‘I wouldn’t,’ Weed said quietly.
‘I know how much you want to be a Pike and been waiting for my answer,’ Smoke said. ‘And after a lot of consideration, I’ve decided to let you have a shot at it, even though you don’t measure up to the standards.’
Weed didn’t want to be a Pike. He didn’t want to “be part of Smoke’s gang. They beat people up, stole things, broke into cars, cut holes in restaurant roofs and carried off cases of liquor. They did all kinds of things that Weed didn’t even want to know about.
‘So, what do you say?’ Smoke had his hand up, fingers poised to flick Weed again.
‘Yeah, man.’
‘First you say thank you, retard. You say, I’m so honored I’m about to shit in my pants.’
‘It would be fucking cool, man.’ Weed dressed his fear in cocky words that started strutting off his tongue. ‘Think of the shit we could do, man. And I get to wear the colors?’
‘Chicago Bulls, like you’re fucking Michael Jordan. Maybe it will make you taller. Maybe it will pump up that flat inner tube between your legs and you can start juicing girls.’
‘Who says I don’t juice ’em now?’ Weed talked big.
‘You ain’t juiced anything in your puny little mother-fucking life. Not even fruit.’
‘You don’t know that.’
Smoke laughed in his cruel, mocking way.
‘You ain’t got no idea,’ Weed went on, acting like a hardass, knowing what would happen if he didn’t because weakness made Smoke meaner.
‘You wouldn’t know what to do with pussy if it rubbed up against your leg and purred.’ Smoke guffawed. ‘I’ve seen your tool. I’ve seen you whiz.’
‘Whizzing and juicing ain’t the same thing,’ Weed let him know.
Smoke turned into the parking lot of Mills E. Godwin High School, named after a former governor of Virginia and home of the Eagles. Smoke stopped and waited for Weed to get out.
‘Ain’t you coming?’ Weed asked.
‘I’m busy right now,’ Smoke said.
‘But you’ll be tardy.’
‘Oh, I’m scaaaarrrred.’ Smoke laughed. ‘Get out, re-tardy. ‘
Weed did. He opened the back door and gathered his cheap knapsack of books, papers and the bologna-and-mustard sandwich he had fixed before Smoke picked him up.
‘After school, you get your ass right back here,’ Smoke said. ‘Right in this exact spot. I’m gonna take you over to the clubhouse so you can get initiated and make your dream come true.’
Weed knew about the clubhouse. Smoke had told him all about it.
‘I got band practice,’ Weed said as his spirit trembled inside him.
‘No you don’t.’
‘Yeah I do. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we got marching practice, Smoke.’ Weed’s blood lost its heat and his stomach made itself smaller.
‘Today you’re busy, re-tardy. Your ass better be right here at three.’
Tears welled in Weed’s eyes again as Smoke sped off. Weed loved band. He loved going outside on the practice baseball field and marching with his Sabian eighteen-inch bronze cymbals and dreaming of the red-and-white toy-soldier uniform with its black hat and plume that he’d get to wear in the Azalea Parade on Saturday. Mr. Curry said Sabians were the best made, and Weed was responsible for keeping them bright and shiny, the leather straps tied nice and tight in their special flat, braided knots.
Flags were waving in front of the tidy blond-brick school, where nineteen hundred boisterous upper-middle-class students were jostling and shuffling into classrooms. Weed’s mood lifted. At least his father lived in the right school district. Weed kept clothes and other belongings in his father’s house, pretending he lived there, too. If Weed couldn’t go to Godwin, there would be no art or musk in his life.
The 8:35 tardy bell was ringing as Weed slammed shut the door to his bright orange locker and ran through empty corridors of different colored walls, the classrooms he passed filled with chatter and laughter and the thud and flutter of books opening on desktops. Weed had a phobia of being late that preceded this moment by many years.
His mother worked all the time and was rarely home or awake to get Weed up for school. Sometimes he overslept, sending him flying down to the corner bus stop in a panic, without books or lunch, barely dressed. In his mind, missing the bus meant missing life and being left alone in an empty house that echoed with past fights between parents who had split and the loud, full-of-himself sounds of Weed’s big brother, Twister, who was dead.