Little Boy by Anthony Prato Read Free Book Online Page A

a P-40B that
night, but she did have a look on her face like she could have
chewed me up and spit me out if she wanted to. She appeared both
ferocious and cuddly, like an attack bunny. I didn’t want to lose
that look. I didn’t want her to walk away. Had she marched away
that night, I don’t know what I would have done.
     
    “Hey, Maria,” I called out. “Just chill out!
I didn’t mean to scare you or anything.”
     
    “Yeah, right,” she said. “What the hell do
you want, anyway?”
     
    The chip on her shoulder was larger than the
situation demanded. She’s such a Guidette , I moaned to
myself.
     
    “I’m sorry, but like I said...” and then I
just trailed off, because I could see she wasn’t getting the point
and wasn’t about to either. “Let’s just talk for a while,” I told
her. “Okay,” she said.
     
    We sauntered over to the bottom of the
stairwell. Nobody was around because the dance still had almost an
hour left to go, and most people didn’t start running up the stairs
to get their coats until after the last song of the night. We were
all alone. It was time to make my move.
     
    “What’s up?” I asked her. How
original , I thought. It was a pretty lame thing to say because
every hood at the dance greeted every other hood with that phrase.
Actually, it sounded more like this: “‘Sup?” It seems like no
matter where I walked in my high school I heard one greeting ad
nauseum: ‘Sup? Sup, sup, sup—a thousand times over, all day long.
And, of course, if you’re really happy to see someone, you drag it
out: “Suuuuuuuuuuuuup?” How fucking stupid. I’m still pissed at
myself for beginning my conversation with Maria that way.
     
    Maria gazed at the ceiling, unimpressed.
“Nothing,” she said.
     
    She looked at her nails—they were hot
pink—and then up at me. “Your name’s A.J. , huh?”
     
    “Yea. A.J. ” I was surprised that she even
remembered my name. Then again, I was dating her friend, so she’d
probably heard it plenty of times before.
     
    “What do the initials stand for?”
     
    “My first and middle name, Anthony Joel.”
     
    “But you prefer,” she trailed off in
confusion, “… A.J. ?”
     
    What kind of question was that? I
thought. “Yea, so?” I answered, defensively.
     
    “What’s your last name?”
     
    “L’Enfant. A.J. L’Enfant. Like it?” My voice
cracked as I said “like it.” I was so goddamn nervous.
     
    “Cute.” She was being sarcastic.
     
    I thought hard for a few moments. I had no
idea what to ask her. “Uh, well, what’s your last name?”
     
    “Della Verita,” she said. It sounded
Italian.
     
    “That’s a beautiful last name.” And it was. I
was going to ask her what the hell it meant, translated, I mean.
But a more important question struck me: “Why aren’t you dancing
with all the other hoods?”
     
    “Uh, what do you mean? You mean that everyone
here that’s dancing is a hood, you mean that I’m a hood?
Didn’t I see you dancing with Lynn earlier? You’re pretty
judgmental.”
     
    Shiiiiiiiiiiiit! Now I was in trouble.
I had to think quickly. “No, no, no!” I replied, feigning a
shameful look. “What I mean is, well, I’m just wondering why you
ain’t dancing.”
     
    Curtly: “First of all, you’re wondering why
I’m not dancing, not why I ain’t dancing. Second, I’m
not a hood. I hate hoods. Third, I just don’t like to dance,
okay?”
     
    Okay. So in the five total minutes I’d known
Maria she’d already dissed me twice: first my appearance, and then
my grammar. All this from a girl whose demeanor and accent could’ve
easily cast her in any number of Martin Scorsese films.
     
    I contemplated making fun of Maria in
response. No : Her uncle, Joey the Wop, would surely hunt me
down and slit my throat after hearing that his little Goddaughter
was insulted by some loser named A.J. I thought about asking her to
dance. No : Too pathetic and slavish. I imagined replying to
her