The Realest Ever - By Keith Thomas Walker Page 0,9

and stood before his mother.

“I guess so.”

Kyra held her daughter in her lap. Kat’s hair was freshly styled with ten shiny plaits that had the pleasant aroma of Royal Crown hair grease.

“You nervous?” Kyra asked her son. “I know I used to get nervous when I had to move to a new school.”

“You moved a lot when you were little?” Quinell asked her.

“I did,” Kyra said. “But not as much as you. When I was little, I grew up not too far from here. I went the same school you’re going to on Monday.”

Quinell’s eyes brightened. “You went to Sunrise?”

Kyra nodded. “Sure did.”

“Is it fun?”

Kyra smiled. “I don’t remember it that much. The teachers are all different now anyway. It won’t be the same for you. I remember I climbed up on the roof one time during the summer. That was fun.”

Quinell’s smile grew wider. “Really?”

“They used to have a covered walkway in the back,” Kyra recalled. “It had these poles holding it up. Me and my friend used to climb them like monkey bars. Once we got on top of the walkway, we could follow it to the school and then climb on it.”

“What was up there?” Quinell asked, his eyes glistening.

“I don’t want you trying to get up there,” Kyra said quickly. “It was stupid for us to do it. We could’a fell off and broke our neck.”

“I won’t try to get up there,” Quinell promised.

“I’m serious.” She gave him a stern look. After her trouble in Little Rock, Kyra found herself over-thinking everything about her parenting. She couldn’t bear to get call from more social workers because of a curiosity she ignited.

“I’m not,” Quinell said. “Was it toys up there?”

“That’s what we went looking for,” Kyra confirmed. “We thought we’d find all kinds of cool stuff. But mostly it was just rocks they had all over the roof. It was some Frisbees and tennis balls the kids threw up there, but they were all old and ugly from being in the sun and the rain for so long. Lord knows I shouldn’t have had my butt up there in the first place.”

But as she spoke, Kyra couldn’t stop a wistful smile from brightening her features. The voyage to the summit of Sunrise Elementary would forever be one of her fondest memories. She and Donovan were big time explorers when they were little. Their imagination was often the only escape from a reality that was much too ugly for eight year old Kyra to see every day.

“Are you glad we came back?” Quinell asked, noticing his mother reminiscing.

“I didn’t come back for me,” Kyra said. “I did it for you. I know things don’t look too good right now, but it’ll be better here in Texas. Do you like living with your auntie?”

Quinell took too long before he nodded.

“Do you like it better here or in Arkansas?” Kyra asked.

Quinell answered right away this time. “Here.”

Kyra nodded. She looked up and was happy to see their bus coming to a squeaky stop in front of them.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

The bus was fairly empty, so Kyra didn’t have to squeeze her family into two seats. She took a window seat and sat Kat in the empty spot beside her. Quinell got two seats by himself across the aisle. He faced the windows, smiling with his sneakers dangling a foot off the floor. Kyra was happy to see him happy. But she knew she wouldn’t be free of her nagging guilt until she righted all of her wrongs. The problem was, some dated back to before Quinell was born.

When she first left Texas in 1999, Kyra went to live with her Aunt Joyce in Little Rock. Joyce already had five kids of her own, including four year old twins. Joyce did the best she could to care for her sister’s brood, but she lived in a bad neighborhood, and Kyra’s brother Duke was the oldest man in the house. Kyra only had three years left in high school, and Joyce knew that she’d been fending for herself for quite a while. Aunt Joyce left Kyra to her own devices, for the most part, and she was thankful that Kyra graduated high school before she got herself pregnant.

After graduation, Kyra found a job as a waitress. Shortly afterwards, she fell in love with a boy she met at a neighborhood house party. Tommy was tall and skinny with rich, dark skin and a pocket full of dope money. He only used a condom three quarters