“I got to that school so fast,” Mama says. “Drove over on my planning period and told her if she ever tri
ed that again, she’d have to deal with me.”
“Good for you, Janetta,” Mrs. Stern says.
Shame fills my throat, makes me feel like I’m choking. I focus on the high shine of Mama’s hardwood floor.
“Mrs. Downy’s stupid,” Ezra says, his first words since he came into the house.
I make myself look up and Ezra doesn’t say anything else, but tips his head toward the door.
“You ready?” he asks.
I think every morning when Ezra wakes up, God gives him a tiny jar of words. He only gets so many, maybe a quarter of what the rest of us do. And he’s so scared he’ll run out, he uses as few of them as possible. Half his sentences are one word or a grunt. Weekends, he talks so little, I bet at the end of the day, he has leftovers.
Mama and Mrs. Stern have moved on, now talking about a sale at Dillard’s. I nod and follow Ezra out the door. Outside, I grab my bike and Ezra runs over to his house to grab his. We meet in the middle of the street that separates our homes.
“Race?” he asks, his voice quiet.
Without answering, I hop on my bike and take off. Ezra sputters behind me. His kickstand clanks and his wheels whir as he speeds after me.
“Kimba, you can’t just start,” he yells from behind me. “We have to count off.”
“Who says?” I shout back, shaking off the embarrassment of Mrs. Downy and laughing at the irritation in Ezra’s voice. Getting a rise out of Ezra Stern is one of my favorite things.
“The rules say.” His voice is closer now, his breaths little pants of exertion. “You always wanna break the rules.”
He pulls up beside me, doing that standing pedal thing that gives him the edge in our races. Flashing a grin, he pulls ahead and rushes toward the merry-go-round that always serves as our finish line. To rub it in, he climbs off the bike, sets the kickstand down and sits on the merry-go-round to wait for me. At least he didn’t do the Rocky dance like the last time he beat me.
“Cheaters never really win,” he says, smiling and leaning back on his palms.
“Butthead.” I set my bike and, ignoring him, walk over to the sliding board.
“And that was another come-from-behind victory, by the way,” he says. “Since you like to cheat.”
“I didn’t cheat. A head start isn’t cheating.”
“Well, I didn’t know you were gonna have a head start.” He climbs up onto the monkey bars and hangs by his skinny arms. “You know what my daddy calls it when one person has a head start that the other person doesn’t even know about?”
“What?”
“America.” He laughs, and I grin even though I don’t understand half of what Mr. Stern says most of the time.
“Did he hear anything about that job in Chicago?” I ask, facing him and hanging from the bars, too. I hold my breath while I wait for him to answer.
“He didn’t get it.”
Suspended from the bars, our bodies twisting, we face each other and give ear-to-ear grins. I’ve been worried Mr. Stern would get one of the many jobs he’s always applying for up north.
“Why’s your mom want to leave Atlanta so bad?” I ask, dropping to the ground, a dusty cloud puffing around my feet.
Ezra drops, too, and shrugs. “She says here, people still make a big deal out of me being mixed. She says in New York, folks won’t stare or make dumb comments.”
“What kind of dumb comments?” I ask, but I’ve heard some of them. I kinda know.
“Asking if I’m adopted,” Ezra mumbles, his chin sinking into the collar of his T-shirt. “Asking what I am, or calling me Oreo or zebra, or whatever. Dad’s applying in lots of places, but Mom’s hoping for New York. She misses our family up there.”
“You see them all the time, though.” My insides are heavy like there’s a roll of pennies at the bottom of my belly.