That night I dreamt of a smothering blackness that wrapped around me like a midnight ocean, seeping into every pore and plugging up my nostrils, my mouth, my eyes, until it consumed me.
I never went back to the library during sixth period. I ignored Maya when she tried to talk to me, cutting her as hard as I’d cut all those other girls. I wandered the halls like a poltergeist, invisible in my misery until someone set me off, then the very picture of fury.
About two months later, I got home to find Maya and a man who must’ve been her father at the kitchen table with Pop. Maya was crying and wouldn’t meet my eyes, and her father looked at me like I was a turd he’d just stepped in. She was pregnant, and like a scene from one of those awful books we read in English class where the girl is going to be cast out of society unless she can find someone to make an honest woman of her, Maya’s father was there to demand that I do the right thing: marry Maya and help her raise the baby.
Pop agreed. And in that moment, I looked at the life ahead of me and saw only the smothering blackness from my dream rushing to drown me.
I don’t remember a lot of what happened in the month that followed. Pop tried to talk to me, and I think I nodded but never heard anything he said. At school, the voices blended together into a kind of aural static that set my nerves on buzzing edge and gave me a near-constant stomachache. I felt the way I imagined people feel in a war zone: aware that every step could trigger the explosion or signal the shot that would end them but too exhausted by that reality to watch where they walked.
At football practice I ran until I puked and set blocks I knew would get me steamrolled. At home, I put so much hot sauce on my food that my lips burned for hours after dinner. I turned the shower painfully hot and cut myself when shaving.
Maya lost the baby. I felt such a wash of relief when she called to tell me that I had to sit down, my legs unsteady and my feet numb. For a few days, I felt alive again, like the sword that had been hanging over my head had finally disappeared. But the relief quickly faded back to neutrality again, and I found that my panic over Maya and the baby had only temporarily overshadowed the other thing. The bigger, scarier, more permanent thing. The thing that had made me go along with Maya’s seduction in the first place. Now that I wasn’t going to be married with a baby to take care of, the problem that was me returned with a vengeance.
THE WORKSHOP is in a church, across the street from a basketball court, and there’s a colorful sign in the window that says “Use side entrance for North Philly Youth Alliance” with an arrow pointing me in the right direction. I’m a little early, so I wander in, hoping I’ll stumble across Rafe.
“Oh, good,” a gray-haired black woman says when she sees me. “I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow.”
“Uh, excuse me?” I say, looking behind me.
“To fix the sink.”
“Oh, no, ma’am—”
“He’s with me, Ms. Lilly.” Rafe comes from somewhere to my right and puts his hand on my shoulder. “This is Colin. He’s doing a workshop with the kids.”
“Oh, hello, dear,” the woman says, but she looks disappointed that I’m not the plumber.
Rafe takes my arm and leads me to a large multipurpose room where I put down my stuff.
“How are you?” Rafe asks. He’s more animated than he was the other night.
“Kinda nervous. Just, I mean, I’ve never taught anyone anything.” I was thinking about Daniel on the drive over and how weird it is that this is what he does every day. But at least he went to school; I’m totally winging it.
“Don’t worry. The kids are going to be really into it. Just talk. Just explain. You’ll be fine.” Then his tone changes. “I’m excited about it too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The only thing I know about cars is how to hot-wire one. And I haven’t done that since about 1994.” He winks at me. “But don’t tell the kids.”
“Oi, Conan!” someone yells as the doors open and kids start coming in.
“Hey,” another kid says to Rafe, but he calls him something I can’t make out.
“What are they calling you?”
He snorts and rolls his eyes in the kids’ direction.
“Conan, like Conan the Barbarian, and Khal Drogo. They think I look like this actor who played those characters. I don’t know who he is, but they think it’s hilarious. I keep meaning to look it up online.”
“Uh, like Arnold Schwarzenegger?” Rafe looks confused. “Wait, who’s Khal Drogo?”
“Someone in that show Game of Thrones. I’ve never seen it.”