I’ve seen this before I said suddenly I know someone with the same necklace Is that so asked the woman mildly It was popular for some time I remembered Margaret wearing hers when she and Allie lived next door But what was so special about this necklace I turned it over In tiny letters a single word was etched keeper Handmade enamel silver plated on the back It’s an Indian peace sign Indian like you You’re from India aren’t you I nodded though I hated being asked that Like Ana never gets asked if she’s from Norway So I added My parents were born there but I’ve lived in Dobbs Ferry my whole life The woman brightened Oh I used to live near Dobbs We talked about the construction going on with the Aqueduct Trail and the waterfront I let her do most of the talking while I looked at the pendant I was never good at figuring out what to wear I wasn’t pretty like Ana or stylish like my mom But I could picture myself with this necklace And maybe some of the girls stopping me in the hall at school to say they liked it Even if that kind of thing never happened to me How much I asked I could still see the storm in her eyes left by her son But would she do it Would she sell me the necklace in spite of him Her face puckered Then she said Seeing you’re from Dobbs I’ll let you have it for five Five Didn’t she say handmade It was a good price I only have four I said Huh A girl with a budget she said gravely You know what it is right What it is Wasn’t it just a necklace It says keeper on it Is that the name of the person who made it Maybe it was the name of her son Though he didn’t look like a Keeper to me She shook her head It’s a finders necklace You know finders keepers Every necklace has one of those two words on the back It tells you what sort of person you are This one says you’re somebody who keeps things
Oh That didn’t seem like much to me By now Ana had joined me and she was wearing the tie-dyed cap Behind her I saw something else The craggy-faced man was coming back The woman must have seen him too because she said You have a deal Four it is Wait up Myla Ana called as I hurried across the street just as the man reached the table I could feel his eyes on me but what was he going to do I’d bought the necklace and now it was mine At the furniture store Mom saw the necklace I was wearing Where did you get that A woman sold it to me for four dollars Margaret has the same one Do you remember My parents did not She said it’s an Indian peace sign I said Indian like us Dad looked more carefully I see he said pushing up his glasses It’s an Om What’s an Om Ana asked A two-letter word Cheetah said Dad pointed to the pendant It’s this symbol I suppose you could call it a peace sign But it’s more than that He explained how in yoga the sound our mouth makes when we say Om is very important I guess he knew because he’d been doing yoga for as long as I could remember But it’s not the only two-letter word Cheetah went on There’s ai which is a kind of sloth And xu which was a coin used in Vietnam And in Scrabble you can Stop I said Cheetah was a spelling whiz which meant we had to quit family game night because he always beat everyone at Scrabble But that didn’t stop him from talking about it What about at Ana asked And it There are lots of two-letter words Yeah but those are common Cheetah said Ana laughed You’re hilarious She was always saying that to my brother even though I didn’t think he was particularly funny It was weird how they got along so easily when I hardly spoke to Ana’s little sister I fingered the cool back of my necklace Om I said to myself testing out the sound in my mouth It felt rich Like a piece of chocolate Inside the store the salesman showed us a platform bed eighteen inches above the floor six inches taller than my cinder blocks Mom said that was nothing even though you’d think for an urban designer six inches was everything Like falling into the space between the train and the platform Six inches could mean the difference between life and death Myla you brought a ruler Ana asked watching as I measured She’s scared of sleeping on a bed Cheetah explained to the salesman
I gave him a shove when my parents weren’t watching By now I was tired of looking like a freak so I said yes to the eighteen-inch-high bed Then I went to the bathroom even a girl It was the craggy-faced man from the jewelry table That necklace he said his voice like gravel I want it back As I washed my hands I studied my reflection with the necklace on Would people finally notice me because of it I’ve thought about it before about being noticed because I’m short and I have thin eyebrows and a thin nose and I’m not the most smiley person My hair is frizzy and isn’t a true Indian black like my parents more a dark brown with highlights you only see in the sun That sounds interesting but most people don’t notice the highlights or me Just then the door to the bathroom opened I thought it was Ana but it wasn’t her Or
At the beginning of summer Ma bought Randall and me each a pair of Air Jordans She got them off the street near St Vincent Ave and probably they were fakes but when you put them on you hoped they weren’t Like maybe the dude was selling them cheap because he needed the cash There was something sweet about the sound of the new rubber on the sidewalk the way it squeaked when I stopped in my tracks I wore my Jordans all summer even when my feet got sweaty and the shadows of Michael Jordan on the sides cracked I wore them because Randall did and it was one way of telling the world we were brothers though Randall probably didn’t see it that way The Saturday night before he disappeared Randall slipped his Jordans on and went out the fire escape to meet with his crew But when I tried to follow him like I always did he stopped me I can’t have you tripping on your face and getting hurt he said standing on the fire escape while I was at the window I don’t do that I said insulted Your feet are too big That makes you a clown Stay home clown But you need me How else will you climb back up I’ve got my brothers he said When he said that it stabbed me inside my chest I’m your brother You’re a clown I tried to think of something to say that would stop him from leaving without me What’s in the duffel bag I asked I was talking about the blue canvas bag Randall kept locked and hidden under his bed which he went through at night when he thought I was asleep I knew the duffel bag had belonged to our pop And our pop was dead I watched him Then I thought why do I always have to listen to him So I didn’t I went out the window the way he did The metal rungs of the fire escape were bumpy with rust under my hands At the end of the steps I jumped I hit the ground hard like I always did scuffing up my knees But so far I’d never broken my legs Ten minutes later Randall reached the train station with me twenty paces away I hid behind a trash can Up ahead I saw all the guys Skinny MaxD Nike and the two Points dressed in dark clothes with scarves around their faces There was no moon and None of your business Randall said Go back to sleep Petey Then he leaped down to the sidewalk below
