The First Part Last by Angela Johnson

Author:Angela Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PSY010000
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2003-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

now

I GOTTA CATCH A BREAK.

The cop who brings me in is on the phone, and looking through some file like she’s got nothing to do but slowly look through paper.

We walk up tiled stairs past gray walls to a squad room.

She points to a chair and says, “Sit, kid.”

I sit.

And when I look at the clock over the window facing a brick wall, I feel my stomach turning over. 7:30 P.M. Coco must be buggin’ with my mom beside her, burning up every phone on the island.

By now my dad—who always thinks that way anyway—is imagining me cold in a Dumpster. It started as a real bad dream, but it’s turning into a freakin’ nightmare.

Then somebody is talking about night court and putting me in a holding cell till they get a hold of a parent.

All I’m thinking about in the gray cell, nasty ’cause I can tell somebody was sick a minute ago, is my baby. And how if I’m lucky I won’t be murdered by her grandma if I get out of here in maybe—ever.

On the other side of things, I’m pretty scared about being dragged out of the station and being treated like I had been doing something dangerous and insane.

Doesn’t Five-0 have anything to do besides bust underage artists? I want to ask, but I’m not talking ’cause that’s what everybody says you should do.

Anyway, the cops can’t do anything as bad to me as my mom can, and she never has to put a hand on me. All she has to do is walk around with a mom badge and her arms folded up serious tight in front of her.

Busted.

Mom lives by the rules and doesn’t take bull-shit—which is what skipping school, getting arrested for street art, and leaving Feather with Coco is.

Since both of Mom’s parents were serious alcoholics, she can’t take the crazy stuff. So we were dragged to meetings in church basements and school cafeterias. I guess she wanted to be ready when me and my brothers were on the street with forties in paper bags.

My one phone call is to my dad. I know he’ll be in the restaurant, and he won’t be nasty mad like my mom probably will. At least I think he won’t.

8:45 P.M.

It’s been fourteen hours since I dropped my baby off at Coco’s house and I stepped into this. So I’m waiting for whoever to come get me so I can see just how big everything’s been nuked.

He doesn’t say anything to me in the station, but when we get into the cab he says, “Have you eaten?”

“No,” I say, and try to look real interested in the raindrops on the taxi window.

“Do we need to stop by someplace and pick up takeout?”

“I’m not hungry, Dad,” I whine.

“When was the last time you ate, anyway?” he says, looking real concerned, like he just picked me up from a hospital ’cause I passed out from lack of lunch, instead of the police station.

It’s the way he deals.

Mom

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