Fear, Friendship, and Support Theme Analysis

That made Jasmine spit air. See, even though TJ was ridiculous and annoying and sometimes gross, she appreciated the fact that he always made her laugh whether she wanted to or not. He was always there to chip some of the hard off. Tear at the toughness Jasmine had built up over the school year.

It had been a rough one for her.

There was a hole in the screen door that had been there for years. TJ’s foot had done that. He said sometimes his feet get mad and do things like kick or stomp or run. Don’t blame him, he’d say. And Jasmine would laugh because his jokes were always funny even though she knew they were almost never jokes.

But the Low Cuts don’t take just take to be taking. They don’t steal for fun. Actually, they don’t even like doing it. But they do it because they have to. At least they feel like they have to. Before they named themselves the Low Cuts, they were part of another set that they had no choice but to be down with. The free-lunchers.

“I hate that sound. Matter of fact, I’d be a school bus that could fly. That way I ain’t gotta hit the brakes and make all that noise.” Bit looked over at Trista. “How ‘bout that?”

“All I’m gon’ say is, I could totally see you, a school bus falling from the sky.” Trista laughed to herself, but just loud enough for Bit to hear.

“Well, at least then I’d be a rocket.”

“Do I want to know what y’all up to?” she asked, and they just looked at her like she hadn’t asked it. Like she hadn’t said anything. So she acted like she hadn’t said anything either. “Wait right here.”

The other Low Cuts watched Bit the hustler, Bit who could turn ninety cents into nine bucks—into ice cream—turn into a son. A son who was scared. A son who loved his mom.

“Not that I’m not glad you’re washing your own clothes, but detergent and bleach ain’t free,” she’d say. And what Stevie couldn’t say was, I’m sorry, but there’s a boy in my school drawing on my clothes, because then his mother would say, I don’t send you to private school for boys to draw private parts on your private uniform that you still have to grow into, and Do I need to call the principal? and Stevie didn’t want to hear none of that. Stitches, remember? Maybe even ditches. Besides, Mr. Brock, the principal, already knew. He’d seen the pictures and words and all he ever said was, Boys will be boys.

Pia felt that same itch when she saw Marcus and the boys yesterday. When she saw the knots at their throats and felt a knot in hers. Because she knew Marcus. She knew where his mother’s black eyes were coming from. Where her swollen jaws and forehead lumps were coming from. Because that same day Pia sat under the dryer two years back, after her wash and before the French roll was put in, she heard her mom ask Marcus’s mom when she was going to leave Marcus’s father.

[…] but she left out the part about the woman in the pink pants because she knew if she told her mother, […] that would be the end of walking. That would be the end of a babysitterless life. Back to cheese-toast snack time and other coughy kids whining about what they want to watch on TV. And she didn’t want that because even though the first walk was rough, anything was worth trying again if it meant she could come home and be alone in her house, where she could microwave nuggets and pretend to be a flight attendant like her father.

50. I look both ways.

Difference: Then I think about Ms. Broome’s assignment. What could I be? What do I wish I could become to change the world? I think about telling Benni I might want to be wet cement to fill the cracks in the sidewalk. Not to hide. But to stop someone else from tripping. Or maybe I’d be an umbrella to keep rain from someone’s head. Keep someone dry in a storm. But I don’t say none of that to Benni, because I don’t think either of those things would change the world. So I tell her I don’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know how to change the world.

Then I ask her if she’d maybe let me borrow one of her instruments to play.

And by lunch, Slim—whose real name was Salem—had twisted the story, told everyone Ty kissed him. So when Ty walked into the cafeteria, he walked into a minefield. A war zone. Everyone locked and loaded, firing at him.

“Am I? I think Slim is. Matter of fact, I think all y’all are.” Bryson pointed at all the jokesters. “Like my father always says, ‘Those that scar you are you.’” He checked their faces, and it wasn’t hard to tell that they had no idea what that meant. He looked at Ty, and Ty’s face looked no different. A gem dropped in the mud. “The point is, I don’t like boys. Not like that. But I like Ty.” He patted Ty on the back. “Matter of fact, I like him more than I like y’all, and for real for real, I don’t see what the big deal is. A kiss on the cheek? That’s what all y’all roasting him for? A kiss on the cheek? Really?”

Bryson shuffled his way over to the door, his body still feeling like garbled pixels. He looked through the peephole like his father taught him. Unlocked the dead bolt, turned the knob, pulled the door open.

“Ty?”

Ty stood there breathing heavy, holding three or four roses. It was hard to tell exactly how many because they were mangled. The human video game seemed to glitch in red streaks. The same red as the petals of the flowers was dripping from his shaking palm.

She turned and added, “When you two grow up, I really hope you become more than horse and jockey, because people lose a lot of money betting on horse races.”

“Not if they bet on us,” Simeon zapped right back at her.

“Plus, I want to be a lawyer,” Kenzi said, trying to control the sting in his throat.

Such silly things to take, a gossipy newspaper and a lighter, as if Fredo ain’t own a store. One with a bunch of newspapers and matches and lighters behind the counter. But still, it was about the principle. The loyalty. The brotherhood.

Guess he was ready now. And not for a small one. Not for a furry football. But for a big, husky thing that looked like it was mixed. Some German shepherd. Some Labrador. Some rottweiler, some monster that Satchmo wasn’t sure was there or not, but decided it was so.

That was all he needed to start devising plans. Escape routes.

Where do you think Clancy is?

What do you think he’s doing right now?

Throwing Hail Marys?

Running the opposite way?

Not helping his teammates?

Why didn’t he chase Brutus?

Why didn’t he tackle him?

If he would’ve tackled him, you would’ve barked at it. Growled it so it knew what that felt like.

That’s all Say-So ever wanted. A love thing with her mother, the way her grandfather had with Miss Fran—through laughter. And since her mother was too busy to break, well then, anyone would have to do. A smile is a smile. A ha is a ha. So every day she’d rattle off her jokes at the end of class, bathing in her classmates’ crack-ups.

“What would happen if a school bus fell from the sky?”

Cynthia thought for a second, a smile creeping onto her lips. “I mean…is it coming from Ookabooka Land?”

Silence.

Just that thought between them. Cynthia looking at her grandfather, her Cinderella, her cinder block. The man who taught her to perform. Taught her that life is funny most of the time, and the times it ain’t funny are even funnier. And there ain’t no forgetting that.

Gregory Pitts’s friends love him so much that they told him the truth. And the truth was, he smelled dead. Like, rotten. It wasn’t that he was rotten, but just that he smelled like his body had mistaken its organs for garbage and that he was essentially a walking, talking trash can. And on this, of all days, that smell just wasn’t going to cut it. So in an act of service and sheer desperation, Remar Vaughn, Joey Santiago, and Candace Greene—Gregory’s crew—decided to help him out. Because today was a day of romance.

Gregory’s hands started shaking, the paper vibrating like dry leaves in the wind. He looked down and started reading his note of compliments again.

Halfway through, he glanced up. Sandra was smiling. And Gregory thought maybe it was the kind of smile that came just before laughing.

Then Gregory thought, But maybe not.

“It’s…a…broom.”

“But I cleaned it. Promise. And yeah, it’s a broom, until you do this.” He petted the wiry twine as if it were fur. As if he were scratching behind the ear of a Yorkie in desperate need of grooming. The straw popped back up when he was done, just like a dog’s would.