The Weight of Blood (8)
He placed the cold shake to her forehead, and she leaned into his touch.
“I can take you down to the nurse,” he offered, concern in his voice.
“No, I’m fine. But thanks,” she said, kissing him. “Anyway, did any windows break in your classroom?
“Why?”
“Because of the earthquake.”
“What earthquake?”
“The earthquake that just happened!”
Kenny frowned. “Really? I didn’t feel anything.”
“Are you joking?” How had he missed all the chaos? But he did have Spanish second period, up on the second floor. So low to the ground, maybe her class felt it more.
“You sure you doing alright?” Kenny questioned Wendy as they rounded the hall corner. Wendy never got sick. Even when she had her period, she barely complained about cramps and now she was talking of earthquakes.
“I’m fine. I’m . . .”
At that moment, Kayleigh Ray burst through a crowd of kids and rushed over to them, gaping in shock. “OMG! You’re never going to believe what I just heard. Mad Mad Maddy is Black!”
Wendy laughed. “Yeah, I was just telling—”
“Yoooo, bro!” Jason stopped to join the crew, tapping his team cocaptain with the back of his hand. “What’s up? Yo, did you hear Mad Mad Maddy is fucking BLACK?”
“Yeah, I heard.” Kenny chuckled, his back muscles taut.
“Who do you think knew?” Wendy asked in a hushed voice, grinning. “Who do you think was her mama?”
“And what woman would sleep with shit?” Kayleigh shuddered.
“Well, clearly a Black one,” Jason quipped. “Gotta be from the East Side.”
“Gross.” Kayleigh blinked quick at Kenny. “Well, not her being Black, but anyone sleeping with that loon. He smells awful!”
Struggling to rein in his annoyance, Kenny took one last sip of air before pasting on the standard generic smile he would maintain for the rest of the day. Just about everyone would want to talk to him about Maddy, but he had to remain unfazed, the same composure he kept whenever anything happened to Black people and they wanted unsaid permission from him to speak about it freely. Because if Kenny was okay with it, then it must be okay.
He chuckled. “Yeah, he does.”
As Jason, Kayleigh, and Wendy speculated, Kenny caught sight of Rashad, Jackie, and Regina talking in hushed whispers by their lockers, debating something. They were easy to spot. All the Black kids were. They only made up 30 percent of the school and hung in tight, secretive circles. Or at least that’s how it seemed to Kenny. He wasn’t close with any of them.
“I knew it! Just knew it. You could tell in her face,” he overheard Jackie insist. But did he know? He wondered. It would be a question that most Black people in Springville were going to ask of themselves: How did we not recognize one of our own?
Rashad looked up and noticed Kenny staring, his face going stoic.
“Kenny?”
Kenny quickly turned to Wendy’s cheery voice. “Huh?”
She smiled at him, squeezing his hand. “I said, what do you think? Can Black girls really look that . . . white?”
Kenny froze, meeting each of their eager gazes, reminding him of game-day huddles. The way his team looked to him for direction, guidance, wins. But off the field, they looked to him to be their Black-people whisperer.
He forced out a laugh. “Man, I don’t know, but she had y’all fooled.”
The group laughed along with him, eating up his words. As the bell rang, he stole another glimpse of the Black kids rushing to class. Other than color, he didn’t really have anything in common with them, or have problems like they did. They were always making a big deal out of anything, blaming everything on racism, arguing with teachers over nothing. Kenny breezed through school, didn’t cause trouble, and had led his team to the state championship, twice. He didn’t belong in those secretive circles.
Besides, he had real friends. When he’d picked the University of Alabama, they’d thrown him a surprise party. When he was nominated for homecoming king, they rallied votes. Whenever they were in the car, they always turned to a hip-hop playlist. They were the most popular kids in school, tight since sophomore year, and that brought a set of perks he’d never see otherwise. Who cares if he was the only Black guy in their crew? They never treated him different. They didn’t see color.
So why couldn’t he ever shake the nagging longing to know what the Black kids were thinking?
MADDY DID IT
EPISODE 1, CONT.
Michael: So the incident that took place second period was the first incident on record of Maddy using her abilities.
Tanya: Alleged abilities. This is just a verbal account, since the camera so conveniently stopped working the moment we needed it to.
Michael: I’d say the same thing. But look at this girl in the far corner of the video. Can you tell everyone what you see?
Tanya: Okay, so there’s a young woman, sitting at her desk by the window. She has a behind-the-ear type of hearing aid. She seems to flinch, or ducks, and takes one of the devices out of her ear.
Michael: Flinching as if she heard a loud sound. Something that maybe would interfere with her device, right?
Tanya: Potentially, yes.
Michael: I want to point out something that wasn’t mentioned in the commission report, or in any part of the investigation. Something you’d only notice if you were really looking. When reviewing school records and reports from that day, I found that the nurse’s office had an influx of students with near-identical symptoms. Headaches, nausea, extreme earaches, vertigo. I compared the nurse’s sign-in book to attendance records and schedules and found that almost all the students with those symptoms were from that second-period history class.