Indigo Summer Read online

  I glanced back down the block, at the house next door to mine. I don’t know why, but I wondered where Marcus was—if he’d overslept. I wondered if he would be riding the bus, or if he got dropped at school. Suddenly, he appeared on his front porch wearing baggy black jeans and a white tee, a backpack thrown across his shoulder. Excitement rushed through me as I waited for him to step off the porch and head toward the bus stop. Instead, he stepped off of his porch and headed toward the old white Jeep that was parked in front of his house. He hopped into the driver’s seat and started it up. Pulled off. A sophomore with his own car. Imagine that.

  Guess my idea of offering him the seat next to me on the bus was not an option.

  Chapter 4

  Indigo

  The hallway was crowded as I pushed my way through hordes of students gathered at lockers, talking, laughing and catching up on old times. Several students just sort of wandered through the hallway, most of which were freshmen—and lost, like me. I took another glance at my schedule and tried my best to find Room 17A, Miss Petersburg’s home room class. But the numbers seemed to be getting larger, as I made it to the end of the hall and stood in front of Room 25C.

  “You lost?”

  Standing before me was the most beautiful pair of brown eyes that I’d seen in all of my fifteen years.

  “Looking for 17A,” I told him.

  “Oh, you got Miss Petersburg for home room.” The beautiful creature was dressed in an orange-and-black football jersey—the school’s colors—number 84 plastered across the front. He took my schedule from my hand, gave it a look over. “You’re on the wrong floor, girl. Room 17A is on the first floor.”

  “Oh.”

  “You a freshman, huh?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Quincy,” he said, “you want me to walk you to your class or what?”

  If I could’ve stopped my heart from beating so fast, I would’ve answered his question. But when I opened my mouth to say something, nothing leapt out.

  He just started walking beside me, as the bell shook the walls in the hallway.

  “Is that the tardy bell?” I asked, not wanting to be late on my first day.

  “Naw, it was just the warning bell,” he explained. “It means you got three minutes to get to class. But they give you extra time to find your classes on the first day of school.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Indigo,” I managed to say. “Indigo Summer.”

  “That’s a different name,” he said. At least he didn’t say it was stupid. “Were you named after somebody?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a weird name.” His smile seemed to give light to the entire school. “But it’s cute, though.”

  “Thank you,” I said, hoping that was the proper response, and that I didn’t sound too stupid.

  “You going to homecoming?”

  Everyone seemed to be asking that question.

  “When is it?” I asked. There were so many activities going on the first few weeks of school, I was just overwhelmed by all of it.

  “The game is Friday night. I’ll be starting. Linebacker.” He smiled, obviously proud of his position on the football team. “The dance is on Saturday.”

  We stopped in front of my classroom. He handed my schedule back to me.

  “Here we are. This is 17A,” he said. “You wanna go with me on Saturday night or what?”

  “Well, I…I hadn’t…um…” I wasn’t prepared for a question like that. “Okay.”

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ll meet you here after class and you can give me your phone number. You do have a phone, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. I’ll see you later then.”

  I watched as Quincy trotted down the hallway, his jeans sagging just a little in the back, bold black letters on the back of his orange jersey, RAWLINS…84.

  He vanished, but the smell of his Michael Jordan cologne lingered.

  The sign on the wall outside the gym read: DANCE TEAM TRYOUTS TODAY, 4:00 PM.

  So many girls on the bleachers, chattering about which classes were hard, and which ones you could get an easy A in, which boys were cute, and which ones looked like toads, and which teachers got on their ever-lovin’ nerves. At my old middle school, I knew just about everybody, but at this new school, as I looked around the huge gymnasium, I realized I was just another face in the crowd, and I didn’t know anyone. And my confidence about making the dance team was now shaken after seeing some of these girls, with much rounder hips, and much better moves, shake what their mamas gave them. Some of them were really good, making my routine, the one that Jade and I had worked on for months, seem just ordinary.

  I took a seat on the bleachers, as a woman blew a whistle to get our attention. The chatter ceased.

  “Ladies, let’s get started,” she said. “I’m Miss Martin, and I’m over the dance team here at George Washington Carver. Keisha here will be assisting me today with the music. If you’re trying out, you should have your own CD or tape with your music on it. Make sure that it’s the edited version of whatever song it is. This is the first round. Fifteen of you will be lucky enough to come back tomorrow for round two.”

  “How will we know who made it to round two?” A dark, round girl at the other end of the bleachers asked.

  “Tomorrow morning, a list of those who made the cut will be posted outside the cafeteria,” she said. “Good luck to you all. Now, let’s get started. First on my list are Tameka Brown and Michelle Smith.”

  Tameka and Michelle both stepped down from the bleachers, Tameka handed Keisha a CD, told her which track to play, and stood in the middle of the shiny floor waiting for the music to begin.

  My heart pounded as Nelly’s “Shake Ya Tail-feather” echoed through the gym, and their bodies began to gyrate to the sound of it. Wearing matching black T-shirts and black shorts, their moves were calculated as they bounced to a rhythm similar to each other’s. Nothing original, just a mixture of the Harlem Shake, the Tick and another dance that I didn’t recognize. I sat there with my chin resting in my hands, my insides in turmoil for the entire four minutes and nine seconds that their song lasted, awaiting my turn. When it was over, they took their seats on the bleachers.

  Miss Martin wrote some notes on the pages attached to her clipboard.

  “Indigo Summer.” She said my name in her own southern version of it. I hadn’t expected my turn to come so soon. “You’re up next.”

  As I leaped from the bleachers, my pink, black and white FILAs hitting the shiny wooden hardwood floor, I handed Keisha Thomas my CD to put in.

  “Track three,” I told her, as music from Usher’s new CD took me to a world of my own. A place where Jade was, with laughter and the hard work that we’d put into our routine, spending hours studying Usher’s video, and trying to emulate his moves. And we had them down to an art. Usher, our artist of choice. Well, Jade’s artist of choice. She thought he was the most beautiful person who ever walked the face of the earth, with his smooth chocolate skin and kissable-looking lips, as she put it. She had every CD he ever made and dreamed of bumping into him at Publix grocery store or Wal-Mart someday.

  “You know he lives in Atlanta, right?” She reminded me of that fact every chance she got.

  “I doubt that you’ll see him at Publix or Wal-Mart, Jade.”

  “He gotta buy groceries, girl.”

  “I’m sure he has someone who shops for him,” I said. “And I doubt if he shops at Wal-Mart anyway.”

  “Well if I ever see him, I’m rushing him. Just want you to know that.”

  “And I’ll act like I don’t know you.”

  “I hope I don’t say anything stupid.”

  “You will,” I assured her.

  Then her eyes would get all glossy, like she was fantasizing about him or something.

  “Yep, I probably will.”

  We’d spent hours working on our routine, a routine mad
e for two people, but here I was forced to perform it alone.

  “You can do it,” Jade had told me on the phone the night before. “You don’t need me there. You know the moves better than me.”

  I prayed she was right as the music resonated through my body, and I mimicked Usher’s moves that we’d practiced for months. I was a little stiff at first, but as the music came to life inside of me, I loosened up a little. I pretended I was on Jade’s front porch again, in control, the bass from the music shaking the wooden boards. And the girls who stared at me from the bleachers were faceless and nameless fans, wishing they were me. Wishing they could move like me. I was lost in the rhythm.

  As Usher sang, “I’m so caught up…” my legs took on a life of their own. Thought about the video that we’d played over and over again. I took a bow as the last few lyrics resonated through the gym.

  “Thank you, Miss Summer.” Miss Martin’s southern twang brought me back to the present time. She jotted down a few notes on her clipboard. I took my CD from Keisha and plopped down on the bleachers, sweat resting on my top lip.

  “You were good,” Tameka whispered.

  “Thanks. So were you,” I whispered back.

  “Hope I was good enough to make the team,” she said.

  “Hope I was, too.”

  I used the sleeve of my shirt to wipe sweat from my face.

  Chapter 5

  Marcus

  Coach Robinson’s whistle sounded across the field.

  “Let’s run that play one more time,” he said, his voice loud for a man his size. Coach Robinson was about five-foot-seven, dark, a short dude with a receding hairline. He was buff though, obviously from pumping iron each day.

  I wasn’t much of a football player anymore, had played when I was little, but never really had a desire to play sports. I was too busy studying and volunteering my time to worthy causes, and tutoring people who sucked in math.

  But Coach Robinson, who was my American History teacher at this new school in College Park, had immediately taken a liking to me. He called on me more times on the first day of school than anyone else in the class; to answer questions and to help pass out worksheets. When the bell sounded for me to head to my next class, he called my name.

  “Mr. Carter.” He looked up from his desk, and motioned for me to come back.

  I walked slowly back to his desk. “Yes, sir?”

  “How come you’re not on my football team?”

  “I don’t really have time for sports, Coach. Got a lot on my plate with my schoolwork,” I explained. “Plus I’m working toward getting a scholarship, and I wanna get it based on my grades, not my ability to run a football down the field. I got a part-time job, too.”

  I was able to transfer to a different Wendy’s on the other side of town. I was grateful for that, because I definitely needed my own money.

  “You’re Rufus Carter’s boy, aren’t you?” he said.

  My pop was a pillar in the community; people from miles around knew him and respected him. For years, he and my grandfather had sponsored sports teams, donating money for equipment and uniforms. The name of his company, Carter’s Affordable Homes, was plastered on the back of T-shirts and on plaques all over town.

  “I remember when you played for the community center over there in Stone Mountain. You were pretty doggone good,” he said. “I used to coach at the community center here in College Park. I remember you.”

  “I played quarterback.”

  “And you were good, too,” he said. “You took that team to victory every single year. Why don’t you play anymore?”

  “Lost interest.”

  “You sure you don’t wanna give this team a try?” he asked. “Quincy Rawlins is my starting linebacker, but I’d like to try you as a wide receiver or cornerback.”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a while since I played.”

  “Well if you change your mind, you always got a spot on the team.”

  “Thanks, Coach.” I folded the worksheet which was my homework assignment and placed it inside my book. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Curiosity had brought me there, as I sat on the bleachers on the football field and watched them practice. My mind went back to the days when football was my first love; my everything and then some. Nothing was more important to me back then. But it had soon become a long forgotten dream, and I remember the person who had shattered it: Mr. Forbes.

  I worked my behind off that year to make the team, had pumped weights all summer just trying to build up my muscle mass, had gone to football camp and everything, but the coach at my middle school didn’t think I had what it took to play quarterback anymore.

  “It’s a new day, Carter,” Mr. Forbes, the new blond-haired, pale-faced coach, had gripped his clipboard, said and frowned. “The days of you getting what you want because your daddy owns half of this town is over.”

  “But Coach, I played quarterback for the community center for five years straight.”

  “Well this is not the community center, and I’ve got a quarterback.” He smiled. “His name is Todd Richmond.”

  “Todd ain’t half as good as me.”

  “Ain’t?” He repeated my bad English. “Ain’t is not the proper word to use in that sentence. I swear to God I don’t know why I took this teaching job over here. Should’ve stayed in the suburbs where the students are both smart and talented. Over here, you people think that just because you can run a football down the field, that you don’t have to know anything else. You go through school with blinders on, thinking that sports will save you from your ignorance.”

  I stood there eyeballing him, my blood boiling as he pretty much called me and my entire race stupid to my face. I knew I had to prove him wrong. Knew that I had to prove that not every black kid who was good in sports was dumb in the classroom.

  “My grades are good,” I said in my defense.

  “You’re in the low Cs, kid. I’m struggling just to keep you on the team.”

  “But I’m bringing them up,” I said. “They dropped when my parents got divorced, because I was stressing over that.”

  “It’s always an excuse with you youngsters,” he said.

  “It’s true,” I told him. “I’m going to bring them back up. And when I graduate, I’m graduating with honors.”

  “You see Todd over there?” He pointed toward the redhead who’d stolen my position on the team. “When he leaves high school, he’ll not only have had four good years of football, but with his grade point average, he’s sure to get a scholarship to Yale or Princeton. And that’s a fact.”

  “I could get a scholarship to Yale or Princeton if I wanted to.”

  “Not likely,” he said, as if it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “But there’s no doubt you could get into either Morehouse or Clark-Atlanta University, one of the historically black colleges here in Atlanta. That is, if you bring that grade point average up, and keep it steady during your high school years. But you have to really be a special kid to get into an Ivy League school like Yale or Princeton, Marcus.”

  His words stuck with me, tore me up inside, and even stopped me from sleeping a few nights. I knew what I had to do. I had to come up with a Master Plan. I wanted to go to Yale or Princeton, simply to set a standard; to prove a point. Not that Morehouse or Clark-Atlanta weren’t good schools, because they were. In fact, Morehouse was known for its strong math and science programs. And I was a math scholar, could work problems out with my eyes closed. But I wanted to not only get accepted to a school where statistically blacks weren’t accepted, but I wanted to get a scholarship to one, too.

  Football was over for me that day, and I was determined to make straight As, graduate with honors, get a scholarship to Yale or Princeton and look for that Mr. Forbes one day and show him that he was wrong about Marcus Carter. I dreamed of that day.

  Coach Robinson had the team running a play over and over again, and when he was sure it was burned into their memory, he ran
it again. I pulled my worksheet out of my American History book, looked over the questions. They were simple, so I completed it, the sun beaming down on my fresh haircut as I sat in the bleachers. I scribbled my name across the top, then folded the worksheet back up, stuck it into my book and placed my book into my backpack. Threw my backpack across my shoulder and decided to head over to the gym where the girls were trying out for the dance team. Nothing like watching a bunch of girls shaking it up.

  I pulled the heavy door open, peeked inside, Usher’s “Confession,” ringing in my ears as I stepped inside. Took a seat on the bleachers next to some other guys who’d stayed after school just to watch the girls move their hips to hip-hop music. They were picking out which ones they would ask out, and saying how cute Indigo Summer was as she bounced to the music that echoed throughout the gymnasium. Just by looking at her, I couldn’t tell that she could move like that. But she could. She was good, and I was glad that I had caught the end of her performance.

  After the last group of three girls started dancing to some song by Ludacris, I decided to make my way outside the gym, and stand near the glass doors. I didn’t want to miss Indigo when she came out. I wanted to speak to her; maybe offer her a ride home. Tell her how good her performance was. My backpack thrown across my shoulder, as girls passed by whispering, smiling and waving, I waited patiently.

  “Hey,” one of them said. “You Marcus Carter?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “You’re in my fourth period.” The light brown girl smiled a cute little smile, and my eyes found her cleavage that she was showing too much of.

  “Oh,” is all I could say as I thought back to all the girls in my fourth period. I didn’t remember her face.

  “I sit two seats behind you in class,” she said. “I’m Alicia.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “And I’m Shauna,” her friend said. “You going to the homecoming dance?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  I wondered if Indigo was going, and if so, if she already had a date. Maybe I’d ask her.