Before her, Patience saw her life laid out and subsequently divided up into segments, identified wholly by the people who dominated them. It was as if she were a cameo appearance in her own existence. Their names served as the headliner of each chapter in the stead of whatever milestone that she could herself create, and it came as no surprise to her that although his was not the first to appear, it was the only one with ink that never seemed to dry. It bled into the ensuing chapters like an unconstrained printing error.

Sometimes she considered the course her life would have taken if she were not chosen for the desegregation program. She imagined that were it not Darius, then it would have been someone else; after all, it wasn’t just the two of them. Rather, there were several clusters of inner-city children, freshly school aged, that were selected by a board of white folks somewhere.

Later, she learned that it wasn’t as simple as being in the right place at the right time. Entry required a meeting with the individuals that would become her principal and her kindergarten teacher, a woman with egregiously plucked eyebrows and hair the color of bruised bananas who made little to no impression on her as she sat on the slouching couch beside both her parents.

Patience studied them just as they did her; for the life of her, she couldn’t remember anyone that looked like those two did in the front room of her house.

For the entirety of their hour long visit, she tried to figure out what it was that prevented the two of them from fitting into the room; maybe it was the yellowish-brown stains that marred the once white, then beige walls, remaining even after her mother’s best efforts to scrub them away with bleach while she swore up and down that they had nothing to do with her habit of smoking inside. The dirt left behind in the carpet by Patience’s feet, joined later by Isaiah’s, after long days of scavenging in the rocky earth outside seemed darker than it ever had, standing out against the too white teeth of Henry Shaw, her new principle.

The pair of them seemed altogether the opposite of her parents, who in their Sunday best came nowhere close to their visitors’ Tuesday casual. If it bothered them, they never let it show; her father’s black tie rested neatly against his chest, made more special with the knowledge that because he so infrequently wore them, it had taken him almost half an hour to get the knot correct. By his side, her mother’s lips, painted a glossy shade of brown that she’d never seen before, curved into a smile that was equally unfamiliar. It was one of the few times she could recall seeing them operate as a cohesive unit, and as a result, she was secured a position at Noorwood Elementary.

In the time before she started school, the house was filled with the belly aching of her father, who was adamantly against sending her to the suburbs, a dirty word in his mind. He claimed that there was nothing wrong with the Saint Louis City Public School district, where he’d gone from elementary to high school. During that interval, he’d make a point of slowing down whenever they happened to pass the architecturally underwhelming structure that was his high school, a plain, three story building with thick bars that covered every window. Because the building was less than a mile away from their home, he spoke of it often; her grandmother was the first to grow tired of it, cutting him off mid tirade one day.

“If you think you learned anything at that damn school but how to throw a punch and when to take one, then you a bigger dummy than I thought. Want better fo’ yo’ daughter, fool.”

This put an end to his complaining. Her father’s ego barely recovered in time for him to drop her off at the bus stop without sulking, the first morning out of a thousand.

The first few years of her schooling passed by in an unmemorable blur. They were made vaguely aware of the other’s presence only on the days when their classes came together for field days or assemblies, aware only to the extent that the sun is cognizant of other stars around it.

Fourth grade saw them finally placed into the same classroom, paired off and put together at one of the several tables arranged into rows that filled the room. The teacher created name tag tents out of multicolored tri-folded construction paper, and this was how she learned his name. Patience clung to her seat as if it were a life preserver while conversation flowed around her; two behind her discussed how Connor had fallen into Ashley’s pool over the summer. Beside her, a small group crowded around a table to discuss whose birthday was coming up next, which roller rink they would go to to celebrate, whose mother would drive who, and whose would bring them all back.

By then, she’d learned what shame was but hadn’t a word for it, and it was impossible for her to imagine any of them crowded into the front room of her house, standing on top of the carpet stained with countless dropped meals that were meant to be eaten at the kitchen table. She felt as if she was already singled out; the yellow dress she wore hung limp around her frame, somehow too small but too loose at the same time. Its color was dingy and faded after too many washes, too dissimilar from the neon orange, blue, and green t-shirts her classmates sported around her, stiff with novelty. Her mother had forbidden her to take along the gray jacket she’d taken a liking to, and had it been possible to crawl into herself rather than to be so bare in front of so many people, she would’ve in half a heartbeat.

It became immediately clear that he shared none of her reservations; his seat was empty right up until Mrs. Morrison called the class to order, her red mouth shaped into a smile that threatened to split her face. Through her memory Patience could see that she had the face of a mother even before she was one, that her brown eyes were warm and gave her the sensation of looking into the face of a puppy. Patience didn’t like or dislike the teacher at first; she was kind enough and Shanice had already warned her to be respectful. That changed on the third week of school.

The fear that Patience felt as her teacher asked her to stay back as she packed up her bag stilled her heart within her chest for a time that would only get longer each time that she looked back at the day. It was only after every other student had bled out of the classroom in a mad dash for the carpool line that she realized he was there too. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a few of their classmates conspicuously hovering near the classroom door, the curiosity plain on their wide-open faces. Older Patience knew it wasn’t their fault; they hadn’t yet learned to hide things for the benefit of others, but younger Patience didn’t care and hated them for it. Her face grew hot, and Patience looked everywhere but at Mrs. Morrison.

“Patience, Darius. I’ve noticed you two don’t seem to be getting along as well as everyone else. Is there something wrong?” Her voice was soft and spongy, as if she were attempting to coax an injured animal closer with a handful of bait; it had the opposite effect on Patience, and the dejection that flashed across the teacher’s face as she shrunk away was wholly lost upon her.

She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, focusing on the scuffed white toes of her Sketchers. If she pressed too hard against the side, Patience could feel the beginning of a hole right where her big toe was. Her stomach seized, and she curled her fingers into her palms until the discomfort was what demanded her attention more. She glanced over at his shoes; they were not new like everyone else’s in class, but they were in much better condition than hers.

“She won’t talk to me,” He pouted, crossing his thin arms. She flinched. Just that morning, when the teacher had her back turned, he’d pinched the skin of her thigh through her jeans so hard she was sure that she would bruise. Would he tell the teacher that though?

She felt Mrs. Morrison’s eyes fall onto her, and in the same moment she thought she would vomit. You don’t either, it ain’t just me, she wanted to say, but it seemed that her lips had been inexplicably sewn shut and so no chunks of blueberry muffin and sweet milk came out either. Darius made her nervous; he moved too much too quickly. He always seemed to be vying for the class’ focus, garnering the attention of the teacher by blurting out answers without raising his hand, which were almost always wrong. At recess, he seemed to run rampant without any clear objective, kicking up wood chips into the faces of other students or launching himself off the already rickety swing set without any worry as to how or who he would land on. While their classmates took her silence for standoffishness and learned to avoid her for it, Darius held entertainment value; it would take years for him to trim the barbs away from his personality into something more clean-cut and respectable that they could digest, something they could call a friend and have around their homes, into the man that would integrate himself into her family like he belonged there even more than she did.

She said nothing. Resentment swelled within her chest, leaving a bitter taste in the back of her mouth that would not water down or wash away with how much saliva she produced.

“Darius, why don’t you head out to the buses? Patience, stay behind a bit longer for me, please.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. When it was just the two of them, Mrs. Morrison steered her to the other side of her desk so that Patience could stand in front of her. Even sitting, she was still quite a bit taller than her, so rather than look up at her, she focused on each of the items in the little cubbies of her desk. Pens, little yellow squares of paper, unused versions of the activity sheets that she passed out every morning with dotted lines.

“Patience. I want you to be as comfortable in this class as everyone else, but in order to do that, you’ve got to let me help, alright?” When she still didn’t respond, the teacher sighed. “I know Darius is… a little more outgoing, but that’s not such a bad thing, I promise. Boys usually are. I think it would be good for you two to be friends.” Her voice trailed off, picking up her sentence somewhere else that Patience wasn’t willing to go. Whatever else she might have said fell upon deaf ears as she sank her teeth into the gummy inside of her cheek, counting her fingers until Mrs. Morrison gave up.

That day, she missed the bus and had to wait in the principal’s waiting room for her father to drive the forty-five minutes to come pick her up.

When the final summer of elementary bled into the first fall of middle school, Patience walked into Noorwood Middle with a crumb-free backpack and a new shiny spin lock in hand. The entire summer had been spent memorizing the code, locking and unlocking it over and over to be sure that she wouldn’t need to ask a teacher for help; as far as she was concerned, the numbers 01-24-19. On her way to room 4078, she inspected the rows of glossy green lockers with a careful eye. She would avoid the ones with dents or squeaky doors, the ones with curse words scratched into the surface by the previous owners, the ones that stank of old sack lunches.

Though this was a new school, a new classroom, a new teacher and a new beginning, not much had changed. The room smelled of fresh dry erase markers, pencil shavings and Elmer’s glue. The table tents were back, angled towards the door so that students could see them as they streamed in. There were four rows of four; with a mixture of relief and apprehension, she noted that it seemed that they were being trusted with their own desks rather than being forced to sit two to a table with their belongings in cubbies too far away to access without permission. She scanned the names quickly, eager to get out of open water. Her eyes jumped around from open seat to open seat, purposefully ignoring any that were filled; she didn’t want to talk to anyone until she knew where she could run to when the teacher called the class to order.

It didn’t take her long to find hers. In slender, loopy letters, her name was written in bright pink marker on a tent towards the center of the cluster of desks. Her feet were already taking her there, mapping a path through the backpacks and legs that littered the floor. It was purely out of curiosity that she glanced at the tent atop the desk next to hers; the letters almost refused to come together in her mind, but when they did, it felt as if she was being forced to breathe through a straw.

Understanding would come to her years later when it occurred to Patience that they were the only two who looked alike. She was not allowed to dislike Darius, and even if she did, it didn’t matter. They were the odd ones out, and in their attempt to help, their teachers would group them together over and over, oblivious to the fact that they were shoving two pieces together that, although similar in color, did not fit.

Her mother was the one that greeted him when he appeared on their porch a month and a half into the new year. For this, he thanked a God that wasn’t listening.

“Darius, how are you?” The smile she gave him was reserved for company. Five years of age fell away, and he silently appraised one of the two contributors to the face that had been at the forefront of his mind for as long as he could remember.

“Hey, Mrs. Theisen. I’m doing alright, and yourself?” He didn’t wait for her to respond, brushing past her into the house as if it were his own, making a show of knocking the snow from his shoes before he did so. “Have you seen Patience? I haven’t heard from her in awhile. I was wondering if she was ignoring me or something. You know how she gets.”

At the mention of her name, her mother kissed her teeth. She trailed behind him as he made his way from the front living room into the kitchen, taking a seat at the circular wooden table that leaned to one side and took up at least a fourth of the room. The front of Shanice’s Tweety bird t-shirt was dusted with flour. She gave him her back, returning to the sink where a pack of chicken legs waited to be seasoned. There was still much work to be done before they would be ready to be fried, and she felt a flash of regret for not having picked up something from McDonalds or ordering a pizza.

“You and me both. Her daddy think something happened to her. I think she just went back to school and ain’t told nobody. It ain’t like she gotta stay with us. It would make sense. Hell, she was always complaining about being here anyways. I’m shocked she ain’t talk to you about it though, you ‘bout the only one left here she did talk to.”

He raised his brows, his mouth forming a little ‘o.’ “Damn, forreal?” He’d forgotten himself in the act, and the apology for his language that followed was real. “Where’s Mr. Theisen? Is he looking for her now? My car finally out the shop – I can help look if you need some help.”

The offer was nothing more than a pleasantry; being alone in a car with Patience’s father was just about the last thing he wanted to do.

“Ah-ahn, ain’t no need fo’ all that, but I’ll let him know you asked. I’m sure he’d appreciate it. Now, why don’t you go and see Isaiah? I’m sure he’d appreciate yo’ visit since Patience ain’t here to.”

He was grateful for the dismissal; something simmered on the stove, and with it, the entire atmosphere of the small kitchen. He had been sitting there for no more than five minutes, but he already felt sweat beading on the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades.

Exiting the kitchen, he made his way down the hall to the basement, dragging his fingers across the walls. The closer he got, the more pungent the smell of marijuana became, and had he not had a purpose for being there, he would’ve turned right around and left. Pursing his lips, he forged on. Upon opening the door to the lower level of the house, the atmosphere changed almost instantly; there was no light bulb on the stairs, only dingy fragments that carried through the separating wall from the main area. It was cooler than it was upstairs, and the smell of weed was almost non-existent.

Darius found her brother perched on the edge of his bed, tapping away on an Xbox controller. He didn’t look away from the TV that sat on top of the dresser even when her murderer plopped himself on the bed next to him, nearly launching him into the air.

Darius wrinkled his nose at the sight of the blunt that rested near Isaiah’s left foot in a well-loved ash tray but refrained from commenting on it. Breathing out of his mouth made no discernible difference beyond giving him the faint taste of bud on his tongue.

On screen, Isaiah’s character was downed and the screen went black; it was only then did he break away, immediately retrieving the blunt. “Wassup, man. Whatchu doing here?” The fact that Patience had at one point told him that she and Darius had broken up tumbled around somewhere in his mind, just out of reach. She tried her best not to hold it against him. It had been her who had introduced the two, after all.

He watched her brother take a drag disdainfully, waving away the smoke as soon as it drifted from between his lips. “I came to see Patience, but yo’ mama told me she ain’t been here a minute. You heard anything?”

Isaiah blinked slowly at him, shrugging. “Ion know man, I ain’t even know she was gone if I’m being real witchu. She been out the house since she came back.”

On the outside, her murderer just grunted in response, returning his gaze to the tv to wait for the next game.

The four chairs at the table were filled that evening, though her father remained wherever it was that he’d disappeared to and one participant went unnoticed by the others. Heads bent, eyes closed. Isaiah stared down at his phone in his lap. Her mother whispered a soft amen.

She watched as Darius tore into her mother’s chicken; it was only when he ate that the thing hidden within him showed itself. He bit through the flaky skin and ripped away at the sinews with his incisors until they tore free, swallowing chunks of meat without flinching even as it scorched his throat going down. When her mother turned her focus on her brother to scold him for burping without so much as an excuse me as a follow up, he wiped his grease slick fingers on his jeans before dipping another leg into the hot sauce pooled at the corner of his plate. She was surprised to find herself more offended by his presence there than his actual crime; the way he smacked his lips seemed to be a personal slight against her, crude and increasingly infuriating.

“Eat up, Darius.” Her mother said to him, gesturing to Isaiah’s hardly touched plate. “My kids don’t appreciate home cooked meals; all they like is fast food, and ain’t no telling when James gon’ show his face. Patience ain’t really never liked my cooking, and it ain’t like she gon’ magically appear just to eat it.”

Shanice was unable to see as her daughter’s face crumbled in on itself, and Patience was unsure as to what her mother would’ve done even if she could have. The anger seeped out of her like air out of a balloon, and she felt herself fading from the room.

Her own mother had falsified a story for him without Darius ever having to dirty his hands sowing any seeds of doubt; she had grown that tree all by herself. Even as he sang praises to Patience’s mother, Darius knew that he wasn’t out of the woods just yet. That her father hadn’t come home meant to him that he was still looking for her, and that in itself meant that he still had hope. As far as he was concerned, hope hadn’t ever done anything good for anyone.

No one noticed when Isaiah slipped out of the house.

His chest full of heat and his face burning from the cold, he dialed his sister’s number again. It had long since stopped ringing, directing him straight to voicemail. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He’d left several already, with no response. He felt sick; his head swam and he tried not to look at the ground because he was sure if he did, he would find his feet no longer attached to it.

“You should stop smoking that shit. It’s going to kill your lungs, and then what are you going to do? I thought you wanted to run track.”

The phone nearly dropped from his hands. Darius plopped down next to him on the top step, scooting over when their thighs touched as if he’d been shocked.

Isaiah shrugged, lifting his eyes to the sky. The moon hung there like a chunk of expired, congealed milk. “Not no more.”

Had he ever really wanted to do track? He didn’t think so. Running made his chest feel small and he didn’t know what to do with his hands while they sweated. Patience had loved to make fun of him for how awkwardly he ran; like he was one of the drunks who frequented the gas station up the street. It had been her idea, a scheme to distract him from himself. She’d convinced Darius to help him out as well, and Isaiah felt the slightest bit of shame for the location of the leg weights he’d loaned him; collecting dust in whatever corner of the basement he’d tossed them.

He caught Darius staring at his phone, the screen still flashing the unanswered call status. He self-consciously flipped it over, pressing the warm screen into his cooling thigh. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than for Darius to leave.

“She’ll come around. She probably just busy or something.” His hand settled heavily on top of Isaiah’s shoulder before he fished his keys out of his pocket, rising to his full height. It reminded him of the cheesy moments depicted between father and son in the movies that his mother liked to watch, and Isaiah felt a swell of regret at not having swatted the hand away when he’d had the chance.

Darius continued, oblivious to how Isaiah now leaned away from him. “You just gotta be patient.”

Next Chapter: 11