It wasn’t until after my third class that I got my first glimpse of my dad, slinking his way around the halls. He looked almost exactly like Nathan, except his brown hair was already showing gray. He was rocking the salt and pepper look with a goatee, too, and he was wearing a gold shirt with a bright green vest over it. His pants were black with little green and gold dragons on them, the school’s mascot. He had a booklet of coupons in his hands and was ripping them off the booklet and handing them out to particularly flamboyant students as he passed them. I made sure to keep a large group of students between myself and my dad at all times, and I had somehow managed to successfully duck him until all the students were loading out of the gym after the pep rally.
“You okay, man?” Sicily asked as I walked behind the crowd of students surrounding the girl who’d won a cruise for her school spirit. “You seem a little jumpy.”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “I just—”
A hand curled around my arm. My heart sank because I was almost home free. I turned around and wasn’t surprised to see that my dad was on the other end of the arm that was gripping me.
“Hello,” he greeted.
“Whoa, do you know Connor or something?” Sicily asked, and to my disdain, several other students had stopped and started staring as well.
“No, I don’t. Can you get some of these people to move along for me?” I asked.
Sicily nodded. “I got ya, buddy.” He turned around and started clapping at the crowd. “All right, all right. Nothin’ to see here. Let’s move it, people.”
With Sicily distracting the group, I led my dad around the corner and away from watchful eyes. When we were there, he held out his arms wide toward me. “Hello, son. How about a hug for your old man?”
“If you try and hug me, I’ll punch you in the face,” I replied.
Connor didn’t seem intimidated, only laughed. “My, aren’t we seedy? Prison wasn’t good to you.”
“Shocking,” I grumbled back.
Connor reached into his back pocket and pulled out a gold envelope with green writing scrawled across the front in an elegant script that said, “You are cordially invited…” He held it out to me. “Here you are. An invitation to your brother’s birthday. He’d want his brother there.”
I snatched the envelope purely for the joy I would get in setting it on fire later. “I wouldn’t—”
Connor looked over my shoulder. “Oh, hello, dear.”
“Hello, Mr. Loche,” Cherri’s voice called back, and my heart started racing. She walked until she was standing next to me, and in my attempts to dodge my dad, I’d also avoided seeing Cherri prior to that moment. She looked delectable in a pair of tight green skinny jeans and a gold sequined shirt with her hair up in pigtails, one sprayed green, and the other gold. “Nathan is looking for you.”
“Well, I should go find him.” He took one final look at me, smiled, and then walked between Cherri and me toward the amassed students.
Cherri looked down at the invitation in my hand. “Did you just get a personal invite?”
“I guess so,” I said.
She gasped. “I wonder if Nathan’s considering you for The Royal Court?”
“Like I’d accept,” I grumbled back.
“I’d be shocked if you did,” she replied. “Still, you should go.” She grinned up at me. “We’ll find a corner and hang out.”
That did sound nice, but being back at my dad’s house gave me hives just to think about. When I thought about explaining to Cherri, or anyone for that matter, why I turned down a personal invite to the party of the year, that gave me more hives. With my skin crawling and only Cherri’s sweet smile to give me confidence, I smiled back at her.
“Okay,” I replied finally. “I’ll go.”
12
Deon
I was glad that my mom had Friday night off because I was able to bring Sicily over for the first time and introduce them. She’d heard me mention a friend several times but hadn’t yet seen him with her own two eyes, and I could sense she was beginning to think he wasn’t real.
“Mom?”
“Hang on, sweetie! I’m just putting some clothes away.”
It occurred to me as Sicily and I sat down at the table in the kitchen that I’d very rarely brought friends over before. Most of the guys in my neighborhood and I would just hang out outside, and Cherri had never been inside my home. Apart from some isolated experiences when I was much younger, I’d never really brought a friend home.
No wonder my mom thought Sicily was fake.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I finally asked Sicily. “Water, juice, or I do think we have some soda in here.”
“I’ll have some water, man. Thanks!” Sicily replied. I got him and myself both a glass of water with ice and then sat down across from him. “So, uh… You gonna tell me what Connor Loche wanted to talk with you about today?”
“What?” My head whipped over. My mom had just walked into the kitchen, and her eyes were wide and terrified as she spoke. “You spoke with Connor today?”
“Yeah,” I replied, not yet having shared my full story with Sicily. “I told Sicily that I don’t know him or why he singled me out.”
My mom looked back at me in nervous silence for a few seconds before nodding. “Oh, I thought maybe something special had happened.” She stepped further into the kitchen and held out a hand toward Sicily. “Hello. I’m Ciara.”
Sicily stood up from his chair, took my mom’s hand, and shook it. “Hello, ma’am. My name’s Tank. Weird one, I know. Got it from my old man. All my friends call me Sicily.”
She grinned. “Nice to meet you, Sicily. Will you
