Guttersnipe
Jamari walked to school in the mornings. In the afternoons he’d try to sneak into the subway, because it was less crowded, which meant less policemen to stop him. When he walked, especially on days like this, he thought about things. He thought about what was going on at home or in school or what he saw on the playgrounds as he moved past his neighborhood towards the heart of the city where the people were different and the rules were different too. Often he meditated on that word: different. When he played ball all the bigger kids liked to jaw about being different. They claimed to be ‘built different’ or ‘made different’ and for them he supposed that was a good thing. With the way that where he came from was so far removed from where he lived, different had another meaning. It had another way of being talked about.
He wasn’t much for nicknames. In Jamari’s experience nicknames were reserved for the extremes; either people who were very good at something or people who were very obviously something not good. Fat Kamani, for example was in fact very fat. She hated the name and although she’d once tried to embrace it, never was able to shake the moniker. Even after she bought her entire class lunch that one day the nickname still stuck. Heck, it might have glued that nickname to her for life. Of course Fat Kamani had enough to buy food for everyone. If nobody else were there, she’d eat all that food herself.
Jamari avoided that situation. In fact he’d avoided her for almost a month after that. He thought nicknames might be contagious; a socially transmitted disease that stuck you hardest if you were predisposed to certain conditions. He didn’t like to think about it, but he was predisposed to a certain condition. He was reminded of it each time his friends talked about hanging out after school; about going over to each others houses to play and the weekend sleepovers. He’d avoided too many questions by talking about sports. He’d say he had practice or a game that weekend, even if he didn’t. It hadn’t always been that easy to get out of questions, especially when he was the one doing the asking. There had only been one time he asked his friends to come to his house. Memories of their laughter still twitched his skin like ghost pains.