All American Boys by Jason Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page B

out on a first date. He’s perfect: attractive, smart, and he has a good job as an audio engineer for television shows. She’s excited until she finds outhe’s wired her whole house so that he can hear everything she does when he’s not around. He can hear her shower, and cook, and talk to her friends about how crazy he is. And he listens to the feed while he watches TV, on mute, in the attic of the house next door, where he lives (she doesn’t know this, though). Total stalker. Shittiest actors on Earth meets the shittiest story on Earth, which makes for the perfect Saturday afternoon movie. For my mom.
    And then I was asleep. And then I was awake again. But this time, my folks were knocked out. Dad in the chair, his head bent at a painful-looking angle, his mouth wide open. As usual. My mother, small, had tucked her knees to her chest and nestled into her chair—the only cushioned one—like a child. She looked so peaceful. So calm. It was nice to see her get some rest. The only person who wasn’t asleep was Spoony. He was still sitting there. Still fooling with his phone. Still texting.
    â€œSpoon,” I called out softly—I didn’t want to wake my parents. It was nice to have the room quiet for a moment. It was nice to not see their eyes, my father’s disappointed, my mother’s all sad and worried.
    Spoony looked up and rushed to my bed. “Wassup, man, you okay?”
    â€œI’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, calming him down.
    â€œOkay,” he said, glancing down at his phone. “Look, I talkedto Berry and told her what happened. She’s been all over the internet, checking to see if anything has been posted—you know, some live footage or something.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd so far, nothing. But something’s gotta pop up. And I don’t care what Dad says, this ain’t right.” He bit down on his bottom lip. “It just ain’t right. And you know me. You know I’m not gonna sit here and let them sweep this under the rug, like this is okay.”
    â€œI know.”
    I gotta admit, there was a part of me that, even though I felt abused, wanted to tell him to let it go. To just let me heal, let me leave the hospital, let me go to court, let me do whatever stupid community service they wanted me to do, and let me go back to normal. I mean, I had seen this happen so many times. Not personally, but on TV. In the news. People getting beaten, and sometimes killed, by the cops, and then there’s all this fuss about it, only to build up to a big heartbreak when nothing happens. The cops get off. And everybody cries and waits for the next dead kid, to do it all over again. That’s the way the story goes. A different kind of Lifetime movie. I didn’t want all that. Didn’t need it.
    But I knew not to even bother saying it. Not to Spoony. No point. Because he’d agree that this was normal, and that that was the problem. Spoony had been dealing withthis kind of crap for years. He’d never been beaten up, but he’d been stopped on the street several times, questioned by cops, asked to turn his pockets out and lift his shirt up, for no reason. He’d been followed around stores, and stared at on buses by women who clutched their purses tight enough to poke holes in the leather. He was always a suspect. And I knew, without him saying a word, that the one thing he never wanted, but was sure would eventually happen, was for his little brother—the ROTC art kid—to become one too. So there was nothing that was going to stop him from fighting this. There was nothing I could do to calm him down. This was not going away. This was not getting swept under the rug of “oh well.” Not if Spoony had anything to do with it.

I n our town, it really isn’t shocking to see a fight go down. I’ve seen kids with house keys tucked between their knuckles throwing punches at each other.