The Substitute: 1985 MOVE

1985 MOVE Book One a novel XXL Bolígrafo A work of fiction inspired by true events. The 1985 MOVE bombing of Osage Avenue in Philadelphia is real, and its history is kept accurate here. Deshawn Pratt, Dr. Osei, the Coleman family, and all present-day characters are invented. The real people who lived and died on Osage Avenue are honored from a respectful distance and are never given invented words. CHAPTER ONE The Pick The clock in Room 214 was three minutes fast, and Deshawn Pratt knew it, because he had spent enough hours under it to catch it lying. He knew a lot of things like that. He knew the third-floor water fountain ran warm no matter the season. He knew which stairwell the cameras did not quite cover and which teacher took the long way to the lounge and how many seconds you had between the passing bell and the moment a hall monitor decided you were loitering instead of walking. He collected these things without meaning to, the way some kids collected sneakers, because information was the one kind of wealth nobody could confiscate from a boy at the metal detector, and Dee had learned young that in a building that had already made up its mind about you, the small true things you noticed were sometimes the only power you got to keep. Detention. Two hours. For a fight he did not start, over a sister he would start ten more for. Nobody had asked him that part. That was the thing that sat in him on the walk up to 214, heavier than the detention itself, heavier than the two hours. Nobody ever asked the part that mattered. There had been a form, and on the form there had been a box, and in the box someone had written a single word, and the word was aggressor, and once the word was in the box the word was the truth, and the truth Dee actually carried, the shove that came first, the little kids, his sister's name in a mouth that had no business holding it, none of that had a box. There was no box on the form for why. There was only the word, slid across a desk, and then a chair, and then the instruction to sit and think about his choices, as if the choice had ever once been his. He came in with his hood up and his jaw set and the particular slouch he had built over fifteen years to tell every adult in a building the same thing: I already know how this goes, so save your breath. It was a good slouch. He had practiced it against a lot of adults. It said nothing and gave nothing and dared you to try to get past it, and most of them did not try, which was the point. A boy that size, wrapped in that slouch, was a closed door, and closed doors got left alone, and being left alone was the closest thing to safety Dee had found in this building. The substitute was there before him. That was the first strange thing. Substitutes were always late. It was practically what made them substitutes. They came in flustered and behind, clutching a coffee gone cold and a lesson plan they had not read, saying okay, okay, settle down now to a room that had never once in the history of the building settled for anyone, least of all for them. They wore their temporariness like a smell. The kids could always tell, instantly, the way animals can tell, and they treated a sub the way a herd treats a limping thing at its edge, with a low constant testing cruelty that was not even personal. This one was different, and Dee felt it before he could have told you why. The man just sat. An older man, dark-skinned, gray cardigan buttoned wrong by one hole, which should have made him look foolish and somehow did not. A dented steel thermos stood at his elbow beside a newspaper folded into a tight neat quarter. He was doing the crossword. In pen. Dee noticed the pen the way he noticed everything, and filed it, because a man who does a crossword in pen is a man who is either a fool or is never wrong, and this man did not have the face of a fool. He did not look up when Dee walked in. He finished a word first, unhurried, the pen moving in small sure strokes, and only then lifted his eyes. "Sit anywhere," he said. "It's a big room and a small crowd." His voice was quiet and it did not push. That was the second strange thing. Adults in this building pushed with their voices, leaned on you with them, and this man set the words down between them like he was laying dominoes, and let them lie there, and expected nothing. There were four of them, counting Dee. Marisol Reyes he half knew, a junior with tired eyes who had already folded her arms on the desk and put her head down on them, one hand tucked up inside her hoodie sleeve where, Dee could tell from the faint blue glow and the small movements of her wrist, she had her phone. She was not being defiant about it. She was just somewhere else, the way people are somewhere else when here has asked too much of them for too long. Trey Osei did not know but Dee did, a little, by reputation, a sophomore like him who had turned being liked into a full-time job. He was leaned back so far his chair had become a physics problem, balanced on two legs against the radiator, and he wore the loose easy grin of a kid who had never yet been alone in a room with himself and did not plan to start today. The fourth was a girl Dee had never seen, which was rare, because Dee saw everyone.