Kenny Wright Read online

  Still, I have an idea. And Arthur’s going to help.

  Right after school, G-ma shows up to do her tutoring like always. I meet her by the front door and get my half-healthy, half-junk-food after-school snack. She gives me a banana and then some kid gives me a pack of Oreos because he says he’s allergic to that creme stuff in the middle. Weird alien kid, right? I mean, who’s allergic to that classic cookie nectar?

  G-ma goes off to the library and I say I’ll see her in an hour.

  So far, so good.

  I run by the classroom where Arthur and I usually play chess. He’s got the board set up and ready to go, just in case. I give him half of my banana and two Oreos. Then I head over to the detention room down the hall.

  When I walk in, I see Quaashie, Quaashie, Ray-Ray, and a few other kids. They’re all on the D-Squad today. Just like me.

  “What you doin’ in here, Grandma’s Boy?” Ray-Ray says. “You take a wrong turn at the water fountain?”

  I ignore Ray-Ray and sit on the other side of the room. Then Mrs. Freeman tells us all to pipe down and get to work. Fine with me.

  For about ten minutes, nothing happens. I’m still mad about being here in the first place, but at least G-ma doesn’t have to know.

  Except then…I hear it. Someone’s whistling out in the hall. Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars. That’s the signal Arthur and I set up.

  When I look over, he’s standing there staring at me. He puts two fingers up to his eyes, points them back at me, and then looks up the hall toward the library.

  Code red! G-ma’s looking for me!

  “Mrs. Freeman?” I say. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  She just looks at me like that’s the most tired thing she’s ever heard. “You can wait,” she says.

  “I don’t think I can,” I say. Then I ball up my fists and cram them in my lap like I’m stopping up a leak. A stupid, messy leak. Then I make the most painful-looking wince, like the Hoover Dam is about to burst and flood the valley.

  “I got to go, too!” Ray-Ray says.

  “Yeah, me too!” Quaashie R. says.

  Then Mrs. Freeman surprises me. “Kenny, you can go,” she says. “The rest of you I don’t believe.”

  That’s probably going to earn me a couple of jabs to the kidneys later, but I can’t worry about that right now. I take a hall pass from Mrs. F. and bounce.

  Arthur’s eyes look like two big moons when I get to him. I think he’s kind of afraid of G-ma.

  “I told her you were in the bathroom,” he whispers. “I think she believed me, but—”

  But whatever. I’m already running up the hall. I’ve got to make this quick.

  When I get to the library, G-ma’s got a bunch of kids sitting around a big table. “Oh, Kenneth, good,” she says. “Vanessa here has forgotten her copy of Bud, Not Buddy. May we borrow yours, please?”

  More bad news! See, that book’s sitting in my backpack. And my backpack’s hanging on a chair in the detention room. If I go back in there now, that’s it. Mrs. Freeman’s going to lock me down tight for the rest of the hour.

  And I think—if Steel was here, this would be no problem.

  Of course, Steel isn’t here. It’s just me. And I’ve got to think quick.

  “I’ll be right back,” I tell G-ma. I walk out of the library, but as soon as I hit the hall again, I’m running like Whiplash is coming after me with ten million volts.

  The good news is Arthur has a copy of Bud, Not Buddy in his locker. The bad news is Mrs. Freeman must think I’m taking the world’s longest pee. By the time I deliver that book to G-ma and sprint back to the detention room, Mrs. F. is standing in the door waiting for me.

  “What took you so long?” she says. “I trusted you, Kenny. And why are you out of breath? Running in the halls isn’t allowed. I ought to give you another detention.”

  She lets me slide, though, and I head back to my desk.

  Maybe I should be relieved, but I’m not. All I can do now is sit here pretending to do my homework and waiting for my heart to stop doing backflips inside my chest.

  Is this what a life of crime feels like?

  Because those knuckleheads can have it. For real.

  ON MONDAY MORNING, G-ma walks with me to school again. She wants to meet the new principal, somebody named Dr. Yetty James.

  I know that “Dr.” doesn’t have to mean like “stick out your tongue and say ahh,” or “you only have fourteen hours to live.” But still, I’m wondering if this new principal’s going to be good news, bad news, or something in between.

  When we get to school, there’s a lady out front saying good morning to everybody. She’s tall, and has this huge smile, and she’s even really pretty. I’m talking Beyoncé/Alicia Keys/Rihanna pretty. Like that.

  G-ma walks right up to her and says, “Dr. James, I presume?”

  “Everyone calls me Dr. Yetty,” the lady says, and shakes G-ma’s hand. “And whom do I have the pleasure of meeting here?”

  “I’m Kenny Wright,” I say.

  “And what are you good at, Kenny?” she asks me.

  I’m not really sure how to answer that one. It seems like a weird question, but G-ma answers for me.

  “He’s an excellent student,” she says. “And he’s quite the chess player, too.”

  “Ah, a kindred spirit,” Dr. Yetty says. Whatever that means. “We’ll have to play sometime.”

  “You play chess?” I ask her. I don’t mean it to be rude, but G-ma shoots me a look that says otherwise.

  “Kenneth, you go on inside,” she tells me. “Dr. Yetty, if you have a moment, I’d like to chat a little.”

  And I think, Uh-oh! This is exactly what I was afraid of. G-ma’s been waiting all weekend to fill the new principal’s ear. It also puts her one step closer to finding out whatever Mr. Diaw wrote in my file before he left.

  “G-ma, Dr. Yetty’s just getting started,” I say. “Maybe you should cut her some slack and talk later.”

  “Nonsense,” Dr. Yetty says. “What better way to start than by getting to know the people in the community?”

  G-ma smiles back at her like Dr. Yetty just won the Miss Black USA contest, or invented electricity, or something. So I slide on out of there, but even while I’m walking away, I can hear G-ma starting to ask questions.

  In other words, this whole new-principal thing is starting off exactly the way I was afraid it might: Sometimes even the beautiful ones bring you the most heartache and trouble. I can feel it in my big toe. It tingles sometimes when trouble is about to pop off.

  And it’s tingling.

  SPEAKING OF TROUBLE…

  A few days later, I get my next beat-down from Tiny Simpkins. He’s stepping to me pretty much all the time now, but some days are worse than others.

  Like today, for instance.

  There I am, standing in front of my locker, minding my own, when I hear these voices behind me.

  “I don’t know, young. Looks kind of tight.”

  “Nah, man. He’s got it. No doubt.”

  When I turn around, Tiny’s standing there with his boy Jerome Cleary. His brother Tony is there, too. Tony’s in eighth grade, and he looks a lot like Tiny, if you added a couple of inches and twenty pounds of muscle wrapped in blubber.

  “Wassup, Grandma’s Boy?” Tiny says.

  “Wassup?” I say, like always.

  “See, we got this bet going on,” Tiny tells me. “My big brother here thinks there’s no way you can fit inside that locker. But I say he’s wrong.”

  I try to get in chill mode, but on the inside I’m already hitting the panic button. Big-time. I probably could fit inside that locker if someone really wanted me to.

  And I think someone does.

  I start to close the door real quick, but Tiny’s already there to stop me.

  “Hold on,” he says.

  “Come on, Tiny,” I say. There’s no use pretending anymore. “Why don’t you just keep it moving, man? For real.”
/>   “‘Keep it moving’?” he says. “Listen to this bamma. How about I ‘move’ this upside your head?”

  Before I can do anything, he’s picking me up like a human gym bag and stuffing me inside that locker. He gives me a punch in the chest, too, and then slams the locker closed. When I try to stop him, all it gets me is a faceful of door. My nose is smushed, my teeth are rattled, and my pride feels like the bottom of the boots of a guy whose job it is to clean up dog poop at the park. Yeah, like that.

  Meanwhile, Tiny and his boys are wilding out in the hall. I can even see little pieces of them through the holes in the metal.

  Then I hear Tiny say, “What’re you looking at, Wong? You want some of this?”

  They start chasing Arthur down the hall, and that’s it. I’m all on my own here. There’s no handle inside this locker, and nobody bothering to help me, either.

  What I could really use right now is some Steel.

  Or maybe a crowbar and a little oxygen tank.

  My fear of cramped, tiny spaces that smell like sweaty shorts and stale socks is starting to get to me. This is jacked up.

  MEANWHILE, BACK IN my locker, nothing’s happening. I can see people walking by, but nobody stops. Nobody even lifts a finger.

  “Hello?” I say again. “Hello? I know y’all hear me. Dang…”

  Then the door opens and Arthur’s standing there.

  “Let’s go eat,” he says.

  That’s it. Arthur knows what it’s like. The last thing you want to do after something like this is talk about it. So we just head on down to the Sugar Shack and find a couple of seats.

  I’m not hungry, so I skip the line. Arthur busts out his chess set and the lunch he brought from home. His dad’s a porter at some fancy Chinese restaurant. Today, he’s got doggie-bag chicken and an egg roll he breaks in half for me, but I don’t want that, either. I just want to get this day over with.

  So when Ray-Ray Powell and his girlfriend Preemie come sniffing around, I am seriously not in the mood.

  “What up, y’all?” Ray-Ray says.

  I just ignore him. Arthur does, too.

  “You deaf?” Preemie says. She’s the only white girl at our school, and probably one of the shortest, too. I have no idea why she hangs with Ray-Ray. She just does. She’s from Chevy Chase, one of the whitest parts of the Maryland/DC area, and her pops was a crazy-rich lawyer. They fell on hard times somehow and her parents got divorced, and now her mom sells shoes at the mall. Sometimes it goes down like that.

  “You can keep moving, Ray-Ray,” I tell him. “We don’t have anything for you to eat, all right?”

  “You sure about that?” Ray-Ray says, and steps in.

  I can see it coming a mile away. He’s going to try and take another hostage, so I put my arms over the chessboard to stop him.

  But there’s too many pieces to protect. Ray-Ray snakes his own skinny arm in there and pulls a white bishop and a knight off Arthur’s home row. Then he steps back, grinning like a fool.

  Now, if I was Stainlezz Steel, we all know what would happen next. Ray-Ray would be straight molly-whopped.

  But I’m not Steel. I’m just me. And to be honest, I’m getting pretty tired of being me. I’m up to there with Ray-Ray, and Tiny, and the Quaashies, and detention, and all of it.

  So maybe that’s why I snap—like a one-eyed man with a busted telescope.

  “You want something to eat?” I say. “Eat this!”

  Then I pick up that half an egg roll and wing it right at Ray-Ray’s head. Some of it gets on his shirt, but most of it goes on the floor. (I don’t have a rocket for an arm. You’ll never mistake me for RGIII.)

  Ray-Ray looks at me like he can’t believe it. So do Arthur and Preemie. Even I can’t believe it.

  “Ohh, boyyy—shouldn’t a done that,” Preemie’s saying. She’s got her hand over her mouth, and her eyes are all lit up like she can’t wait for whatever’s going to happen next.

  I’ve never seen Ray-Ray really mad before. My heart’s thumping like an 808 bass drum. So I throw my hands up to block anything coming my way.

  When he comes in swinging, I jump out of the way. But it’s not me he’s after. It’s the chessboard. His arm sweeps the whole thing off the table and everything goes flying—the pieces, the board, my backpack, and Arthur’s lunch.

  It makes a big noise, and it even quiets down the cafeteria—for about three seconds. Everyone looks like they’re expecting a fight. But then they see it’s just me and they go back to their business.

  Everyone except for Dr. Yetty. She comes out of nowhere and swoops down on our table.

  “What is the meaning of this display?” she says, looking all heated.

  “Kenny threw food at me!” Ray-Ray yells.

  “He took our chess pieces,” Arthur says.

  “Ray-Ray didn’t do nothing,” Preemie’s saying. “Ray-Ray didn’t do nothing, Dr. Y.”

  But Dr. Yetty isn’t listening to Preemie. She’s staring at me, and then at Ray-Ray, and then at me again. It’s like sitting under a heat lamp, the way she looks at us.

  “Both of you—Raymond and Kenneth. Clean up this mess. And then I want you to report straight to the office, toot sweet!” she says.

  I don’t know what toot sweet means, but it can’t be good. Before all this, I’d never been sent to the principal’s office for anything. Now I’m two for two and the school year’s just getting going.

  I’m starting to think maybe this place is bad luck.

  No, scratch that. I know it’s bad luck.

  DR. YETTY HAS THE office set up all different than Mr. Diaw did. The desk is against the wall, and there’s a round table with some chairs in the middle of the room. She’s also drinking coffee out of this huge mug with Muhammad Ali’s picture. On the side, it says, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

  Yeah, that seems about right. Here comes the sting.

  “Can someone please tell me what happened?” Dr. Yetty says.

  “Kenny in a bad mood today,” Ray-Ray says.

  “Kenny is in a bad mood,” Dr. Yetty corrects him.

  “That too,” Ray-Ray says. “’Cause someone put him in his locker this morning.”

  And I think, How does he know that? I guess he must have seen it, but still. I don’t like Ray-Ray getting inside my head.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Yetty,” I say. “I just kind of snapped.”

  “Don’t tell me,” she says. “Tell Raymond.”

  I get it over with quick. “Sorry, Ray-Ray,” I say.

  “It’s cool. It’s cool,” he says really fast. “Sorry I messed with your game like that.”

  I know he doesn’t mean it, though. Nobody fronts more than Ray-Ray Powell. His middle name should be Scam. He’s a full-time faker.

  “Okay then,” Dr. Yetty says. She’s looking at our files now. “Ray-Ray, you’ve already had two detentions this year. And Kenny, you’ve had one as well. Not off to a very good start, are we?”

  “Dr. Yetty, I can’t have another detention in my file,” I say. “You’ve met my grandma. She’s going to kill me. I’m not even kidding.”

  Dr. Y. nods and looks at me. Then she sits back and thinks for a minute. I can’t tell which way this is going, so I hold my breath.

  Just before I’m ready to pass out, she finally starts talking again. “All right,” she says, “I have a proposal. Kenny, I want you to teach Raymond how to play chess. And Raymond, I want you to learn.”

  And I’m like—

  At first, I think Dr. Y.’s messing with me. I even laugh a little, but she’s not smiling. She’s dead serious. The only one who’s smiling is Ray-Ray.

  He’s all ear-to-ear with it, like he actually likes this idea.

  “I’m down with that,” he says, and Dr. Y. looks at me again.

  “Do I have a choice?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Good. Because—”

  “You can take a one-day suspension instead,” she tells me.r />
  And now I’m more like—

  I can hardly believe it. Dr. Yetty is even stricter than Mr. Diaw was. She’s stricter than G-ma, too, and I totally didn’t think that was possible. I’m not even sure what G-ma would do if I got suspended. All I know is, I don’t want to find out.

  “How long do we have to do this?” I say.

  “Until Raymond can finish one game of chess against me—win, lose, or draw, but without asking for any help,” Dr. Yetty says. “And you both have to stay out of trouble in the meantime, or I will suspend you. Is that going to be a problem?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say right away. Ray-Ray just shrugs.

  And whether I like it or not, that’s the end of that.

  Or just the beginning, depending on how you look at it.

  THE NEXT DAY’S Friday, which is one of G-ma’s tutoring days. It’s also my first chess lesson with Ray-Ray.

  Ray-Ray shows up on time. Not for the chess, but for whatever G-ma brought me to eat. Dude is always hungry.

  “What is that? Cake?” he says, looking at the little bag in my hand.

  “Nope. It’s a sack full of moldy jockstraps, mousetraps, and angry scorpions. Stick your hand in and get you some,” I tell him, looking straight serious. I don’t even open the bag.

  “Don’t even trip with me, fool,” he says. “I’m not the one who threw that egg roll.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re also not the one who has to teach you chess,” I say. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  We sit down and I start showing him where everything goes at the beginning of the game. Then I show him how all the different pieces move around the board—rook, knight, bishop, king, queen, and pawns.

  “Dang, we’re gonna be here a long time,” Ray-Ray says. “Where’d you learn all this, anyway?”

  “From my dad,” I say. Which is true. “He’s a cop. A detective, actually. He puts bad guys away for a living.”