Scandalous Heroes Box Set (48 page)

Scotty, G and Martray understood that. You get a mitt, a baseball bat or a football and then somebody bigger stole it. You go home without your gear and your ass got whupped by your parents. You try to get it back and your ass got whupped by the bigger kids. It was a no win situation. He had even seen one boy go home and tell his father about the big kids taking his things. The father came storming up to the court but when he saw that the gang of guys playing with his son’s gear was bigger than even him he turned around and took his dumb ass right back home—and then whupped the kid anyway.

They were cutting across an empty field when Scotty spotted a little girl running as if she was being chased by the devil. G looked at him.

“Isn’t that one…”

Scotty gave him a swift side eye.

“…um…” G looked away. Some topics were never to be spoken of, even between friends; things about Scotty’s mother and things about Scotty’s father…

Martray didn’t really know the score but he knew enough not to ask. They began the walk back down to Winton Terrace, their humor and energy a stark difference to the joking boys that had first come up the hill forty minutes ago.

Scotty heard a song with no music. It sounded good and it took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t a song playing on someone’s radio or stereo at all, but the familiar voice of a little girl singing a song about loving someone always and forever...

He stopped. “I’ll meet you down there.” G looked at him curiously. “I’m going to check on something.”

“Aiight, man. Meet me at the crib.”

“Yep.”

He walked up the hill towards the hilltop using the shirt that was now hanging from his back pocket to mop away the sweat from his face. He was nearly there when he looked up and saw Vanessa standing on the edge of the parking lot, peering down the hill. He had already rounded the sharp curve that would lead to the parking lot so she wasn’t looking in his direction but in that minute he thought about a book that he had read last year in American Novel.

It was called The Catcher in the Rye, and in it there was a guy named Holden Caulfield that was as nutty as a fruitcake. But Scotty understood that kind of nuttiness. It was the crazy that people and circumstances made you if you let it…and down deep he understood that it was the nuttiness that probably every person in the world possessed.

Scotty could get with Holden on one thing; they both had a similar desire, only Scotty had not been able to put words to it until reading the book. Holden had this fantasy about saving the children that played too close to the edge of a rye field from falling off the edge. Scotty wanted to do the same thing for himself and his brothers and sisters; not a fall from some rye field, but a fall from innocence.

Everyone else in the class hated the book and complained that it was stupid. Someone had commented, ‘Why should I care who falls off the edge of a cliff? If they dumb enough I’m going to run over and watch they asses fall!’ And then everyone had laughed including Scotty. But he understood Holden then and especially now as he watched the little girl standing on the two foot lip surrounding the deadly drop off of the parking lot. The lip would stop a car from toppling the edge…but not a little girl that wasn’t being careful. He had an urge to catch her—in the most literal sense, just as he had Holden Caulfield’s desire to catch the little children’s fall from innocence.

He was happy to see her swiftly back away from the edge and disappear. He slowed his walk as he realized that he was almost jogging. As he finally reached the parking lot Scotty didn’t see anyone but a bunch of five and six year olds riding big wheels up and down the sidewalk. He walked toward her townhouse anyway, remembering the fall she had taken the night before. He’d actually heard the blunt impact of her body meeting the hard gravel and concrete. And when she’d lifted her head the sight of the blood and scrapes had bothered him. She hadn’t cried which had impressed him even though she looked like she had wanted to. She was a cute kid with long wavy black hair and cocoa colored skin that reminded him of Beady. Scotty wondered if she remembered playing with Beady—but probably not. She had just been two and three years old back then. She certainly didn’t remember him.

For some reason it had made him mad that she asked how he knew her. Just because she had forgotten him didn’t mean that he’d forgotten her. And the reason that she didn’t remember also made him a little mad. That meant that her mother had never bothered to tell her.

He took a moment to look at her. Vanessa’s eyes were still just as dark as her hair, which now flowed around her shoulders. She was tall and thin, which shouldn’t surprise him. So was her mother. Unfortunately, he knew that kids that looked like her didn’t always fair well in the projects; not when her exotic looks was so different than those of the other people that ranged in colors from toffee to charcoal and that came in all shapes sizes and levels of beauty mostly thought that a girl like her was much closer to the world’s idea of beauty than they were.

However, to Scotty, beauty was defined by what surrounded him. And to him beauty was found in the image of the black females that populated his neighborhood. Beauty looked like brown skin, full lips, and hair that had a texture foreign to his own. Straight or curly his fingers ached to explore all the differences.

He stopped at the entryway that led to Vanessa’s Townhome, taking in the sight of her sitting in the corner against her door, hugging her blue jean clad knees.

She lifted her head from where it was resting on her knees, her dark eyes big with surprise.

~***~

Was it possible to make a person appear just because you were thinking about them so hard that the cosmos caused them to materialize in front of you? Vanessa had been thinking about Scotty and then she’d heard someone approach, looked up and there he was.

He was wearing jeans that had been cut-off at the knees but more importantly was that he was shirtless. His blonde hair fell around his face, now darker with the sweat that also dotted his bare torso.

Oh my God. He had muscles in his chest and stomach. Oh my God he was half undressed.

She opened her mouth and something stupid came out without her thinking. “How do you know my name?”

He looked like he might not answer and then when he spoke his voice was a little annoyed. “How do you know mine?”

“Well…somebody told me.”

“Same here.” He looked around, not seeing the white Cadillac.

“Your mom left you locked out?”

If some other boy had asked her that she would have been evasive, not wanting them to know that she was alone. But for some reason she didn’t feel afraid to answer him honestly—and not because she was forming a crush on the older boy but because she could sense that he had no interest in hurting her.

She nodded and he sighed and looked around. He walked over to the front window. “Come here.” He went behind the bush and Vanessa followed catching a scent of his sweat and soap, which was not the least unpleasant. “Watch.”

She thought to herself that he didn’t say much, not even hi, but she watched him intently as he pressed his fingers along the side of the screen, catching the two small tabs that allowed the screen to be raised and lowered. In surprise she watched him raise the screen and then lift the window easily from the outside as opposed to the way it had intended to be opened—from the inside.

“Climb through.”

She grimaced and crossed her legs urgently. “I…I gotta go to the bathroom too bad.” Admitting that she had biological needs such as going to the bathroom was mortifying to her. Scotty looked over his shoulder, she understood that he was ‘scoping the scene’; attempting to do this unseen. He quickly climbed into the apartment and a moment later Vanessa heard him unlocking the door from the inside. She smothered back a whoop of triumph and without picking up her books she ran through the apartment and up the stairs to the bathroom.

She had barely made it. Her eyes watered as she quickly tore down her pants and panties in one movement and then released the tight hold that she had on her bladder muscles. Urine gushed from her with a splash as it hit the toilet and she groaned in pleasure. “Thank you baby Jesus,” she sighed softly.

When she finally returned down the stairs, Scotty had lowered the screen and window and had shut the door. She saw her books on the side table. He was looking around her living room and she was suddenly proud of how fine their house was when she saw the look of admiration in his eyes.

“This is nice.”

Mama had gotten a cool living room set, which was made of soft tan fur. The cocktail and side tables were wooden and surrounded by the same fur. A huge plush white rug was in the middle of the floor and an oversized painting of a half nude African warrior woman took up most of one wall. The wall next to it had a huge mirror that made the already large room look twice as big.

“You want some Kool-Aide?” She asked.

He looked at the door and shook his head. “No. I better go before your mother gets home. Don’t let anyone see you breaking into your house that way. You’ll get in trouble.”

“Why? Its my house.”

“Because little kids aren’t supposed to know how to break into houses.”

“I’m twelve, I’m not little.”

He chuckled. “Okay. Well twelve year olds aren’t supposed to know anything about breaking and entering.”

His words caused her to wonder how much he knew about breaking and entering. “You sure you don’t want some Kool-Aid. You can always go out the back patio if my mama comes home.”

When he hesitated she led the way through to the neat kitchen.

Scotty noted that Vanessa’s house was spotless. It didn’t even seem real that a kitchen wouldn’t have dirty dishes piled into the sink or grease stains all over the stove and dirt and trash on the floor. G’s house was nice compared to his own but even his friend had dirty dishes in the sink and a few roaches running around the kitchen. 

He watched Vanessa open a cabinet and retrieve two matching glasses and thought that if his house had glasses like that, the smaller kids would have smashed them just for fun.

She opened the refrigerator and he peeked over her shoulder and saw food, fresh vegetables, and neat plastic containers that held some food, which had been cooked instead of spread across bread.

She grabbed a container and then poured red Kool-Aid into the glasses. She watched him gulp down half of it in one swallow. “You want a peanut butter sandwich?”

He shook his head and placed the empty glass in the sink. “Nah. Catch you later.” He went out the back and after sliding the patio door closed behind him he saw her watching him and winked at her before disappearing.

Vanessa squealed as soon as he was out of sight and then jumped up and down in excitement. She hurried to the phone to call Jalissa to tell her what had happened.

“You are such a liar!” Jalissa kept saying, but the way she said it let Vanessa know that her cousin believed every word. “I can’t believe you let that thief into your house and then you left him alone?! Girl, you better go check to make sure nobody stole Aunt Leelah’s jewelry!”

“What? No! He was just standing there looking around.”

“Hmph,” Jalissa sucked air through her teeth. “Don’t cry when your mama finds out that some of her stuff is missing.”

“I know that he is Tino’s brother but that doesn’t mean that he’s bad.” Being related to a bad person didn’t make you a bad person. Look at Jalissa and Jalissa’s mother. Aunt Callista was…a bitch. She could think the word even if she couldn’t say it out loud.

She heard keys in the front door. “I gotta go,” and then she quickly hung up the phone. “Hi mama.”

Leelah White dropped her purse on the side table in relief. “Oh my God, baby. I was so scared when I didn’t see you out front.” She hugged her daughter in relief. “I am so sorry that I’m late.” She took hold of her daughter’s shoulders and looked at her closely. “But how did you get inside?”

She thought about Scotty’s words but more importantly she thought about how pissed her mama would be if she knew that Scotty knew how to break into their house. “I opened the window from the outside and climbed through.”

Leelah gave her a surprised look and then went over to the window and examined it. Vanessa joined her and pointed out how she had done it—or rather how Scotty had done it.

“Well I’ll be…” she gave Vanessa a worried look. “How did you learn how to do that?”

Vanessa raised her eyebrows. “I…heard kids at school talking about it.”

Instead of looking happy that she had gotten into the house safely, mama seemed more concerned that someone knew how to break into the house. She immediately locked and secured the window and then did the same for all of the windows on the lower level.

For some reason this made Vanessa mad because what if mama left her outside alone again. She’d been over an hour late this time. Vanessa decided that she would just demand that her mother trust her with a key to the house. She wouldn’t lose it and nobody would steal it from her if she kept it on a chain around her neck.

“Mama, I don’t like being locked out the house. I think I should have a key.” She opened her mouth to support her case by proclaiming that she was old enough and responsible when her mother interrupted.

“Yes baby, I know. Come here baby, I want to talk to you about something.” She led Vanessa to the couch and they sat down with mama’s arms around her. Vanessa waited with anticipation and a little nervousness because mama seemed like she was about to say something unpleasant.

“Vanessa, I can’t keep leaving you alone in the evenings like I’ve been doing. It’s wrong and I spend most of the night worrying about you.”

“But, you call me before I go to bed-“

“But that’s not enough. You need an adult with you. So I talked to your aunt Callista and starting tomorrow you’re going to go home with Jalissa everyday after school.”

Vanessa stiffened and pulled back to examine her mother. She’d told her mama a long time ago that she didn’t like Aunt Callista’s house and didn’t want her as a babysitter anymore…although she hadn’t told her the real reason.