‘Hey,’ I say, ‘let’s cut.’
Diane’s eyes widen. ‘What?’
I shrug, Miss Odeen’s comments about my effort slipping away. ‘Wouldn’t you like to avoid Mr Morris this afternoon?’ I ask Diane. I don’t tell her that I also want to get away from school, away from too much time in classroom after classroom with blocks of boredom stretching out in front of me, making it too easy for Preston’s drunken, slurred voice to snake into my brain.
Maybe I only need a minute.
Diane is still insisting she isn’t sure as we head down the stairs and out of the building, students spilling out onto Eastside’s lawn for lunch. I grab her by the hand and tug her toward Telephone Road.
‘Come on,’ I say, consumed by the need to run. To go. ‘I bet you’ve never cut. Not even once, right?’
She shakes her head no, and it strikes me how strange it is that this girl took a boy down with a switchblade to protect me, but she’s never skipped a single minute of school.
‘It’s just this once,’ I tell her, ‘just for today.’ I don’t know why it’s so important to me to leave school now with Diane. There’s something freeing, maybe, about taking off with the one other person who was with me that night at Winkler’s. Who knows exactly what happened to me and how terrible it was. Even if there is a part of me that wishes I could have been the one to defend myself.
‘Well,’ says Diane, following me and not protesting all that much, ‘all right, I guess.’
Still hand in hand, we prepare to cross Eastside’s perimeter near an edge of the campus I know few adults will be monitoring, when suddenly I catch a glimpse of Johnny Treadway heading out of a side door of the school building all by himself.
‘Hey,’ he shouts, nodding his chin in our general direction.
I turn and meet his eyes with mine, and I feel Diane grip my hand, and hard, too.
‘Hello,’ she says, her eyes homing in on him, her face breaking out into a soft, uncertain smile.
‘Hey, Johnny,’ I say, still leading Diane off campus. ‘If you see Connie and the others, tell her we’re taking a vacation, will you?’ I applaud myself for such a witty comment in front of a boy as cute and tuff as Johnny Treadway, but I realize he’s not all that interested in what I’m telling him. Instead, his eyes are set on Diane, following her, just like they were yesterday during lunch.
‘Okay,’ he finally manages, never losing focus. ‘I’ll tell them.’
Diane is still peering at him over her shoulder as I lead her toward the closest bus stop, and when the city bus lumbers closer and we climb on, I can tell she’s still lost in thought, or at least in Johnny Treadway’s deep brown eyes. Not that I blame her for that, of course. Then again, part of me thinks a girl like Diane wouldn’t ever give a boy like Johnny the time of day.
As the bus moves, the thick, sweet scent of gasoline and exhaust cuts through the air, but I just sit back and feel the rumble of the bus’s wheels under us, drawing us farther and farther away from school and crowded halls and complicated cafeteria conversations and teachers who aren’t Miss Odeen frowning at me, their eyes full of fake concern.
For the first moments of our ride, Diane hums to herself, deep in thought. First a Beatles song I recognize, then something I don’t. Her face is relaxed and open, maybe the most at peace I’ve ever seen it.
At last she turns to me and says, ‘I can’t believe we cut class.’ She offers an exaggerated frown. ‘You’re a bad influence, Evie.’ But then a smile cracks her face in two, revealing her perfect white teeth. She winks.
‘I guess I am,’ I say, and I smile, too. I turn and peer out the window, smudged with fingerprints. ‘This bus goes downtown,’ I say. ‘Where do you want to go?’
Diane sits up straighter, grinning even more widely. ‘Oh, let’s go to the Jive Hive. Please? Do you know it? On McKinney and Main?’
‘The record store?’ I ask. ‘Yeah, I know it.’ I’ve been there a few times with Connie and the others, and one time we got kicked out for loitering too long and not buying anything, but it seems as good an idea as any.
‘I love that place,’ Diane says. ‘I’m absolutely mad about music.’
I smile at her, because of course she is. That must be why she’s always humming to herself. But then why didn’t her sad little bedroom have a single record in it? I want to ask, but something stops me, and instead I turn my attention out the window.
As the bus lurches through downtown, we pass Sakowitz and Foley’s, and the Loew’s State Theater on Main. I can remember the ruckus last year and the anger among some white people when it integrated and everyone was allowed in through the big brass doors up front. I heard about the students from Texas Southern University, the Negro college in town, holding sit-ins to finally integrate the lunch counters at Mading’s Drugs and Union Station. But I also remember Fannie Lou Hamer’s words and the terrible things that happened to her when she tried to vote. It seems some things are changing for the better, and other things aren’t changing at all.
As this jumble of thoughts floats through my mind, I ask Diane what she thought about Miss Odeen’s assignment on Fannie Lou Hamer.
‘I really liked that Miss Odeen taught us about her and everything she had to go through,’ she answers. ‘I feel stupid that I didn’t know about her before. But I could tell some of the kids didn’t like the lesson.’
‘I could tell, too,’ I answer, shifting in my seat. ‘Diane, don’t you think it’s strange that we don’t go to school with everyone like they do up north? Don’t you think it’s not right?’
Diane ponders for a moment before she answers. ‘Yes. But I do know parents like mine would get so angry if that happened. They say the most awful things when they see the news.’
It’s odd to have Diane mention her parents, and I can tell when she does that she’s caught herself off guard. Like she didn’t mean to bring them up at all.
‘I don’t think my mother would be angry,’ I say. ‘At least I hope she wouldn’t be.’
When it was in the papers this past July that President Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act, my mother said she was proud that it was a Texan who had done it. But my grandmother didn’t say anything at all.
‘My parents are hateful people,’ Diane murmurs, her mouth in a firm line, her eyes suddenly clouded with concern. I feel guilty that the topic has come up, and I mutter a quiet apology.
‘It’s all right, Evie,’ Diane says as she reaches up to ring the cord and let the bus driver know we want to get off. ‘I’m used to thinking of them that way.’ The way she says it, I can tell it’s not really true, but I don’t press. Instead, I follow her as we hustle through downtown, passing businessmen racing through crosswalks and shopgirls gossiping and smoking as they head off for their lunch breaks. By the time we reach the Jive Hive, with the painting of a cheerful bumblebee playing a saxophone on the front window, Diane’s good mood seems to be returning. Just as we reach the door, she pauses and touches me lightly on the arm.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get so prickly on the bus,’ she says. ‘I just do sometimes when I think about them.’ Then she nods toward the record store. ‘Anyway, we’re here now, and that’s certainly helping.’ She offers me a smile and I return it, but as we head inside, I can’t help but wonder one more time what this girl is hiding.