Twenty-Four Seconds from Now . . . by Jason Reynolds

Author:Jason Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Published: 2024-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The rest of breakfast and the car ride home were strangely normal. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but after Ma said all the uncomfortable stuff she needed to say and we pulled up in front of the house, she added, “You can always talk to me about this. Or anything.” And “I love you.”

“Love you too, but I’m not sure I want to talk about this ever again.”

Nat’s not-boyfriend Spank was outside, his body half under the hood of Nat’s car as if her old beater were a metal monster in the middle of eating him alive. Which my parents would’ve loved.

“Before we go in, let me ask you: Have you and your dad talked about any of this?”

“Not really,” I said, recalling a moment some months back where we sorta talked about it but sorta didn’t. “Not forreal forreal.”

“Do you want me to tell him?” Ma asked.

“If I tell you not to, you gon’ tell him anyway?”

“Yes. But you know your father. All he’s gonna say is ‘Don’t bring no babies in here unless they know how to count money.’ ”

My dad has been saying that for as long as I can remember, mainly to my sister. When she was in high school, he’d practically preach it to her.

Don’t bring no babies in here unless they can count money. I don’t need no grandchild, I need an accountant to help with the bingo books.

Nat would always respond with “But y’all were teenagers when y’all had me, and look at how I turned out!”

And then Dad would say, “Yeah… look at how you turned out?” But he was always joking. The truth is, Nat can do no wrong. Not to him. Doesn’t matter what she has going on; she’s his baby girl, his pride and joy, and everything she knows about men, he taught her. How to listen for the lie. How to protect herself by using what he calls the Doorknob.

You grab and twist! he’d instruct, demonstrating the move.

“I just don’t know why Nat’s never given that boy the Doorknob,” Ma said, now confirming she could read my mind. We peered at Spank through the windshield.

“Maybe she has,” I said, opening the car door.

“Yeah, maybe she has,” my mom said unenthusiastically. Then, lowering her voice, she added, “And maybe he likes that kinda thing, and that’s why he can’t seem to get away from her.”

The thing about Spank is that the way my folks talk about him, you’d think he was the worst person ever. You’d think he was some cliché clown with scumbag tattooed across his neck and whatever else parents see as inappropriate or unsavory for their daughters to date and their sons to be. But the truth is, Spencer Hankinson, or Spank as everyone knows him, ain’t none of that. He’s a regular Ronnie. Rocked an old-man high fade, wore blue jeans that were the middle wash, not the dark or the light but that blue that looked both childish and fatherly, and white T-shirts out the pack, except for when he wore the black ones out the pack.

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