“Is anyone home?” Ruth said.

Midnight ignored her question and opened the car door to get out, but she stopped him. She took his phone from his hand, found his contact list, and typed in her name and phone number.

“If you need a ride in the next few days, call me. Don’t walk these streets by yourself late at night.”

He took his phone back and said nothing. He shut the door and trudged through the snow toward the house, then he stopped suddenly and ran back to her car. Had he forgotten something? She rolled down her window. A blast of snow rushed her face.

With his eyes squinted and mouth twisted, Midnight held on to her door and said, “How long can a cockroach live with his head cut off?”

The absurdity of the question itself and the fact that he ran back to her car to ask it stunned her into silence for a second. Then she said, “I don’t know, but I do know you’re going to freeze if you don’t get into that house.”

“You don’t know the answer,” he said triumphantly, and grinned as he ran sideways pushing against the wind gust.

A young woman with an angry face and pink hair rollers framing her head appeared in the doorway and yanked him by the arm. That had to be Gloria, Lena’s younger daughter, the one who got into enough trouble for Mama to predict she wouldn’t amount to much. With a quick glance back in Ruth’s direction, Midnight jerked free of his aunt’s grasp and the door closed, leaving Ruth to wonder about Midnight and what life was like for him in that sad little green house.

Fourteen

Midnight

Corey’s house on Hill Top was a ranch-style bungalow with a front porch, and Midnight preferred it over the house he used to live in with Daddy. It reminded him of the midday sun, bright yellow with white shutters and flowered curtains at the kitchen window. Sometimes, he pretended his mom was inside making heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast before school in the mornings and singing Blake Shelton songs while Daddy worked in the yard. Now, Mom’s face dissolved into that of Miss Ruth. Every time he looked at her name and the number that she’d stored in his phone last night, a rush of warmth flooded his body and he caught himself smiling.

At the side of the driveway, Mr. Cunningham bent at the waist, digging his shovel in the ground and lifting snow off the walkway. Mr. Cunningham was a short, solid guy with dark skin and rounded shoulders whose brow always seemed folded like a paper airplane. Even though he’d shaved his head bald, you could still see the shadow outline of hair on both sides. Sebastian said the Cunninghams were older than most kids’ parents, and that’s why Mr. Cunningham had gone bald already.

“Think fast.” Pancho whipped a football toward Midnight, whose knees plunged into the snow, trying to catch it with his left hand, his other arm practically useless. He missed.

“I wasn’t ready, dork.” Midnight pawed the snow with his gloved hands, the uneven terrain of the snow working against him, making it tough to find equilibrium. Then he muttered under his breath, not sure if he wanted Pancho to hear him or not, “Plus, the trajectory of the ball was all off.”

“You catch like a girl.” Pancho must have heard him.

“Yeah, a baby girl, bebita,” Sebastian took birdlike steps with his chest poked out. He was half Black, half Puerto Rican, basically a light-skinned Black boy with curly hair until he opened his mouth and the words came fast from the back of his throat, his r’s rolling.

Midnight’s bum arm made him the butt of jokes sometimes. His whole body burning with humiliation, he said, “Shut up, you spic. Just shut up.” He’d heard Daddy call some of the Hispanic guys from the plant that name behind their backs, and he’d sneered when he said it.

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. He obviously knew the word. Corey even stiffened but stayed quiet. After hesitating a second, Sebastian said, “Your mama,” picking at Midnight’s deepest wound. He pointed at Midnight with one hand and held his belly with the other, falling back in the snow, forcing laughter. “Your mama’s so stupid she took a spoon to the Super Bowl.”

Sebastian’s giggles trailed off and everything went quiet.

“Leave him alone,” Corey said, scooping the ball, tossing it away from his body, and then getting under it for a smooth catch. Midnight called Corey his best friend, but at times he didn’t know for sure how he felt about him. Corey dominated Little League, and Midnight could never even make the team. Whatever it was, that uncertainty circled Midnight’s head sometimes like a gnat that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times he swatted at it.

“I can take care of myself.” Midnight knocked the ball from his hands.

“What’s wrong with you? You better quit trippin’.” Corey elbowed Midnight’s ribs.

Whether he asked for his protection or not, Corey had always given it. Somehow, that made Midnight feel weaker. He knew Corey thought he owed him something after what happened the summer after third grade, when they became friends.

Nobody knew who or what started the fight that day in the open land off Sheldale Road. You could say the fight found them. Usually, you could blame it on the heat, nothing better to do, or maybe a sugar rush from too many Starbursts. But this one felt different from the start.

It was hot and all the boys—too many to count—ran around with no shirts on, the sun blazing on their backs. Mom had died the year before and Daddy had closed himself off, so Midnight spent more time wandering on his own looking for something to get into. Running from his rage. Or maybe running to it.