The Twelfth Card

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.”
    But today, here, the point had nothing to do with being witty. Because playing the dozens was traditionally men against men or women against women. When a male offered to play with a female, it meant only one thing: flirt.
    Geneva, thinking, How weird is this? It took getting attacked to make people respect her. Her father always said that the best can come out of the worst.
    Well, go ahead, girl; play back. The game was ridiculously juvenile, silly, but she knew how to snap; she and Keesh and Keesh’s sister’d go on for an hour straight. Yo’ mama so fat her blood type is Ragu. Yo’ Chevy so old they stole the Club and left the car . . . . But, her heart beating fiercely, Geneva now simply grinned and sweated silently. She tried desperately to think of something to say.
    But this was Kevin Cheaney himself. Even if she could work up the courage to fire off a snap about his mother her mind was frozen.
    She looked at her watch, then down at her language arts book. Sweet Jesus, you wack girl, she raged at herself. Say something!
    But not a single syllable trickled from her mouth. She knew Kevin was about to give her that look she knew