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.”

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 so well, that I-ain’t-got-time-t’waste-on-wack-bitches look, and walk off. But, no, it seemed he thought that she just wasn’t in the mood to play, probably still freaked from the morning’s events, and that was all right with him. He just said, “I’m serious, Gen, you’re about more’n just DJs and braids and bling. What it is, you’re smart. Nice to talk with somebody smart. My boys” – he nodded toward his posse’s table – “they’re not exactly rocket scientists, you know what I’m saying?”

A flash in her mind. Go for it, girl. “Yeah,” she said, “some of ’em’re so dumb, if they spoke their minds, they’d be speechless.”

“Def, girl! Straight up.” Laughing, he tapped his fist to hers, and an electric jolt shot through her body. She struggled not to grin; it was way bad form to smile at your own snap.

Then, through the exhilaration of the moment, she was thinking how right he was, how rarely it happens, just talking with somebody smart, somebody who could listen, somebody who cared what you had to say.

Kevin lifted an eyebrow at Detective Bell, who was paying for the food, and said, “I know that dude fronting he’s a teacher is five- 0.”

She whispered, “Man does sorta have ‘Cop’ written on his forehead.”

“That’s word,” Kevin said, laughing. “I know he’s stepping up for you and all and that’s cool. But I just wanta say I’ma watch yo’ back too. And my boys. We see anything wack, we’ll let him know.”

She was touched by this.

But then troubled. What if Kevin or one of his friends got hurt by that terrible man from the library? She was still sick with sorrow that Dr. Barry had been killed because of her, that the woman on the sidewalk had been wounded. She had a horrible premonition: Kevin laid out in the Williams Funeral Home parlor, like so many other Harlem boys, shot down on the street.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, unsmiling.

“I know I don’t,” he said. “I want to. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. That’s word. Okay, I’ma hang with my boys now. Catch you later? ’Fore math class?”

Heart thudding, she stammered, “Sure.”

He tapped her fist again and walked off. Watching him, she felt feverish, hands shaking at the exchange. Please, she thought, don’t let anything happen to him…

“Miss?”

She looked up, blinked.

Detective Bell was setting down a tray. The food smelled so fine… She was even hungrier than she’d thought. She stared at the steaming plate.

“You know him?” the policeman asked.

“Yeah, he’s down. We’re in class together. Known him for years.”

“You look a little addled, miss.”

“Well…I don’t know. Maybe I am. Yeah.”

“But it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened at the museum, right?” he asked with a smile.