I smacked the phone onto the sidewalk. I probably would’ve gone for a death knell stomping as a sonorous “Fatality” shocked downtown Millburn like thunder if the same barista hadn’t picked up the cracked phone from the cement.
“What the fuck, Ferraro!”
“Okay, you guys need to get out of here,” said the barista.
I turned down Main Street as the group, headed by Pierce Stone, followed. “Hey! You know how expensive this phone is? I could sue you! Hey!” I kept walking. I had told Tank I would meet him in the Charlie Brown’s parking lot and we’d go to his house for a sleepover. “Hey! Ferraro! You’re going to pay for this, if you can even afford it!”
I had my backpack with me, but I still probably could’ve outrun the four of them. I hit the parking lot, but there was no sign of Tank. Pierce Stone turned the corner into the lot, holding his phone and yelling something indecipherable, short of breath. Mitch Farber, Josh Glassman, and Paxton followed.
When he stopped sucking wind, he stood up and got so close to me I could make out a string of coleslaw still stuck in his teeth. I could’ve knocked those teeth right out of his mouth if I wanted to. My father put a punching bag and a speed bag in the garage, and I proved to be a natural. “Put on some weight, Vito, and you could be the next Rocky Marciano,” he would say. My father taught me the value of the jab and how a fight is won with your feet, not your hands. But he reminded me to only hit someone in the face if you really want to hurt him. I really wanted to hurt Pierce Stone.
He smacked his limp wrist against his chest, leaving his pink face bare and vulnerable.
“You’ve got to work the jab, Vito. It’s here. Here. Here,” my father would say as his fist landed inches from my face. “But be careful. Short Hills isn’t like how I grew up in West Orange. Back then, we’d knock the crap out of each other and then make up. Now, they sue. Everyone sues!”
I clenched my fists and looked the sock right in the eye and was about to drop one of those lines I fantasized about in bed, like something a paladin would say before smashing his warhammer into the earth, but a car with big shimmering rims screeched into the parking lot. “Eyy, eyy Vic!” yelled Tank, hanging out the passenger-side window. The bass made the pavement shake. “What’s this shit?!”
Tank popped out of the car with two guys who were either black African or black African-American, but not like Silas. They wore their hats backward and had on these long, crisp white t-shirts.
I pictured the three of them with wings sprouting from their shoulder blades, like Hussars riding into the fray during the Battle of Vienna.
“Yo, you good, homie?” asked one of my reinforcements.
I checked Pierce Stone’s pants to see if he had wet himself again—he was dry. But he slowly inched backward until he was half hidden behind a Mercedes.
“Yo Vic, get in.” I got in. “Yo, these are Carina’s friends, Pierre and Henri.”
“What’s good, son?” said Pierre, the dreadlocks spilling onto his shoulders from under his hat.
“Hey, those are like Ricky Williams dreadlocks. I like them a lot, but my parents say I’m not allowed to grow ’em. I always give myself dreadlocks in Madden.”
“Ha! Yo Henri. Check this shit—my dude here wants dreads!”
“Yo, that’d be tight, my nigga. Tank tells us ya ball pretty good? Me and Pierre here play for Irvington High School.”
“Like, football? Yeah, I’m a running back, which is why I tell my dad I need dreadlocks, because all the best running backs in the NFL have ’em. But he says there aren’t many Italian running backs in the NFL, except for, like, John Cappelletti and Franco Harris.”
“Franco Harris was a Mario Brother?” asked Pierre.
“My dad can always find the Italian in someone. I always thought Franco Harris was black African-American.”
“What other African-Americans are there? Like white ones?”
“Yeah, our friend Silas is from Africa, and he’s white.”
“Y’all got a white nigga?”
“I’m not sure. He is from Namibia.”
“Where’s that at?”
“In Africa. So, are you and Henri black African-Americans or just black Americans?”
“We both Haitian.”
I remembered finding Haiti—that adorable western slice of Hispaniola—one of the times I’d scanned my father’s atlas and imagined lounging on the island paradise under the palm trees with long, flowing dreadlocks as waves crashed upon the white sand and rushed up the beach, barely reaching our scattered bocce ball set.
“That is so cool. I wish I was from an island. You guys ever play bocce? I heard it’s called pétanque in French. You guys speak French? My mom knows a little. She says everyone used to take French in school. I’ve always wanted to learn it, but I was good at Spanish at Glenwood so I just stuck with it. My dad says I can’t take Italian until high school. So, you guys ever play bocce—I mean pétanque—on the white sand beaches of Haiti speaking French? You guys ever go back to visit your tropical home?”
“Go back? I ain’t neva been. Me and Henri, we was both born in Newark.”
Henri tore through the sloping, snaking streets of Short Hills, going so quickly around blind turns that I caught myself praying in the backseat again, this time the Hail Mary.
We pulled into the DeVallos’ driveway and took the stairs that hugged around the house right down to Tank’s bedroom door, which stuck out like a hobbit hole in the shire.
“Yo, Short Hills is gettin’ hood!” said Pierre as he lit a cigarette and tossed the pack to Henri.
“Eyy eyy, Tanky boy, you want one, my nigga?”
“Man, you know Tank don’t smoke that shit. He’s a good kid. Yo Tank, get yo sista out tho.”
My eyes started to itch like I was at the Geigers’, bathing in
