See No Color by Shannon Gibney Page A

instant, I recognized it. I felt my face color, and I whipped around. Reggie .
    He was standing right there, a big grin on his face. His forehead was broader than I remembered; his eyes kinder.
    â€œYeah, yes,” I stammered. “Nice to see you again.” Girl, you can play some ball. It was late May now, two months since that at bat. One month since we had battled, plate to mound, and I had won. And two months since he had caught me lying about my family.
    â€œHow you doing?” he said.
    I must have looked completely bewildered because he went on. “It’s Reggie,” he said. “Reggie Carter.”
    I looked up at him sharply. “I know,” I said. “I remember you. The killer fastball. Not something I could forget too easily.”
    He grinned and crossed his arms in front of him. His whole body lit up when he smiled—like he was a completely different person, almost. “Naw, I guess not,” he said. Little crinkles formed around his eyes.
    I tried to smile.
    â€œNo one forgets you neither, do they, Ms. Kirtridge?” he said, peering at me carefully. “You and your brother and your father.”
    I felt the semblance of a smile evaporate. He was testing me, maybe trying to see how far he could push me before I broke down and unraveled the fake story I had told him before.
    â€œYeah,” I said, putting the shoe back on the wall. He’s on to you. You unblack black girl. I had already turned and was halfway out of the store when he caught up to me.
    â€œHey, can’t I—can I walk you to your car?” He looked genuinely concerned, and I wondered if I had misread him.
    I looked left and right. There was a short white lady shopping for soccer shorts with her impatient grade-school son. The sales girl was studying her nails behind the cash register. No one was watching, but I still felt naked and exposed. He was too near me and I could smell him, could almost recognize the soap he used, and it clouded my thoughts and even stifled my fear for an instant and I said, somehow, yes, and he smiled again and there was nothing else to do but fall in beside him as we walked through the mall and out to my car. By the time we got there, I felt a little grateful that I’d had to park so far from the entrance. True, I’d have to tough out another game in my old Nikes, but the monolith was even more cracked.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    â€œY ou seem different,” Kit said, while we washed the dishes. It was my turn to clean the pots and pans for the week, but she had magically appeared beside me in the kitchen, brandishing a steel wool scrubber when I was halfway through.
    I looked at her sideways. “Different like how?”
    She laughed. “I don’t know. Different . Happier.”
    I felt my face color, and I focused on scraping charred bacon grease from the bottom of the frying pan. There is no way I’m telling you. You don’t have access to every-damn-thing.
    â€œHappy is good, though,” she said, throwing some suds at my eye.
    â€¢ • •
    In truth, there wasn’t much to tell that Kit would have cared about. Reggie and I had talked mainly about baseball during the five minutes it took to walk to my car and the ten minutes we spent sitting on my hood before I finally opened my door and got in. He seemed to sense I was most comfortable when things were between the foul lines.
    I met Reggie again the next week to see a movie, and three days later, we met at his favorite Japanese restaurant for tempura, which I had never tried.
    â€œThat ain’t right,” he said, when he found that out. “What do you eat at your house, anyway? Oh yeah, you elite baseball heads probably eat no fried foods at all, huh?”
    I shrugged. “French fries sometimes.”
    He snickered. “Shit. Your dad counts them too, I bet.”
    I had mentioned almost nothing about my family to him and hoped to keep it that way. We