Emako Blue Read Online Free PDF Page B

like, she never smiles or laughs.”
    “If I looked like her, I wouldn’t be smilin’ either. . . . Savannah is too ugly,” I said, and changed the channel to BET, Rap City. Busta Rhymes was out of control. I got up to dance.
    “Sit down, Monterey. You dance like a white girl.”
    “Hey!” I said. “Why you wanna diss me like that?”
    “I’m just clownin’ with you,” Emako said.
    I sat back down and turned the channel to MTV. “What you doin’ tomorrow?” I asked.
    “Drivin’ up to Wayside to see my brother Dante. It’s visitin’ day. Once a month we go up there, sit around for a few hours, talkin’ and laughin’. Don’t misunderstand me. It ain’t like some picnic in the park, but Mama misses him.” Emako looked down. “When he first got sent there, I used to tell everyone that he went to Kansas to stay with my auntie, but everybody knew that I was lyin’. They knew where he really was. Besides, we don’t even know nobody in Kansas. So I just started telling the truth. ‘He’s at Wayside. ’ I figured that if anyone had a problem with that, then I had a problem with them.”
    “What’d he do?” I asked.
    “Gangbangin’, ballin’, got busted for dealin’ dope and carryin’ a concealed weapon and got two years. I figure he’s better off there. If he was still home with my mama, he’d be in the ground. Mama said he’s gonna get rehabilitated. She thinks he’s gonna get out, go to some trade school, learn to be a plumber or something, and his past is gonna stop following him around, but I know it won’t. Boys round our block won’t let it. He’s in too deep, so I know that he’s just gonna get out and get shot or sent up again. Dante . . . he’s got bad karma.”
    We stopped talking and watched television for a while.
    My daddy knocked. “Pizza’s here.”
    We sat down on the floor and opened the pizza box.
    “I got a job at Burger King. I start next week.” Emako smiled as she picked up a can of Mountain Dew.
    “For real?” I asked.
    “Yeah, for real . . . the BK that’s right around the corner from my house. I put in a application at Popeye’s Chicken too, but they wouldn’t hire me because I didn’t have no experience. Can you believe that? I spoze it’s easier to learn to fry hamburgers than chicken. Anyway, it’ll feel good to start putting a little change in my mama’s pocket. She’s been strugglin’ since my daddy left.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Gone,” Emako replied.
    “Gone where?”
    “Just gone, Monterey. Been gone so long, my mama calls him Been Gone Bobby Blue. I think he’s dead, but my mama said no. She said he’s just another invisible man who knows how to get lost and stay lost unless he smells money. Then you turn around and see him walking down the street toward the house, wearing a suit, smilin’ like he just got back from a vacation in Hawaii. And then, when the money runs out, he’s gone again.”
    I looked down at my pizza. I didn’t know what to say.
    “Why you gotta look so sad? It ain’t the end of my world. Besides, you wait and see. When I’m famous and livin’ large, he’ll show up with his hand out, ready to be my daddy, and you know what?”
    “What?”
    “I’m gonna tell him to get out my face.”
    Emako took a bite of her pizza and changed the subject. “So, what’s going on with you and Eddie Ortiz? I always see you lookin’ at him. I could ask Jamal to hook you up.”
    “You must be kiddin’. Eddie’s a senior.”
    “But he’s only sixteen and you need to stop bein’ so shy around him.”
    “I get nervous,” I said.
    “Next time he tries to talk to you, just act normal. A’ight?”
    “A’ight.”
    “He’s tryin’ to get early admission to college, at least that’s what Jamal told me,” Emako said.
    “Someone told me he’s real smart,” I added.
    “I’m serious. I could ask Jamal to hook you two up and then we could go somewhere, the four of us.”
    “My parents won’t let me. Not until