Jumped In

  Copyright © 2017 William Kowalski

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Kowalski, William, 1970–, author Jumped in / William Kowalski.

  (Rapid reads)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1627-5 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1628-2 (pdf ).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1629-9 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8571.O9855J86 2017 C813'.54 C2016-907268-1

  C2016-907269-X

  First published in the United States, 2017

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958169

  Summary: In this work of contemporary fiction, Rasheed tries to escape his rough neighborhood with actions both small and heroic. (RL 2.8)

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Jenn Playford

  Cover photography by iStock.com

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  20 19 18 17 • 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  OTHER RAPID READS BY WILLIAM KOWALSKI:

  The Barrio Kings*

  The Way It Works

  Something Noble*

  Just Gone*

  The Innocence Device

  Epic Game*

  *Nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s Golden Oak Award

  Other novels by William Kowalski:

  Eddie’s Bastard*

  Somewhere South of Here

  The Adventures of Flash Jackson

  The Good Neighbor

  The Hundred Hearts**

  Crypt City

  *Winner of the 2001 Ama-Boeke Prize

  ** Winner of the 2014 Thomas H. Raddall Award

  ONE

  You haven’t seen me before, even though people like me are omnipresent.

  Omni is Latin. It means “all.” Omnipresent means “all present.” Everywhere.

  That’s right. I’m everywhere, and yet you’ve never seen me. Not unless you were looking for me.

  And even if you were looking for me, chances were you didn’t see me anyway. I am good at not being seen. That’s how I’ve managed to survive sixteen years so far.

  I’ll tell you something else about myself. It’s embarrassing, but I don’t care.

  My favorite thing is to watch old TV shows on YouTube. I love them. Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, The Brady Bunch. They give me this warm, cozy feeling, like everything is perfect in the world.

  I know it’s a lie. Everything is not perfect. But that’s why I love them so much. I can pretend it’s true, even though I’m smart enough not to believe it.

  Watching old TV shows is what I do when I’m supposed to be at school. I figure it’s safer. Just getting to school is as dangerous as running across a minefield. I have to pass by a lot of characters on the street. People talking to themselves. Gangstas with guns. Crazy people who just don’t care who they hurt.

  And you’re not safe just because you make it to school either. Two kids got knifed there last year, one on the front steps and one in the cafeteria. Why should I risk that? Just so I can learn how to do algebra? Uh-uh. Ain’t worth it.

  I’m probably learning more on YouTube anyway.

  My phone is this crappy old thing I stole from somewhere. The screen is cracked, but it works fine.

  I like to sit outside the 7-Eleven by my house and steal its signal. If you lean against the wall and hold your phone up high, you can get three bars. You just have to remember not to breathe through your nose. The dumpster is only ten feet away. From the way it smells, I don’t think it’s ever been cleaned.

  I have earbuds. But I only wear one at a time. I gotta be able to hear what’s going on around me. You never know when someone is going to come along and start something with you. Sometimes it’s people with a beef. Sometimes it’s gangstas. Sometimes it’s people who just aren’t right.

  There are a lot of crazy people up in this hood. Does the hood make people crazy, or do crazy people make the hood?

  The old TV people live in a different universe. Their houses are clean, their neighborhoods are safe, their moms are sober, their dads exist. Everything is spotless and perfect. I like to imagine what these people would do if I just appeared in the middle of their show.

  Hey, wassup! It’s me, a brown-ass teenager with nappy dreads and dirty clothes. Yeah, I know it’s 1950 or whatever. Y’all are surprised to see me, right? I’m from 2016, bitches. Let’s talk about Barack Obama.

  This is fun to think about, the same way it’s fun to think about winning a million dollars.

  TV people have problems, but they’re all rich-white-person problems. Buddy needs to find the courage to ask a girl to prom. Little Chip or Biff breaks a window with a baseball and is worried his dad might be disappointed in him. A bunch of folks get stuck on an island and have to make all their furniture out of bamboo for the rest of their lives.

  Or—my personal favorite—a dad with three boys meets some blond woman with three girls. They get married and move in together. Somehow, instead of being all crowded together and broke, now they have twice the house and twice the happiness. Because that is life in the white world.

  Or so these TV shows would have you believe.

  I’m not really that dumb. I know TV is fake.

  My eyes are not closed. They are wide open.

  If they filmed that show in my neighborhood, here’s what it would look like. The dad would be so long gone, half the kids wouldn’t even remember his face. And the mom’s six kids would be by five different fathers anyway. The boys would be slinging rock on the corners or running it out to the soldiers on the street. The girls would be knocked up and hanging off the shoulders of some tattooed punks who all thought they were gonna be the next 50 Cent or Diddy. Maybe some of them would be in jail, or dead. Or maybe all of them would be dead. You never know.

  That’s the main difference between my life and these dumbass TV shows. On TV you always know what’s going to happen. No matter what crazy stuff these white people get up to, you know none of them are going to get shot over it. Back then, in their black-and-white world, the worst thing that could happen would be that one of them would get a stern talking-to. If they ever even saw a cop, it was old Officer Friendly waving from his patrol car, returning their lost dog.

  Around here, I kid you not, half the time I wake up in the morning and wonder if it’s gonna be my last day on earth. If the cops show up on my street with a dog in the back, you know that dog is gonna be chewing on somebody’s arm in about three seconds.

  And if I see a cop, I know I need to run like hell, or my ass is gonna get beat. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t do anything wrong. I was walking while brown. Around here that’s a crime.

  Besides, I don’t
even go home. Not until I absolutely have to. Because of all the places I hate most on earth, home is number one.

  TWO

  Sometimes I feel like an alien scientist who’s all alone on a planet of strange creatures. My job is to figure them out. Then I have to report back to my overlords.

  This is the story I tell myself when I’m sitting behind the Seven, skipping school, hiding out from crackheads, trying not to get jumped in to the E Street Locals.

  The E Street Locals, in case you didn’t know, is the band of idiots that runs a territory in this city about three blocks square. I happen to live right in the middle of that territory.

  And getting jumped in is what happens to you when you join a gang. Everyone stands around in a circle and beats the crap out of you until you fall down. If you don’t die, you’re in.

  Real nice, huh?

  The Locals think they’re a gang. They’re more like a collection of the greatest losers known to humanity. You know how after a rainstorm, there are little piles of trash caught up in the sewer grate? That’s the Locals. They’re the sewer trash of the city, stuck in the places that never get cleaned.

  They would be a joke if they weren’t so deadly.

  The name of the leader of the Locals is Boss. Original, huh? That’s the best name he can think of. He’s just the latest in a long line of Locals who think they’re Scarface. They keep getting arrested or killed. In two or three years, Boss will be replaced by someone else. Someone meaner and stupider.

  Boss has a bunch of thugs under him. They call themselves lieutenants. I think they are giving themselves too much credit. You need brains to be a lieutenant. These guys are just mean. The worse of a person you are, the higher you rise in that gang.

  The Locals sell rock and carry gats, and every once in a while they manage to shoot straight enough to kill somebody. Usually, though, if they hit you with one of their bullets, it’s by accident. They don’t even care if their shots go flying all over the place.

  The world would be a better place without them.

  If you want to avoid the E Street Locals, the best time to go out is around nine in the morning. That’s because they’re up all night, drinking forties and smoking weed. They usually pass out around sunrise, unless they’re on a meth bender.

  So if I need to bounce, that’s when I go. Kinda like how on Hogan’s Heroes, every time they escape from prison, they know just when to move to avoid the searchlights.

  That’s what I do this morning. I need to get out of the house. I would go back to the alley behind the Sev, but I can’t deal with that reeking dumpster anymore either. I need to get out and explore. Alien scientist on the move. Expedition number nine thousand. Mission, to observe and record. Try to understand. What is the world like outside Locals territory? What would my life be like if I wasn’t me?

  I like to walk around the nicer parts of town, over where the university is. It’s strange, because I can be there in ten minutes, but I might as well be on the moon. That’s how quick things change in this city. It’s like there’s an invisible line—poor people on this side, rich people on that side. They don’t like you to cross it. You have to wear a disguise.

  I keep a backpack on so I look like a college student. I carry a notebook too. This is where I record my observations. I try not to steal too many things. Only when I absolutely can’t help it or when I get hungry. I don’t want to get kicked out of this world. I like it here. No one is trying to shoot me.

  It’s nice at the university. Big plazas, fancy buildings, lots of trees, happy-looking people. On old TV, college students are always white. Here, you see all kinds of people. They must be trying to help everybody out these days. Scholarships and shit. Money for nothing.

  Maybe I can get me some of that money. I could be at home here.

  I wonder what it’s like to be a college student. I don’t even know what I would study. I guess I need to finish high school first. I haven’t been to one class all year, so I’m not sure how that’s gonna happen. But it’s nice to think about. Even if it is just a pipe dream.

  Pipe dream. That used to mean the dreams people had when they smoked opium through a pipe. I guess opium was the jam once. People been smoking stuff through pipes for a long time.

  I guess there have always been stupid people. It’s not just a new thing.

  I heist myself a muffin from the student union and eat it on the library steps while I watch the people walk by. Cute girls in their prime, everywhere. I look at these girls and wonder what it takes to be their boyfriend. They probably only want a guy with lots of money and good grades. Someone from a good family. Someone who is going somewhere in life. Someone with a car.

  You can’t really blame them. Who wants someone who comes from nothing, has nothing to give and is going nowhere?

  I got dreams, sure. Like every other kid in my neighborhood, I wanted to be a rapper. Rappers are who we all look up to—big guns, nice cars, fat stacks of cash, hot chicks all over. I don’t feel that way anymore though. Too much like the gang life. I don’t know what I really want anymore.

  I never really had a girlfriend. There was a girl I used to like once, but she runs with the Locals now. A while back I heard she got a baby. She wasn’t but fourteen.

  I make some notes in my notebook. I draw a few sketches.

  Then I go into the library and grab a book. I don’t look to see what it is. I don’t care. I’ll read anything. Besides, everyone else has books out, so I need one too. You wanna fit in, you gotta do what all the other kids are doing, right?

  They have couches in here. I sprawl out on one and open up my book. It turns out to be an encyclopedia. The letter M. I read about the mongoose.

  Man, I never knew mongeese were so boring. Before you know it, I’m asleep.

  No surprise there. I don’t get much sleep at home, what with all the shouting and the sirens and the yelling. I tend to grab it when I can.

  But this was the wrong place to fall asleep.

  THREE

  Next thing I know, someone is shaking me by the shoulder. He’s not being any too gentle about it either.

  It takes me a few seconds to wake up. Soon I realize this isn’t just any somebody. It’s a dude in a uniform. A cop. Maybe thirty years old, blond hair in a crew cut, square jaw. Looks like a cartoon. A real jerk. Uh-oh. Does he know about that muffin?

  “Quit shakin’ me,” I say. “I got rights.”

  “You got ID?”

  I pat my pockets. This is just for show. I never had any ID. ID costs money.

  “Nuh-uh,” I say.

  “You a student here?”

  “Yeah, I’m a student.”

  “Really.” He obviously doesn’t believe me.

  “What, you don’t think a punk like me can read a book? Check me out.” I hold up my encyclopedia.

  Now everyone else in the library is looking at me. I can feel their eyes. But when I look at them, everyone looks away. Because, of course, the cop is talking to the grungy-looking brown kid. Not to the clean-cut white boys and girls who always mind their manners, who had the good sense not to be born into minorities. And the other people of color in the library don’t want to get caught up in my stuff. I’m not like them either. I’m dirtier. They can tell I don’t belong.

  It doesn’t have to be crosses burning on the lawn to be racist. It can be you just looking away.

  This cop is no dummy. I haven’t fooled him.

  “What’s your major?” he asks.

  Major? Not sure what that means. Oh yeah—I saw it on TV. It means what are you studying.

  “Criminal justice,” I say. “I’m gonna be a cop someday.”

  That’s a total lie, of course. Not even a very good one. I don’t even know why I said it.

  “Really. You, a cop.”

  “Hell yes.”

  He smirks.

  “You don’t even have a student ID?” he asks.

  “I musta left it back in my room,” I say.

 
“Which dorm you in?”

  “Huh?”

  “Which dorm?”

  I think fast. What the hell is a dorm? I have no idea. It sounds like some kind of bug. Dorm. Dorm. Wait. He must mean where my room would be. Oh, dormitory. From the Latin word for “sleeping room.”

  See? I do read.

  “I’m on the third floor,” I say.

  “Yeah, but which building?”

  “Aren’t you in Meem?” says a voice.

  We both turn and look, me and the cop. There’s a pretty white girl standing there. She’s got one of those perky little white-girl noses that turns up at the end like a ski jump. The rest of her is pretty perky too. Damn. Damn.

  “Yeah, Meem,” I say. “That’s it. Meem is the place to go for all your dorming needs. I wouldn’t dorm anywhere else. Meem all the way.”

  “I’m his resident assistant,” the girl says to the cop. “He must have forgotten his ID again. He’s always doing that.” She turns to me. “How many times have I told you, uh…”

  I turn to the cop and hold my hand out.

  “Darius Higgenbotham,” I say. “How do you do.” This is how white people act, see. I know this. Watching all those shows was better than college.

  “…Darius Higgenbotham,” says the perky girl.

  “Higgenbotham?” says the cop. He looks skeptical. Really skeptical.

  I shrug. I hope he doesn’t ask me to spell it, because I just made it up on the spot. My name ain’t no Darius Higgenbotham. What you call me depends on who you are to me. My mom calls me Baby, but if you call me that I’ll pop your ass.

  “All right,” he says. “Darius Higgenbotham. Try to remember your ID next time, okay? Students are supposed to carry it at all times.”

  “I will, Officer.”

  “See you, Lanaia,” says the cop.

  “See you, Officer Townsend,” says the perky Lanaia.

  He walks away. Lanaia and I stand there and stare at each other for a minute. Well, I stare. She just kind of looks.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She nods. “No problem,” she says.

  I want to ask her why she did that. But suddenly I’m feeling shy. I’m not sure what happens next.