Magic Street Read Online Free PDF

figured out how to do it yet?"
    "Too much stuff under my bed, nobody can get under there."
    They laughed about that for a moment.
    "I think Miz Smitcher, she call the cops," said Ceese.
    "She call the cops on us, I just have to pay her a visit later."
    Raymo always talked that way. Like he was dangerous. And grownups took him at his word—treated him like he was a rattler ready to strike. But in the past few months since Raymo's mom moved into one of the rental houses owned by Ceese's brother Antwon, they'd been together enough that Ceese knew better. Truth was, it surprised him that after all his brag, Raymo actually did score a bag of weed.
    That was Ceese's problem now. It was easy to tell Raymo that if he scored some weed, Ceese would smoke it with him, because he thought it was like the girls Raymo was always bragging about how they liked him to slip it to them in the girls' bathroom at school or behind the 7-Eleven. All talk, but nothing real. Then he shows up with a Ziploc bag full of dry green leaves and stems, along with some roll-your-own papers, and what was Ceese supposed to do? Admit it was all fronting?
    So now he had to think, was Raymo putting on when he threatened to do something bad to Miz Smitcher?
    "Look, Raymo, Miz Smitcher, she okay."
    "Nobody okay, they call the cops on me."
    "Let's just ride down Cloverdale before the cops come and do the weed another time."
    "You got it in your pocket, Ceese. You decide," said Raymo. But his smirk was saying, You chicken out this time, you ain't with me next time.
    "I heard that," said Raymo.
    "You spose to," said Ceese.
    "You telling me I can't tell weed from... weeds?"
    That's what I'm telling you all right. "No," said Ceese. "How would I know?"
    "So you don't get high, you going to start telling everybody I couldn't tell weed from daffodils?"
    "You can't help it, you buy fake weed."
    "Just give me the bag and fly on home to Mama," said Raymo. "Dumb little—"
    "No, I'm okay with it, I'll smoke it with you."
    "I don't want you to," said Raymo. "You a virgin, I don't want to be your first time."
    Ceese hated it when he twisted everything to be about sex. "Let's just smoke it," said Ceese, and he started walking through the wildflowers growing profusely between the road and the lawn.
    "Not here," said Raymo. "Somebody pack your head with stupid?"
    "You said we going to smoke the weed up by the pipe."
    "On the way back down the hill."
    "We got to walk all the way up to the top?"
    "When your daddy call somebody to see if you really go to the top, they say yes, they saw us go up there, we rode back down."
    "My daddy don't know anybody higher up Cloverdale than his own house."
    Just then an old homeless man came out of one of the houses on the downslope side of Cloverdale, carrying a bunch of grocery bags, some full, some empty. The old man winked at them and Ceese couldn't help it, he waved and smiled.
    "You know that guy?" asked Raymo.
    "He told me he your long-lost daddy, come to see how you turn out, decide if your mama be worth—"
    "Shut up about my mama," said Raymo.
    admitted that—Ceese only knew because his own mama told Miz Smitcher once.
    They walked farther up the hill.
    Word Williams was standing at the curb, looking down the street.
    "Look at that kid, wishing he was us," said Raymo.
    "He ain't even looking at us," said Ceese.
    "Is so."
    But he wasn't. As they got closer, he moved back onto his yard so he could look around them, down the hill.
    "Whazzup, Word?" said Ceese.
    Word looked at him like he'd seen him for the first time that moment.
    The door to Word's house opened and his older sister Andrea leaned out and called to him.
    "Get in here, Word, it's time to eat."
    Word looked back down the road, then glanced at Ceese as if he wanted to ask a question.
    "Word!" said Andrea. "Don't act like you don't hear me."
    Word turned and walked back toward the house.
    Raymo was a half-dozen steps ahead. Ceese ran to catch up.
    "What you talk to that boy