All American Boys: Friday–Saturday

He was the stereotypical green-eyed pretty boy with parents who spoiled him...

But, unstereotypically, he wasn’t cocky about it like you would think, which of course made the ladies and the teachers and the principal and the parents and even the basketball coach even more crazy about him.

“I don’t even have no girlfriend,” Carlos said. But that didn’t matter. Cracking a joke about somebody’s girlfriend—real or imaginary—is just a great comeback.

He and Shannon didn’t have mandatory basketball practice like usual, but were still going to the gym to shoot around because, well, that’s what they did every day.

My hands were already up, a reflex from seeing a cop coming toward me.

That was my role: the dutiful son, the All-American boy with an All-American fifteen-foot deadeye jump shot and an All-American 3.5 GPA.

It wasn’t far, either, but Ma and the Cambis were paranoid about the two-block stretch between our houses.

But I was okay. Hell, I was alive. And so the other stuff—well, the alternative was way worse.

“Were your pants sagging?” Dad interrogated, now back over by the door.
“Were my pants sagging?” I repeated, shocked by the question. “What does that have to do with anything?”

First was the obligatory mother hug. Spoony ran over to our mom and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Okay, so Rashad’s nose was broken, but we’ve already set it, so as long as he doesn’t bump it or knock it, it’ll heal just fine. The same goes for his ribs. There’s really nothing we can do about them except make sure that Rashad isn’t in any pain, but as long as they’re fairly stable, they’ll heal up as well. We did do an X-ray just to make sure there were no lacerations to any of his organs, and there weren’t, so we’re pretty much in the clear with that.”

I’ve seen ten guys from our school chasing four dudes from another school down a block and a stranger step into the melee with a bat to protect the guys who were outnumbered.

“Is this how you want the world to know you? Some kind of derelict who doesn’t give a damn about his actions?”

He looked over at me and waved, totally oblivious to the rest of the players and balls around him.

Another cop car pulled up and then another, then all eight cops started asking the crowd to disperse, only holding a few people back to ask questions.