From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

way deep inside of yourselves where it matters the most. Angie. Angie. Angie. Say her name soft and her millions of braids are trailing behind her as she walks slow towards you saying, “Mel. You been on my mind.” Make it sugary and sweet. Make it low as a moan, deep as a holler. Angie. Angie. Angie.

Chapter Four
    A week went by with no mention of Mama’s friend Kristin. Maybe Mama had realized she’d done all she could to land a good job and now it was out of her hands. She seemed to be home a bit more, which gave us more time to talk about stuff. But there was something strange about us together these days. Something missing. . . . I had a million questions I needed to ask her about Angie. But every time I looked at Mama, it felt like I was looking at her through layers and layers of something. It seemed more and more we were talking around stuff rather than getting to the heart of things.
    Something needed to happen, though. Here I was, going on fourteen, never had a girlfriend. But I had a cute girl’s number in the pocket of my jeans and I was afraid to call her. Every time I changed pants, I transferred the number, and because I was always touching it, the numbers had begun to fade a bit and the paper was starting to fray around the edges.
    This morning, Ralph had suggested I call her up and ask her if she wanted to come over and check out my endangered species stamp collection. He had said that that was subtle enough and she was probably into stamps and stuff. I was thinking this would be a good idea, but when I turned around Sean was rolled up in a ball on my bed trying hard as he could not to laugh out loud.
    â€œWell,” Ralph said. “ I thought it was a cool idea.”
    And for a moment, I tried to make believe it didn’t matter what anyone thought. But it did. No matter how stupid people acted sometimes, it mattered. A lot. Stupid, stupid Sean. Stupid, stupid world.

Chapter Five
    Mama came into my room early one Saturday morning wearing this perfume oil called “Rain.” The scent of it wafted into my dream. I could feel her gently shaking me. Halfway between sleep and wake, I climbed up a tree to save the last Malayan flying frog. Far off, I could hear Sean laughing and yelling at me to bring my crazy behind down.
    â€œWake up,” Mama whispered. I opened my eyes slowly, feeling the frog taking a final leap out from beneath my fingertips. Almost awake, I felt my hand close over air.
    Outside my window, the sky was dawn-lavender, shot through with the dark shadows of other buildings. When I sat up, I could see the black pools of single-story roofs below me.
    â€œBeach day,” Mama reminded me. “Supposed to get up to 85, which probably means 90.”
    â€œMama?” She was standing in the doorway now, dressed in a pair of shorts, a polo shirt, and brown leather sandals. Her hair was messy and wet. “The way the sky looks, Ma? You see it?”
    Mama smiled and came back over to my bed. She stared out at the dawn for a long time before she nodded. “I want to keep the day just like this,” I said. “I want to hold on to it.”
    â€œCan’t keep a day, Mel,” Mama said, her voice hopeful and full of some sort of longing. “A day turns into night just as quickly as it dawns.”
    â€œI want this day to be different from other days. Just full up with those colors. I wish . . .” My voice cracked and I caught Mama trying to hide a smile. It was changing. Slowly, it was going from being little-boy high to something between a boy’s and a man’s. Now it couldn’t make up its mind.
    Mama put her arm around my shoulder. For a moment we stared out the window together this way, just watching the dawn move up over the buildings.
    â€œI wish some things could just go on like this,” I said.
    â€œOh, Mel,” Mama said. She rubbed my cheek before moving back over to the door.
    â€œMama . . . ?”
    I