ready. I saw you in Mara’s trio last spring—lovely. There’s room in the fall class. You should sign up.”
Holy moly! Nobody just “signs up” for Choreography. You have to get Eva’s permission, which, apparently, I just did.
A mental bow to Quentin. There’s no way I’d have gotten this good without Modern IV—his Modern IV class. After Eva leaves, I do my happy dance, something like a salsa. Feet moving to the beat in my head, I sprinkle baby powder over my body before slipping back into the orange tank and denim skirt. Then I check my cell. Two text messages. Clarissa: What’s up? And another from my friend Sonya: Godfather marathon. Nothing from Jacy.
My flip-flops make soft, slapping sounds as I head home. A slight breeze has sprung up and the street pulses with movement.
In my blissed-out, after-class state, dance is everywhere. Pedestrians swarm out of the subway, an urban line dance snaking past the fruit stand. Pigeons diving for bread crumbs create a swooping pattern more intricate than the New York City corps de ballet. Kids play hopscotch chalked onto the sidewalk, the rhythmic jumping its own music: two, one, one. Two, one, one. Two.
The bodybuilder doing curls in front of a second-story window, muscular arms pumping, keeps a steady tempo: up, down. Beat. Up, down. Beat. He catches my eye and winks. I hurry across Clinton.
Mr. Ryan, recently retired, sits on a folding chair in front of his brownstone. He wears collared, buttoned-down shirts all year, long-sleeved in the winter, short-sleeved in the summer, but it’s his fingers, tap-dancing on a laptop, that grab my attention.
He glances up. “Hot enough for you?”
“Really. Do you know when it’s supposed to break?”
“Not till after the weekend,” he says.
Maybe I can get Jacy, Clarissa or Sonya to do a Sunday matinee at the Quad. Doesn’t matter what we see; AC all afternoon sounds good to me.
Up ahead, Jacy lounges on the stoop, grocery bag at his side. His hair, frizzed by the humidity, looks like a clown’s wig.
“Your hair is a beast, Strode.”
He shrugs. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Didn’t know I was late.”
Clearly, Jacy’s not mad anymore. Still, I’d like to know where he went. “Whatcha do today?”
“Nothing much,” he says. “But I’ve got a surprise for tonight.”
“Yeah? What’s in the bag?”
“Picnic stuff. Reggae at the band shell. Sonya and Clarissa are already there.”
I glance up. The brick structure was built in the early 1900s when six floors was a big deal. Now, it’s just another old building housing a mixture of rent-control holdouts like me and Mom, and newer people who pay zillions to live in the same-size apartments.
“I already talked to your mom,” Jacy says. “She’s cool as long as we get back by ten and you beep her the minute you get in.”
Mom, a charge nurse for Mercy Hospital, works the night shift. She usually leaves the apartment by nine o’clock. Cell phones aren’t allowed in hospitals so we have a beeper code that I cannot forget to use—or I’m in big trouble. 04, for OK, means “I’m home.” 78 is short for “running late.” And 505—SOS—means “I need help.” I’ve never needed that one, although as Mom says, “This is Brooklyn. The crazies are everywhere.”
I shake my head. “Have to shower before I go anywhere.”
Jacy buries his nose in my neck.
“Stay away from the pits!” I shriek.
“You don’t smell bad. Forget the shower. Seize the moment.”
“You always say that when you want to do something at the last possible second,” I grumble. “You know I like to—”
“Plan. But this is the last concert of the summer. The Voice gave it two stars.”
“I thought you were boycotting the Voice.”
“Things change.”
Yeah, they do. Then again, some things don’t. If Jacy doesn’t want you to know about something, there’s no way you’ll know. Unless, of course, you do a little bit of detective work on your own.
Chapter 3
We enter Prospect Park at Ninth Street. A group of Dominican men are heavy into a soccer game, children swarm all over the playground and barbecued meat perfumes the air.
My stomach growls so loud Jacy laughs. “And you call me a beast!”
The crowd follows the asphalt path around the ranger station. The white band shell sits at the bottom of a natural amphitheatre. A Celebrate Brooklyn! banner spans the lighting rig. People are everywhere; blankets laid out end to end create a giant chessboard. The spicy scent of weed drifts on the breeze.
“Jacy!” Sonya shouts. “Over here!”
I spot her first. She and Clarissa have staked out a prime spot under a tree. Jacy and I thread our way up the hill.
Sonya’s soft, pillowy skin reminds me of the Pillsbury Doughboy. She counters that with some major body piercing: nose, tongue, belly and, at last count, seven earrings on each lobe. Her eyes, lined with dark makeup, are huge.
But not as huge as her appetite. “What did you bring?”
Jacy sets the grocery bag on the blanket and removes a dozen doughnuts, six-pack of Coke and the grapes I insisted we buy at the corner market.
“Awesome,” Sonya says. “Clarissa and I got hummus, pita and cucumber salad from that Middle Eastern place on Fourth. And a box of Mrs. B’s cookies.”
A true-blue fashionista, Clarissa is doing a Guatemalan-peasant thing: white embroidered blouse tied to bare her midriff, low-slung jeans. She has a deal with a stylist in the Village and gets free haircuts if she lets the guy experiment. This time, her hair is a mixture of lengths—real short on the right side, longer on the left. Not one of the better cuts, but not as bad as the one where her scalp looked like it got caught in a blender.
Someone jumps Jacy from behind. “Strode!”
Josh Tomlin, who was Banquo in the school’s hip-hop version of Macbeth, does the WiHi handshake: palm slide, fist smack. Not quite the pretty boy he thinks he is—his jaw is way too square—he might actually have some acting talent underneath all that ego. Charlie Liu, on the other hand, is skinny and hyperactive, with square-framed glasses that are a little too big for his face. Video camera in one hand, he rattles a bucket of Kentucky Fried with the other.
“Jace the Ace,” Charlie says. “Join the fiesta?”
Clarissa, Sonya and I make room on the blanket.
“You didn’t tell me it was a party!” I whisper to Jacy.
He gives me a wicked grin. “Didn’t know who would show.”
Now I really wish I’d showered—but as soon as the band begins to play, I forget all about it. Sinewy bass, syncopated drums. By the time I finish eating, Clarissa moves to the groove.
“Dance with me,” she cries.
She doesn’t have to ask twice. I start small to allow reggae’s seductive rhythm to settle into my bones, and then let my body go where it wants. Doesn’t take long before the world melts away. Just me, the music and—
It.
Back of the neck prickle, goose bumps on my arms. I swivel around. Everywhere, people are mellow. Lying on blankets. Getting high. Batting a beach ball through the crowd.
My friends are occupied, too. Sonya, still