Next by Kevin Waltman

Author:Kevin Waltman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
Published: 2013-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

Uncle Kid’s still a damn good player, but he’s a poor salesman. Even I can tell he’s too jumpy for his own good, pushing me so hard to leap to Hamilton Academy that he makes me want to stay at Marion East.

“It’s all there for the taking,” he shouts after my mom makes a cutting remark about how few black teachers Hamilton has. He pounds the table with his fist and then stands and paces the living room like a nervous man outside an emergency room. “You can’t not transfer, Derrick. You have to.”

Even I can see that Kid has more invested in this than just my basketball career and education, but before I can say anything Mom shoots him down: “Sidney Bowen, don’t you dare stand in my living room and tell my son what he has to do! Only two people get to say that, and he’s grown enough to make up his own mind on this.”

“But, Kaylene,” he pleads.

“But nothing,” Mom says, taking his plea with the same patience she shows to students who forget their homework. “Whatever love you have for those pretty, white people is your business, but don’t come dragging it into my living room.”

“It’s not about me loving white people!” Kid shouts back. Mom struck a nerve and now Kid’s got his back up too. The room feels like a pot about to boil over.

Dad, ever calm, tries to ease the heat back just a bit. “Sit, Sidney,” he says, then reaches over and puts his hand over my mom’s—the only man alive that can do that when she’s angry and expect to keep that hand. “The adults in this room yelling isn’t going to help the one teenager make a decision.” He takes his glasses off for a second and wipes his face with his hand, a weary gesture, but when he sets those glasses on the table and looks at me without them I can see the calm in his eyes. His face seems to relax, easing away the wrinkles that are starting to form around his mouth and temples and he looks—just for a second—like the man I’ve seen in the pictures from before I was born, the one my mom fell for: smooth skin the shade of almond butter and a patient smile that says he’s got all day just for you. “Instead of shouting over each other, let’s just write down a list of pros and cons.”

My mom sighs, impatient with my dad’s methodical take, but she knows he’s right because she gets up and tears a fresh sheet from the message pad on the fridge. When she sits back down she says, “Fine, let’s hear all the great reasons why my son should go to school in a different damn county.”

Uncle Kid clears his throat, but my dad just shoots him a look—Don’t you dare, man—and instead Dad starts off. “Academics,” he says. My mom, who’s been resisting the idea of a transfer at every turn, lets her pen hover over the paper.

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