Island Boyz by Graham Salisbury

left. Two Ball Park mints and the peanut M&M’s. Could have been worse.
    Willy said, “We could take him, you know. All us against him.”
    “Not if he got Mike and Tito with him,” I said.
    “I hate to agree, Shrimpy.”
    “Hey . . .”
    As we got closer to the middle school we could see there was something going on up ahead in the parking lot. A small crowd, mostly girls, was closing in around somebody who was almost screaming.
    We picked up the pace.
    “Stay behind me,” I told Darci.
    “Joey, I—”
    “Shhh.”
    “But I want to go home.”
    “Listen,” I whispered.
    Then I stopped and said, “No, don’t,” and covered her ears.
    Because what we heard was somebody letting loose a string of the nastiest words I ever heard in my whole entire life, and even worse was it was coming from a girl.
    We pushed through the crowd to see what was going on.
    Ho!
    The girl with the nasty mouth was facing off with a
boy.
She wasn’t scared of him at all. In fact, she kept poking him in the chest with her finger, and each time he slapped her hand away, saying, “I ain’t fighting no girl, I ain’t fighting no girl.”
    Finally the guy turned his back on her and walked away, and all the girls cheered.
    The poor guy was stuck. If he fought with her, he would be shamed. What could he do? Nothing. Just walk away.
    And that’s when the skyrocket went off in my brain, the idea that would save us from Frankie Diamond.
    “Who’s that girl?” I said.
    Willy shrugged.
    Julio said, “Don’t look at
me.
”
    “Her name is Lynnette Piper,” Maya said.
    “You
know
her?”
    “Not really. Her dad works with mine. I’ve seen her at the beach, at company picnics. She doesn’t take anything from anybody, as you just saw.”
    This Lynnette girl strutted around smiling like she’d just won the world heavyweight boxing buckle. Of course, that made all those girls go wild. I wanted to ask somebody what the fight was about, but I thought it might be smarter to keep low until things settled down.
    “Maya,” I said. “Tell her you want to talk to her.”
    “Who?”
    “Lynnette Piper. I have an idea.”
    Willy, Julio, and Liddlebiddyguy turned to look at me.
    “No, really, Maya, listen,” I said. “This Lynnette . . . since she’s your friend, maybe you could get her to . . . you know, sort of help us out. Maybe she could become one of us for a day. I mean, look at her. She’s small, like us. She fits. And when Frankie tries to rob us, she can tell him to go somewhere else, you know. Take a hike. Like she told that guy just now. What’s Frankie going to do? Fight with her? See what I mean? It would shame him to fight a girl. He’d be stuck.”
    Maya stared at me a long time, then said, “First of all, Joey, she’s not my friend, and second of all, you are so far out of your mind you might never make it back.”
    “Why?”
    “Because she won’t even listen to me. Why would she? She doesn’t even know me. And anyway, I don’t want her going after me for bothering her.”
    The crowd of girls started breaking up. Where was Lynnette?
    “Come on, Maya. Hurry, before she leaves.”
    “I’m going home.”
    Lynnette made a clean escape. She simply wasn’t there anymore. How’d she do that?
     
    When Darci and I got home, Stella was on the phone. It was how she lived, you know? Had it jammed between her ear and shoulder so her hands were free to do other things, like maybe sand her fingernails or paint her toenails white.
    “I’m going right back out,” I said, handing Darci over.
    Stella ignored me, like always.
    I dumped my backpack in my room and headed over to Maya’s house. I still thought I had a great idea. Lynnette was so scrappy Frankie wouldn’t know what to do with her.
    “Come on, Maya, call her up,” I said when I got there. “She can help us. I know she can.”
    Maya looked down at me like I was some insect she was thinking about stepping on.
    “Okay, then, just see if you can get her phone