Jay had stared at the mirror and waited to hear Kelvin’s voice speaking to Mr. Wright to distract him from what they were—from what Jay was—about to do. But Jay stared into the mirror and watched Kelvin just stand there by the magazine rack without saying a word. Mr. Wright’s hands had disappeared from view, and without turning around Jay was unsure of what the man was doing.
He looked at his own face in the mirror and saw himself for what he was: a lanky, skinny kid with a smooth face, skin and eyes just as dark as his father’s. His face looked scared no matter how much he tried to keep it from appearing that way. He didn’t want to steal from Mr. Wright or drink Mad Dog or feel Robin Francis’s buck teeth and braces in his mouth. But going through with the plan, even if the plan hadn’t quite gone into effect just yet, was easier than saying the truth out loud, especially if he had to say it to Kelvin.
Jay’s father’s name was James, and Mr. Wright had always called Jay “Little J,” and he’d always called Kelvin “Little K,” although Jay had no idea what Kelvin’s father’s name was. He didn’t know anything about Kelvin’s father aside from the fact that he didn’t live with Kelvin and Terry and their mother. Kelvin didn’t really want to talk about his father, and Jay didn’t push it. He understood. He didn’t want to talk about his own father either.
It wasn’t that Jay didn’t love his father or that he thought his father didn’t love him: quite the opposite. Jay knew he was loved, especially by his mother in her quiet, gentle way. She was a librarian, and throughout his life Jay would think of libraries when he thought of his mother: the fresh, clean smell of books in their bindings; the whispered voices; the confidence that whatever you needed or wanted could be found provided you had the time and the patience to wait for an adult to find it or to look for it on your own.
Jay’s father’s love was different, grumbling and marked by qualifiers like “because” and “but.” Boy, I’m doing this because I love you and Son, I love you, but. Jay’s sister, Janelle, had already been everything he knew his father now wanted him to be—smart in school, good at sports, self-possessed and certain—and by the time Jay was born, when Janelle was almost thirteen years old, Jay figured his father had spent one whole childhood confident that he had done the best he could and had, in fact, done well. And then Jay came along, and his father just didn’t know if he could do it again. It’s not that his father was an old man; he was only forty-eight, not that that really meant anything to Jay. But he did seem old. While other parents listened to Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, Jay’s father listened to the Temptations, the Platters, and the Supremes and kept the radio on all day in the carport, especially when his buddies were over, telling their stories on Saturday afternoons.
Jay lifted his right hand and put it on the handle of the glass door that covered the refrigerated drinks. He kept it there for a moment, his fingers closed tight around the handle, waiting to hear Mr. Wright call out from the front of the store: “Little J, what you doing back there?” But he heard Kelvin’s voice instead.
“Mr. Wright,” Kelvin said, “how much is this magazine?”
“Which one?” Mr. Wright asked. Jay had wanted to look up into the mirror again, but doing so would’ve required him to step away from the cooler, and he was already standing in front of it, had his hand on it, in fact, and he knew he couldn’t turn back now without drawing attention to himself.
“Which one?” Mr. Wright asked again.
“This one here,” Kelvin’s voice said.
“What’s that, a MAD magazine?”
“Yes, sir,” Kelvin said.
Jay opened the cooler door, felt its cold air pour out and wrap itself around his fingers. He stepped forward and let the opened door rest against his right hip. He reached for a bottle of Mad Dog with each hand. He grabbed one of Banana Red and another bottle—he was never able to discover what kind—and then he lifted the front of his shirt and stuffed the bottles into the waistband of his jeans. His hands were shaking, and he was trying to unfasten his belt and cinch it tighter when Kelvin shouted, “Thriller! Thriller!” before Jay heard the crash of the door being slammed open and the bell atop it being rung and the sound of Kelvin’s feet pounding across the sidewalk and into the parking lot at a sprint.
Jay had turned away from the cooler, his hands jostling the bottles stuck in his waistband, and made a break for the door. He ran up the aisle by the front windows, his peripheral vision noting the shape of Mr. Wright as he came out from behind the counter. Jay had his shoulder against the door when he felt Mr. Wright’s powerful grip clench itself around his left forearm. He pulled Jay back toward him, and Jay let go of the bottles, which had worked themselves up from his waist to his stomach, where he’d clutched them to his body. One of the bottles came loose and shattered on the linoleum, splashing neon pink liquid across the floor and all over Jay’s and Mr. Wright’s pants.
“Jesus,” Mr. Wright said, momentarily relinquishing his grip on Jay’s arm.
Jay felt the slackening of Mr. Wright’s fingers, and he tore his arm free and stepped toward the door, but his shoe slipped on the wet floor, and he found himself on his back, flailing in the nauseatingly scented liquor and bits of broken glass. Mr. Wright bent down and helped him to his feet, his strong fingers once again closed around Jay’s arm.
“Come on, Little J,” he’d said. “Come on. Let’s stand you up.”
The first call Mr. Wright had made had been to Jay’s mother.
“I should call the police,” he’d said to Jay, the phone pressed to his ear while he waited for someone at the library’s circulation desk to answer. Jay, the back of his shirt and blue jeans soaked through with Mad Dog, sat on the wooden stool Mr. Wright kept behind the counter. Mr. Wright stood, his back leaning against the window that looked out on the gas pumps and the otherwise empty parking lot. “You better be glad I know your daddy,” he’d said. “And you’d better be glad I ain’t calling him right now.”
But Mr. Wright had ended up calling Jay’s father anyway because his mother had been in a meeting and wasn’t able to leave work to come pick him up, and Mr. Wright refused to let him leave the store without talking to one of his parents. But he’d looked just as worried about calling Jay’s father as Jay was. His father worked as a mechanic for DeKalb County, and Jay pictured his father being called out from under one of the county’s cars that he had up on a lift, tools in hand. Jay knew his father would raise his head at the sound of his name, set down his tools, and wipe his hands on the towel he always kept hanging out of his back pocket regardless of whether he was at work or at home. He would walk across the garage, pick up the phone, clear his throat, and then have one of his best buddies tell him about the awful thing his only son had just done.
“J,” Mr. Wright said, “it’s Connie down at the store. I got Jay here with me. I’m going to let him talk to you.”
Jay had refused to turn rat on Kelvin, even though he knew that Mr. Wright knew that the boys had been in it together, even though he knew that Mr. Wright would tell his father exactly what had happened.