Bright Lights, Dark Nights (16 page)

“It'll turn around when this whole case dies down, right?” I asked. “They're probably just being careful because of all the attention it's getting.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Dad said. “Where are you off to?”

“The park,” I said.

“See? This is what I'm talking about.” Dad clapped sarcastically. “Can I get her name at least? Is she a criminal? Is that what you're hiding? Are
you
a criminal?”

I laughed at the jokes and grabbed my coat. “Just friends from school,” I said, a little white lie.

The plan was to meet Naomi, and that was about as far as the plan went: meet Naomi and let the day take over.

It was November and the leaves were half on the ground, shuffling and crunching beneath the foot traffic. The slums my dad would go on about after work were nowhere in sight, the people were smiling, and the colors were out of a Disney cartoon. The park was at the edge of High Hill, where the buildings got taller. We were surrounded by buildings on all sides, the center of a wall of giants. There was us in the park, and outside of us, there was the world.

Naomi was standing on the sidewalk. She had her hair pulled back and large sunglasses on, and she had a backpack with her, which I was used to, since I mostly saw her at school. She spotted me and waved. I was getting more comfortable around her in general, but she still made me nervous every time I saw her. My breathing rhythms changed. Every step closer to her I felt a little more light-headed. I hoped today wouldn't be the day I finally blew it.

“Ready?” I said as I approached. I took a deep breath and buried my hands in my sleeves. “Let's find the biggest pile of leaves and jump in. We'll just run and dive.”

“Okay, let's do it,” Naomi said. “I can't wait to get all those bugs in my hair.”

“I hope I land right on a rat,” I said. “The biggest, fattest rat in the city.”

We started walking in no particular direction with no mention of where we were headed or how long we had. We walked and talked, and I looked at her, and down at her feet, and back at her. And she looked at me. Which isn't to say there weren't a million other things in the periphery of my vision: a lady with four or five dogs pulling her like a bobsled team, a food truck with a long line, traffic starting and stopping. But mostly I saw Naomi. We came to a section of the park I'd been to many times; in fact, it was my personal tree.

“You have your own tree?” Naomi said. “This is a Walter Tree?”

“This is
the
Walter Tree,” I said. “There's my comic-book store across the street. Sometimes I'll go there and then sit down by this tree. I like it because I can be alone and sit there and read, but there's always people all around, so I'm not alone-alone. Just regular alone.”

That was when I wasn't there with Jason, but I didn't mention that part to Naomi. I imagined him walking out of the comic-book store, seeing me on a sort of date with his sister. I'd dodged Shadows for three weeks now. I was officially avoiding him. I hadn't said a thing about Naomi and me to him. There was nothing to say. Except that I liked her a lot, but he wouldn't want to hear that and I didn't want to say it.

“Walter Tree, I love it,” Naomi said. “I'm going to show you my special place, too. But it has to be dark first.” Naomi leaned against the tree. “You need to carve your name into it or something so everyone knows it's your tree.”

“I pee on it, like, once a month,” I joked. “That's how I mark my territory.”

“All right, I won't lean here, then,” Naomi said, pushing off the tree. We crossed the street and headed into the comic-book store. There were seven or eight people in there, which was about average whether it was a Saturday afternoon or a weekday morning. “So you read comics? Like X-Men, Batman?” Naomi asked.

I showed her around the store. “Yeah, there's so much more than that, though. There's the mainstream comics, the just-right-of-mainstream comics, like indie superhero stuff, and the real indie stuff.”

“Do you read regular books?” Naomi asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I like comics because I can read them in one sitting and feel like I accomplished something, but I read all kinds of stuff. Stephen King. Nick Hornby, I just finished reading
High Fidelity
. I have a lot of free time, you see.”

“Well, I'm gonna take up all your free time,” Naomi said. “I'm going to make you quit reading.”

Please do.

“So where is this special place of yours?” I asked when we headed back outside. The sun cast a golden light on the storefronts. “I'm getting curious.”

“It's where my sister would take me when I was a kid,” Naomi said.

“The invisible sister nobody's seen,” I said.

“Oh, she's real. But no one sees her anymore,” Naomi said. “Drugs and boys, man.”

“Been there,” I joked before I knew if it was okay to joke.

“I love my big sis, though. She taught me all about capital-
L
life,” Naomi said. We walked a slow pace along the street, contently aimless. “She was smart as anyone but such a mess, too. She made every bad decision she could like it was a contest. She got involved with this boy my parents hated, and they were right. I mean, even as a kid I knew he was the bad guy in the movies, right? But he was a charming, good-looking kid, and Mom and Dad were Mom and Dad, so you can guess which side Alicia took. She ran away when she was seventeen. I was just twelve then. I saw her once or twice after that. She was kinda messed up on stuff. She wasn't the same person at all. I hope she's better now, but I almost don't want to know.”

“Wow,” I said. “That's some story.”

“Yeah, so I get screwed over from all that because now I'm the
good kid,
” Naomi said. “So they need to keep me on the straight and narrow, but they don't know I'm secretly a
wild child
.”

“I thought you were,” I said. “I wasn't sure, though.”

“Come on, Walter. I get out of the house, and ten minutes later, I'm jumping in piles of rats and garbage,” Naomi said. “Wild child.”

“I'm taking the blame for that,” I said. “That was my idea. I'm the bad guy. Don't tell your parents.”

We walked past the storefronts, an electronics store, a nail place. We went into a music store at the end of the block and combed through the CD bins. Nicki Minaj was blasting from the speakers even though the store was empty aside from an older guy who worked there.

“It's kind of weird stores like this are around still, right?” Naomi asked. “Everyone downloads stuff. You wonder how they stay in business. It's like a relic.”

“Where are we going to waddle around once they're all closed, though?” I asked.

“Maybe it'll be like those apocalyptic shows,” Naomi said, “and all the trees and grass will consume the buildings, and wild cats will be everywhere.”

“Damn, I don't want to fight off beasts just to get my Nicki Minaj fix,” I said. “Can you imagine if this store went out of business? We wouldn't even be standing here right now. We'd be bored and lost, probably turn to drugs and alcohol. If this store wasn't here, an hour from now our entire future would be lying in a gutter.”

“Then we need to buy something,” Naomi said. “To keep them in business. This is going to be
our
album, so I'm going to say no rap.”

“No rap?” I asked. “Pressure's on.”

“So how'd you get into all this rap music, anyway?” Naomi asked me as I flipped through the CDs. We were stationed under a vintage poster of Stevie Wonder in some dapper shades, promising an electric night, live in concert.

“How
did
I get into rap?” I asked back, thinking about it. “I just really like discovering new stuff. One thing leads to another. Pop music led me to older pop music, the Beatles were a gateway into Motown, which led me back to modern R&B, and some rap, which I really settled on and devoured.”

“Top five rappers,” Naomi said.

“Just five? I thought you didn't even listen to rap,” I said. I was flipping through the pop section, which seemed to encompass pretty much everything under the sun that wasn't rap.

“I listen to
some
,” Naomi said. “I just couldn't have you thinking I'm like Jason or anything. I listen to a
little
. Top five, let's hear it.”

“All right, this isn't too bad,” I said. I'd had this conversation with Jason before. “It's probably the same basic list everyone has, but I'm gonna be a little outrageous. First off, I'm going to use one slot and put the entirety of the Wu-Tang Clan in there. Solo Wu-Tang rappers would be its own top five. Eminem would be on the list. Nas. Tupac. And then that leaves me one spot … Can I split it between A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West, and Biggie? Otherwise I have to bow out.”

“No way,” Naomi said down the aisle from me now. “This is, like, your top seventeen already. Let's pick out a random CD from the rap section. That'll be your number five.”

“Good deal,” I said. My number five pick was Positive K,
The Skills dat Pay da Bills
. The cover was hella nineties, featuring the hit single “I Got a Man.” “So what do you listen to?” I asked.

“Oh gosh,” Naomi sighed. “Nobody ever asks me that. I'm embarrassed.”

“Don't be embarrassed. I'm apparently a huge Positive K fan,” I said. I had to find a good CD that would make her think of me, us, and this moment. So far I was blanking.

“Here's one—this was pretty good,” Naomi said, and handed me a CD. Janelle Monáe,
The Electric Lady
. “I like Esperanza Spalding, too, but you won't know her. Uh, what else? Some jazz, some classical. Some harp stuff you'd probably leave the store if I put on.”

“I'm sure it's good,” I said. “I like the stuff I've heard you play. You have good taste.”

“I do listen to a lot of R & B, too,” Naomi said. “That freaky sex music.
Oh, shut up, Naomi, you're not funny.
I'm so sorry.”

I laughed.

“You want to know what really got me into harp?” she asked me. “I can't believe I'm even admitting this—I'm such a dork. But video games. My brother used to play these fantasy video games on his PlayStation, and they'd have this cool harp music, and I wanted to learn to play.”

“That's kinda funny,” I said. “When I was over a few weeks ago, Jason said it sounded like Final Fantasy music. He was annoyed with it and had no idea he was the inspiration for it.”

“He'd flip out just knowing we're hanging out right now,” Naomi said. She felt that pressure, too. He was a ghost on our maybe-date. “I don't even know what to tell him. I can't handle it right now. I love him—he's my brother—but he's such a punk, too.”

“He
is
kind of a punk,” I said. “But that's just Jason.”

“
That's just Jason
—it should be a friggin' sitcom,” Naomi said, nerve exposed. She rolled her eyes. “Everyone says that. He's the golden child of the family. He gets into all this trouble, he gets to do whatever he wants, messes up all the time, but he's the golden child. He can be out as late as he wants, he can date whoever. But my older sister gets in trouble and somehow it all falls on my shoulders. Because Alicia was a girl and I'm a girl, and Jason's just Jason. It's crazy.”

“That's what it's like at school, too,” I said. “He has a charm that wins people over. He's untouchable.”

“It's Jason and girls. That's the issue when it comes to me,” Naomi said, her eyes in an angry squint. “He dates these skanks and then he gets all defensive of me because he doesn't want me to be like the girls he dates. He's such a hypocrite. My family is nuts, Walter.”

“Not to change the subject or anything, but I've got it,” I said, once I'd spotted the Maltese Falcon of CDs. “This can be our album, and with this purchase, we save the record-store industry.”