell DJ. He's lying on the couch, flipping through channels one night, with a bag of chips sitting on his chest.
“You missing something,” I start by saying, and he flies off the couch like he can read my mind. His hand slams into my chest while he's going past.
“You better not have touched nothing of mine,” he swears.
I'm waiting for him when he gets back. “You keep Markese and the others away from our project this time,” I tell him.
He gets up in my face. “You gimme that shirt back,” he yells.
We keep on repeating the same words over and over, like a CD that's stuck, until my uncle comes slamming out of the bedroom where he was sleeping and tells us both to get out of the apartment, or he's calling the cops.
If I could've drawn a picture of DJ's face as he left the apartment, there would have been flames shooting out of his eyes and smoke coming out of his nose and mouth.
But I'm not gonna take any chances this time, not even with my own brother. I lean over the railing of the stairwell and shout that he'll get his jersey back in one piece when the tetrahedron is done. “As long as it stays in one piece—you know what I mean?” I holler. A door slamming is all the answer I get.
SHARICE
I decide it's time to take a chance. I tell Rhondell that she can hand me the yellow or the blue pieces one afternoon when we're working after school, folding and gluing the little tetrahedrons like usual.
Rhondell gives me a quick look. “You sure?” she says. “Because I've got plenty of purple if you want them.” She pushes a stack of purple shapes toward me.
“No, I'll take the yellow,” I insist. “I'm okay with yellow.”
See, I've been trying to change some of the beliefs I have about things (such as the colors blue and yellow). All blue cars don't cause what happened to my mom. For instance, Aunt Asia drives a blue car, and it's about fifteen years old with 174,300 miles and a lot of rust—and nothing has happened to it yet. People are always honking when I'm riding in the car with her because she drives it so slow. You want to scrunch down in your seat sometimes, when people honk their horns and go zooming past, like you're a big blue turtle holding up the whole road.
And when Aunt Asia took me to see her third-floor apartment (at the top of a house) for the first time, to talk about how I might feel about living there, all I could see was yellow when she opened the door. The walls were the yellowest yellow you could imagine. “Isn't that the color of sunshine?” Aunt Asia said, clasping her hands behind her back and happily studying the walls. “That's why I picked it. If I couldn't have an apartment with lots of windows, at least I'd have sunshine, that's what I figured.
“And it won't hurt my feelings if you don't want to stay here after seeing my small place, so don't you worry about that,” she told me, twisting her bracelets nervously on her arm and giving me an uncertain look. “It's just me and this little place, and I know it isn't much to offer. Other homes they'd put you in would probably be a whole lot nicer than this.”
While she showed me all the things that were wrong with her place—the leaky refrigerator with the towel underneath, and the stove with only one burner that worked, and the rusted bathtub, and the bathroom sink that only ran cold—I thought about how all the things that were wrong with her place were still better than the few things that were right in the other places.
During the tour, I didn't say a word about the
Similar Books
