Fire in the Streets (4 page)

“Power to the people!” The crowd repeats Leroy's final chant. “Power to the people!”

We hug our stacks of papers, ready to sell, until I see one of the Panthers at the front motioning us even closer. It's someone we know. Guy called Rocco, from the neighborhood.

Rocco takes the papers from me. “Thanks, Maxie-girl.
We were really running low.” Rocco's buddy Slim takes some from Emmalee and a guy I don't know takes Patrice's.

“Pretty good sales today, considering,” the unknown guy says.

I look at Rocco, confused. “I thought Leroy wanted
us
to help sell them?”

“Nah, we've got it,” Rocco says. “Go back to whatever you were doing before.”

I don't want to go back. Not to the banner. Not through the crowd. Being close to the guys is better. I can tell by Patrice's expression that she agrees. Emmalee too.

“We're cool,” I say, trying to make it sound real casual. “We'll hang here.”

Slim nudges Rocco. “Check it, there she is.” Kind of under his breath.

In this case, “she” is a sister goes by the name of Cherry. Cherry dresses to kill and there are always casualties. Today it's tight stretchy pants that cup her butt just so. All the brothers turn to look one by one as she passes. Her powder-blue Panther work shirt has been tailored to fit her hourglass shape. A gold belt cinches her waist to almost nothing. A wrist of bangles and a pendant that falls in the line between her breasts. Her jacket dangles from the fingers of one hand. It is warm out, but that's not why she does it. You can tell from the gleam in her eye.

“Hey, everybody.”

“Hey, Cherry.”

I try not to show that I'm watching her too. Emmalee and Patrice probably, as well. It's no secret between us that we all want to get to look like Cherry in the next five years. Emmalee and Patrice at least have started to grow in the chest. I'm just small all over.

Slim leans forward. “Umm-umm. Cherry, you are looking fine today, girl.”

Cherry fixes a gaze on him. She's wearing big shades, but you can tell that's what she's doing. “Today? I always look fine,” she quips.

“I hear that.” Slim grins back. “I'm just saying.”

Cherry slides on by. I watch her go, thinking how nice it would be if I could actually look like that someday.

“I want to go home,” Patrice declares a short while later. And it's the second time, and there's more urgency in her voice. “I have a bad feeling. I want to go now.” She might be about to cry.

“I want to stay,” I tell her. “We have to stay.” Bobby hasn't spoken yet. Something more is going to happen. I can feel it. Something I have to be a part of.

But the thing with us is, we always have each other's backs, so something's got to give. We look to Emmalee
for the tiebreak. She thinks about it. Emmalee is like that, always thinking things out. You can tell when she's doing it by the look on her face.

“I want to go now, too,” she decides. “Sorry, Maxie. We stayed longer than we were going to.”

It's not dark yet. All I promised Raheem was that we would leave before dark. But it's two against one.

“Okay. Let's go.” We snake through the crowd, moving from Panther to Panther, looking for Hamlin or Raheem to tell them we're off.

“Heem.” I see him, finally. “We're going home now.”

“You have your tokens?” he says.

I nod. Hamlin had given us two el tokens each, just in case something happened and we needed the extra fare.

“You'll be fine,” he says, but I think it's mostly so he won't worry after we go.

“Yup.” I'm confident. There's nothing about this crowd we can't handle, even when it's freaking us out. If nothing else, we've proved we're no kind of chickens today.

Raheem points us in the direction he thinks will get us out fastest. We're working our way that way when a big hand catches hold of my shoulder. I hold back a gasp and spin around, ready to scream, ready to fight, ready for anything.

“Maxie?” It's Leroy Jackson. “Can you do me a favor?”

W
E BURST FROM THE CROWD ONTO THE
sidewalk, heaving deep breaths. “What were you thinking?” Patrice screeches at me. “I'm not going back in there.”

“What was I supposed to do?” I feel bad about breaking our deal, but Leroy Jackson's the highest-up Panther I've ever personally met, and he looked me in the eye and said, “Go find some change.” Handed me a whole ten-dollar bill. I couldn't say nothing to that but “Yes, sir.”

As quickly as we can, we skirt the police barricade and cross the street away from them. Although there's really no getting away. The line of cops looks thicker than ever. It's late afternoon, and I remember what Raheem said about the sun going down.

“I'm going home.” Patrice's voice strays to a higher pitch.

“Go home, then,” I tell her. “You too.” Emmalee raises her eyebrows at me. “I can handle it myself.”

“I don't want you going back in there either,” Patrice wails. “Did you see how they were looking at us?”

I keep my voice level. “I can do it. It'll probably be faster, even. I'm small. I'll slip right through them like a slice of night. They won't even see me coming.” I try to smile.

Patrice is skeptical. She fixes me with a look that says she knows better, and she probably does, but I already told Leroy yes and took the money, so what am I going to do?

“It'll be okay.” I do my best to reassure her. “I'll just go home with Hamlin and Raheem.”

“Fine,” Emmalee says. “I don't want to stand around here any longer.” She's right. Too many cops. We stand out like a whole fist of sore thumbs.

Patrice hugs me like she thinks I'm going to die in a minute. I hope she's being overdramatic, but I hug her back because you really never know. I wait until they disappear around the corner, then I make my way along the sidewalk in the other direction. Looking for a store, a Laundromat, whatever I can find.

Leroy's ten-dollar bill is still clutched tight in my fist. Today, more people than normal are paying with dollar bills and expecting change, he said. I smooth it out and try to act like a person who's supposed to have ten whole dollars in her possession.

I luck out. There's a corner store at the end of the block.
I duck inside, wait in line behind a bunch of demonstrators buying cigarettes and pop.

When it's my turn the fat white clerk glares at me, gnawing the life out of a toothpick with his jaw. “What do you want?”

“I need a roll of quarters,” I say, holding up the bill. He looks at me, at the money, and I can see it settle over his face. Suspicion. It's like he knows by looking that it's not that usual for me to have ten bucks in my hand. I want to be angry, knowing exactly why he thinks that, but I can't quite get there 'cause it's also kind of true.

Clerk looks me up and down. “Ain't got none to spare.” Toothpick moves to the other side of his mouth. “Get along out of here.” He shoos me with his hand. I flee back to the street, but I try to look calm the second I get out there. Can't go running out of a store with all these cops around. Not smart.

Walking farther, I quickly learn that getting change is a bigger deal than I realized. Two whole blocks and four stores later I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get a different kind of response. The last guy yelled at me good. “I don't do favors for your kind. Nothing in the law says I have to.”

I want to cry, want to give up, but Panthers don't back down from nothing. I go on, my footsteps carrying me where I least wanted to have to go. A real bank building.
There's one right there on the corner, with a nice clean sign out front. It looks exactly like the sort of place I'm not supposed to go. I've never even been inside a bank before, but it is where they keep all the money. I take a deep breath.

The wooden doors are tall and heavy, carved with fancy ruts and swirls. Big, round gold metal handles. I slip inside. It's cool in here. Fans blowing and clean white walls that go high. Big glass lights that hang from the ceiling like bakery birthday cakes upside down. The floor is interesting. There's one big rug that goes all the way to the wall on all sides, but then there are other small rugs on top of it. A square one by a row of chairs, and a long skinny one that leads right up to the counter. I walk along it, feeling like I'm entering a royal palace.

Except I'll never pass for the sort of girl who fits in a place like this. I figure most royalty isn't sweat-dirty with frazzed-out hair and only ten whole dollars.

The woman behind the counter says, “Can I help you?” The sign above her head says
TELLER
. So I go up and tell her.

“I need a roll of quarters, please.” I hold out the ten dollars.

She takes it and holds it up to the light.

“It's real,” I blurt, then wish I'd kept my big mouth shut. Saying too much can get you in trouble, Raheem says. Don't I know it. Still, this is advice I'm not good at following.

The teller smiles. “I know. See?” She holds it where I can see. There's a little shadow face next to the big face, in a space that's supposed to be white. “It's called a watermark. All the real bills have them.”

“Wow.” I'm relieved. Of course, I knew it was real all along, but the bill's already in her hand, and I don't know how I'd get it back if she didn't believe me.

She puts the bill into her drawer and pulls out a roll of quarters. She slides it toward me. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” The quarters are wrapped in smooth paper. They're a touch heavier than I would have thought. “This was hard to get,” I admit. She seems like a nice person. She helped me.

She smiles again, this time in a way that seems a bit sad. “Well, now you know where to go.”

“Thanks,” I say again. I pivot on the carpet, start my royal exit. This time, I feel taller. Much more princess-like. Before I push back out into the heat I look back at the teller, wondering what it would be like to go to work in a place where people are rich enough to buy rugs to put on top of the rugs that are already there.

I
'VE LOST A LOT OF TIME. THE AFTERNOON LIGHT
is no longer quite as full. I only hope Leroy will know I did the very best I could. As cut down as I've felt all day, I'm buoyed by my contact with the woman in the bank. She was white, and she was nice. I've seen it before, just not that often. I feel lighter. Right up until the moment I push back into the throng.

I was right about one thing: I'm so much smaller alone. At times I think I'll be trampled. I thought I was used to it, the loudness and the whiteness and the crush of constant moving feet, but the energy has shifted, and it only keeps getting worse. My breath comes shallower and shallower till I'm afraid it'll stop altogether. I need a bit of space around me, need to see what's coming 'fore it smacks me in the face. As it is, I'm adrift in a sea of blond hair, brown hair, pale skin, frenzied eyes. Their frantic energy is the type that wants to consume things—air, time, people—whatever gets in the way.

It's a while before I realize I'm totally lost. I can't see the stage, nor even the speaker poles poking up over anyone's head. Earlier, when I lost sight of it, I relied on Emmalee's height. She could always stretch up and see. Now I don't have anything to go by.

“Please,” I call. “I need to get to the stage.” I don't think anyone hears.

I'm so close to tears, my face hurts. I can't fail. Not at the first real assignment I've ever been given. And by Leroy himself. I can't let him down.

I try again. “Help. Which way is the stage?”

I'm mad, so mad at myself for screwing this up. I have to show Leroy, show everyone, that I can do it. I can do anything a Panther should do. I walked right into that bank, and everything turned out okay. I try to get that royal feeling back but it's long gone.

It's hopeless.
The thought settles over me. I try to push it away, because I know what hopeless feels like, and I don't feel it anymore, not since the Panthers. In this one moment, though, I don't know quite what to hope for. I don't see how I'm ever going to find them again, and it no longer feels like there's much light in the sky. The crowd is furious, it's going to get dark, and I'm supposed to go home.

It all wars out in my mind, but the thought of letting down Leroy hurts me hardest.

“Where is the stage?” I scream. In front of me, someone points. I try to shift, try to go that way, but the momentum of the crowd drives me back. I'm no longer moving upstream; I'm moving backward with the current, and a moment later, the strangest thing I can imagine happens. I'm spun around, see the pale blue flash of uniforms, and am ejected from the crowd amid a mighty swell of screams. I fall to my knees on the sidewalk of a street I don't recognize, at the feet of a row of riot-dressed cops with clubs out and big plastic crowd-pushers in their hands.