Read Leaving Atlanta for Free Online Page B

imagined that he wouldn’t.
    The conversation deteriorated into fifth-grade macho, with the boys illustrating in competing detail how they would handle
     a homicidal white woman.
    Tasha was bored. The only white woman she could think of was skinny Miss Russell with her paint and clay, and any idiot could
     see that she wasn’t about to try and kill anyone. As a matter of fact, Tasha thought that she was really nice and even liked
     her. She felt guilty listening to the boys discuss hypothetical acts of violence toward the art teacher, even if it was in
     hypothetical self-defense. The recess bell finally rang and the sound of tennis shoes rustling pine needles drowned out Roderick’s
     insistence on the ferocity of his karate chop.
    Tasha walked about a pace and a half behind her companions.
    “What you waiting for?” Monica asked.
    “I’m not waiting,” Tasha said, hoping to sound casual.
    “Her boyfriend,” Forsythia said. “I saw you looking at Jashante the whole time.”
    Tasha stared at the pretty girl incredulously. It was unspoken but accepted that Monica would be the one to initiate all teasing
     or ridicule. This was unprecedented; Tasha was unprepared.
    “I was not looking at that boy.” She shoved her hands into her fur muff.
    “And he was looking right back at her.”
    “No he wasn’t,” Monica said. “Jashante wasn’t studying Tasha.”
    Now Tasha was unsure if Monica was coming to her defense (also unprecedented) or if she was implying that Tasha wasn’t cute
     enough for a boy to look at, even one like Jashante. Because of this double possibility, Tasha was unsure how to respond.
    Monica continued. “Tasha wouldn’t talk to somebody like that anyway. He been kept back so many times that even
he
don’t know what grade he supposed to be in. And”—she lowered her voice—“he lives in the projects.”
    “So,” Forsythia said. “She was still looking at him. You saw it too; that’s why you elbowed me.”
    “Looking isn’t the same as talking.”
    “She was smiling too.”
    “I was just trying to be nice,” Tasha said.
    Forsythia said, “My mama says you just can’t
be
nice to some people.”
    Now what did that mean? There were some people that kids weren’t nice to, like Octavia Fuller, who they called the Watusi;
     but Tasha figured that everyone could be nice to her if they felt like it. Maybe there were some people that you just
couldn’t
be kind to, but she was pretty sure that she hadn’t met any of them.

    DeShaun wasn’t scared anymore. She could eat an entire plate of spaghetti while the newscaster talked about the Missing and
     Murdered Children. Tasha watched her sucking the noodles into her figure-eight mouth; the end of each pasta string slapped
     her gently under her nose.
    “You’re not supposed to eat like that,” Tasha told her. “You can choke like that.”
    “For real?”
    “And when you choke, your lips turn blue. You’ll be trying to call somebody to help you but you won’t even have enough air
     to talk with—”
    “Tasha, cut that out,” Daddy said.
    As soon as Daddy started paying attention, DeShaun started acting like she was really worried about choking.
    “Do kids really choke on their spaghetti and die, Daddy?”
    Daddy gave Tasha a long look that said that he was mad. She would have given DeShaun a hard pinch under the table if she thought
     she could get away with it. But there was nothing that she could do with Mama and Daddy both sitting right there.
    At night, in their canopy beds, Tasha said to her sister, “I wonder what’s happening to all those boys.” There was no noise
     from DeShaun’s side of the room. “Someone, or some
thing
, is hunting them.”
    “Some
thing?
” DeShaun said. “What do you mean by that?”
    Tasha smiled in the gentle orange glow of the night-light. “I mean that whatever is killing those kids might not be a person.
     It could be a creature or something.”
    “What kind of creature?”
    “Oh,