Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

“A cop,” Geneva whispered in disbelief.

Jonette laughed in a high, girlish voice. “I’m the man , yep.”

“You’re so down,” Geneva said. “I never guessed.”

Mr. Bell said, “You remember when they busted those seniors who smuggled some guns into the school a few weeks ago?”

Geneva nodded. “A pipe bomb too, or something.”

“It was going to be another Columbine, right here,” the man said in his lazy drawl. “Jonette’s the one heard about it and stopped the whole thing.”

“Had to keep my cover so I couldn’t take ’em down myself,” she said as if she regretted not being able to bust up the kids personally. “Now, as long as you’re going to be in school, which I think is pretty wack, but that’s a different story, long as you’re here, I’ll keep an eye on you. You see anything makes you uneasy, give me a sign.”

“Gang sign?”

Jonette laughed. “You’d be a claimer in any gang, Gen, nothing personal. You go throwing me a flag, I think everybody’d know something was up. Better you just scratch your ear. How’s that?”

“Sure.”

“Then I’ll come over and mess you up some. Give you some shit. Get you out of wherever you are. You cool with that? I won’t hurt you. Maybe just push you round a little.”

“Sure, good…Listen, thanks for doing this. And I won’t say anything about you.”

“I knew that ’fore I told you,” Jonette said. Then she looked at the officer. “You wanta do it now?”

“You bet.”

Then the pleasant, soft-spoken policeman got a dark look on his face and shouted, “What the hell’re you doing in here?”

Screeching: “Get yo’ motherfuckin’ hands off me, asshole!” Jonette had slipped into character again.

The detective took her by the arm and shoved her out the door. She stumbled into the wall.

“Fuck you, I’ma sue yo’ fucking ass for abuse or some shit.” The girl rubbed her arm. “You can’t touch me. That a crime, mother fucker ! “She stormed off down the hall. After a pause Detective Bell and Geneva stepped into the cafeteria proper.

“Good actress,” Geneva whispered.

“One of the best,” the policeman said.

“She kind of blew your cover.”

He handed her back the social studies book, grinned. “Wasn’t exactly working.”

Geneva sat down at a table in the corner and pulled a language arts book out of her knapsack.

Detective Bell asked, “Aren’t you eating?”

“No.”

“Did your uncle give you your lunch money?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Forgot, didn’t he? All respect, he’s not a man who’s ever been a father. I can tell. I’ll rustle you up something.”

“No, really -”

“Truth is, I’m hungrier than a farmer at sundown. And I haven’t had any high school turkey tetrazzini in years. Gonna get me some of that. No trouble to get a second plate. You like milk?”

She debated. “Sure. I’ll pay you back.”

“We’ll put it on the city.”

He stepped into the line. Geneva had just turned back to her textbook when she saw a boy look her way and wave. She glanced behind her to see whom he was gesturing at. There was no one else. She gave a faint gasp, realizing that he was indicating her.

Kevin Cheaney was pushing away from the table where he and his homies sat and started loping toward her. Oh, my God! Was he really coming this way?…Kevin, a Will Smith look-alike. Perfect lips, perfecter body. The boy who could make a basketball defy gravity, could move like he was a break-dancer competing in a B-Boy Summit show. Kevin was a coal institution at all the jams.

In line, Detective Bell stiffened and started forward but Geneva shook her head that everything was fine.

Which it was. Better than fine. Totally def.

Kevin was destined for Connecticut or Duke on scholarship. Maybe an athletic one – he’d been captain of the team that won last year’s PSAL basketball championship. But he could make it on grades too. He didn’t have the same love of books and school that Geneva did, maybe, but he was still in the top 5 percent of the class. They knew each other casually – they shared math class this semester and would also find themselves together in the hall or in the school yard from time to time – coincidentally, Geneva told herself. But, okay, fact was that she usually gravitated to where he was standing or sitting.

Most of the down kids ignored or dissed her; Kevin, though, actually said hi from time to time. He’d ask her a question about a math or history assignment, or just pause and talk for a few minutes.

He wasn’t asking her out, of course – that’d never happen – but he treated her like a human being.

He’d even walked her home from Langston Hughes one day last spring.

A beautiful, clear day she could still picture as if she had a DVD of it.

April 21.

Normally Kevin would hang with the svelte model wannabees, or the brash girls – the blingstas. (He even flirted with Lakeesha some, which infuriated Geneva, who endured the raging jealousy with a gritty, carefree smile.)

So what was he about now?

“Yo, girl, you down?” he asked, frowning and dropping into a battered chrome chair next to her, stretching out his long legs.

“Yeah.” She swallowed, tongue-tied. Her mind was blank.

He said, “I heard ’bout what happened. Man, that was some mad shit, somebody trying to yoke and choke you. I was fretting.”

“Yeah?”

“Word.”

“It was just weird.”

“Long as you okay, that’s cool, then.”

She felt a wave of heat wash over her face. Kevin was actually saying this to her?

“Why don’t you just roll on back at home?” he asked. “Whatcha doing here?”

“Language arts test. Then our math test.”

He laughed. “Damn. You down for school, after all that shit?”

“Yeah. Can’t miss those tests.”

“And you cool with math?”

It was just calc. No big deal. “Yeah, I’ve got it covered. You know, nothing too heavy.”

“Straight up. Anyway. Just wanted to say, lotta people round here give you shit, I know that. And you take it quiet. But they wouldn’t’ve gone and came in today, way you did. All rolled together, they ain’t worth half of you. You got spine, girl.”

Breathless from the compliment, Geneva just looked down and shrugged.

“So, now I see what you really about, you and me, girl, we gotta hang more. But you’re never ’round.”

“Just, you know, school an’ shit.” Watch it, she warned herself. You don’t have to talk his talk.

Kevin joked, “Naw, girl, that ain’t it. I know what’s what. You dealin’ crank over in BK.”

“I -” Nearly an “ain’t.” She refused to let it escape. She gave him a self-conscious smile, looked down at the scuffed floor. “I don’t deal in Brooklyn. Only Queens. They got more benjamins, you know.” Lame, lame, lame, girl. Oh, you are pathetic. Her palms bled sweat.

But Kevin laughed hard. Then he shook his head. “Naw – I know why I got confused. Musta been yo’ moms selling crank in BK.”

This seemed like an insult, but it was actually an invitation. Kevin was asking her to play the dozens. That’s how the old folks referred to it. Now you called it “snapping,” trading “snaps” – insults. Part of a long tradition of black poetry and storytelling contests, snapping was verbal combat, trading barbs. Serious snappers’d perform onstage, though most snapping took place in living rooms and school yards and pizza parlors and bars and clubs and on front steps and was about as sad as what Kevin had just offered as his initial volley, like “Yo’ mama so stupid, she asks for price checks at the dollar store.” “Yo’ sister so ugly, she couldn’t get laid if she was a brick.”