A surge of something painful and hot and sharp rips through my whole being, and the world around me goes dark. I’m in darkness, and I see my red-orange band deep inside, but it’s as far away from me as a star.
Then I see, hear, smell flames. I smell flesh. I hear the cackling laughter, and I scream.
Just like that I’m back in the regular world again. I raise myself up (since I somehow wound up on the ground), coughing and gasping for air, and I feel like I’ll never get enough back in my lungs. The first thing I see is not what I expected to see. The man is several feet away from me, up against a tree. His arms are wrapped around the trunk in a queer way. He looks like somebody stuck him there with cement. Clearly, that somebody was me.
He still watches me. I can’t tell if he’s scared or annoyed.
“Think you could at least loosen your grip?” he asks.
How does he know I’m doin’ it?
I don’t move. Am I able to jube in his presence now? Why doesn’t it feel right?
“You’re even more fascinating than I remember.”
“Stay away from me.” I hurry onto my bike, though I feel a little dizzy and pray I can make the trip home. I also worry that the dawn breaking open the sky will make gettin’ home before Mama wakes up an impossibility, which could mean a helluva lotta trouble headed my way. She promised to punish me in a big way if she ever caught me comin’ in late again.
“Wait a minute,” he says.
I ignore him, but he gets my attention when he tears himself from the tree as if I wasn’t really holdin’ him there at all. Was I not? Was he… fakin’ it? There’s so much I don’t understand. My head’s spinning.
Before I can get my full weight into the pedals, he blocks me and the bike. His iron grip squeezing my hands over the handlebars. He’s stronger than he looks.
“Here’s how it is,” he begins. “I like you, Evalene. I always have. Believe it or not, you’re the reason I came back to this shit town. My dumbfuck uncle thinks it’s to take over his business when he croaks. It’s not. And I won’t.
“Lotsa folks aren’t gonna understand us, but I don’t much care for lotsa folks. Jim Crow is a pointless, intellectually hollow, and ultimately self-sabotaging model for a so-called civilization. It’s an embarrassment. You see? I’m on your side. I’m no dummy.”
His words surprise and confuse me. I don’t know how to classify him in my mind, he’s so unpredictable. I do all I can to hide my thoughts from him. He doesn’t need any more weapons.
“I’m not asking for much. Just spend some time with me. Don’t be scared of me. Nothin’ serious.” He smiles. I hate his smile.
“And your—uh—boyfriend? You’re gonna have to end that.”
I attempt to pull my hands away, but his grip tightens.
“I’m tryin’ to be nice about this. I’m a nice person. But I’ll warn you now: When I want somethin’? I get it. If you just accept that, there won’t be any problems.”
“Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
He backs up, letting go of my hands, but still blocking me.
“I don’t know. But I can’t,” he says. “You have to rearrange the way you think about me. This might surprise you, but a lot of young ladies would kill to trade places with you.”
I reach, reach, and I just barely touch that bright red-orange, and I feel a wave of somethin’ pass through me. It shoulda worked, but it didn’t. It’s like a dud when you expect a firecracker.
I give up on tryna use my powers, so I pedal straight ahead. He tries to leap outta the way, but I roll over one of his feet. He cries out like a li’l kid cuz I hurt him, but as I peel away, flying down that hill, I can hear him. Laughin’ and hollerin’. “You won’t forget me now, will ya? Virgil Hampton! That’s my name! Virgil! Hampton!
14
Unspeakable
BY SOME MIRACLE, I MANAGE to make it home in time. More or less. I get inside and run by the closed bathroom door with the light peeking out under it just in time for Mama to come out and see me standing in my bedroom doorway.
“Evvie, you scared the heck outta me. What’re you doin’ up so early?” she asks, and takes a few steps closer to me. I try to back up without her noticing.
“Are you—dirty?”
“Uh, yeah. A li’l bit.”
“Why?”
Now I gotta come up with something quick when there ain’t a single reason I can think of for me to be outside in the dirt at six in the morning.
“I had a nightmare. Dreamed somebody took my bike. So I woke up and went out to make sure it was still here, but then I fell.”
“Backward?” she asks, examining the back of my pants.
I nod innocently.
She eyeballs me like she’s trying to crack a code.
“Clean yourself up. Come down to the kitchen.”
She doesn’t sound mad, exactly. Not happy, but not mad. Could go either way.
When I get out of the tub, I can hear the twins in their room singing “Miss Mary Mack.” Up and singin’ and it ain’t even seven o’clock yet.
I go downstairs in my robe without bothering to find my slippers. She’s making coffee on the stove, fiddling with the newspaper, but not reading it. She gestures to a chair, so I sit.
“I won’t suffer lyin’, and I won’t suffer sneakin’. I will not put up with it, Evalene.”
“Lyin’?”
The water starts to boil, so she gets up to pour herself a cup.
“So you gonna stand by that stupid story you just told me?”
Okay. That was a lie.
“Sorry. That wasn’t how I got dirty.”
“I don’t like this. You spendin’ every free second with that boy and stayin’ out all night? You think you grown now?”
“But I wasn’t with
