Free Long Division by Kiese Laymon

brushed your teeth. Now you brush your teeth on the regular and chew gum.”
    Shalaya Crump was dying laughing but I was just telling the truth.
    “Don’t try and laugh it off,” I told her. “You changed so I can change too. And maybe I changed how I talk from listening to you. You ain’t ever think about that?”
    “Whatever, boy,” she said and got serious again. “The point is I ain’t giving out no kisses or no tongue like peppermints. I ain’t no gotdamn Candy Girl. Now can you please shut the hell up and let me show you something?”
    We stepped into the cold Night Time Woods together. From inside the woods, the purple gray of the road cut through the green just enough that it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen next to Shalaya Crump’s face. Any other color against that green wouldn’t have been so pretty, but this purple gray and green was more than pretty. This purple green and gray made me know that Shalaya Crump and me were meant to be kissing soon.
    I grabbed Shalaya Crump’s hand as soon as we got deep in the woods. In six years of knowing Shalaya Crump, this was the first time I had ever held her whole hand and had her lead me into something. We had held hands before when we were in Sunday school and I tried to tell her that her hands were the sweatiest girl hands in the country. But this time was different. Shalaya Crump held on, and even when I loosened my grip, she held on even tighter. That’s always how you can tell if a girl likes you. If you loosened your grip and she loosened hers, you might as well go play football with your boys or something, because nothing is gonna pop off. Anyway, I felt like we were in our own version of “Thriller.”
    “City, I can’t do this by myself anymore. I need you to come with me.”
    “Need me to what?”
    “To come with me.”
    “Where?”
    Shalaya Crump knelt down next to this rusty handle that was covered in pine needles and leaves. The handle looked like thehandle of this rusted brown iron Mama Lara used to keep her doors open. When Shalaya Crump pulled the handle, this hole inside the ground opened up. The door to the hole had rusty handles on both sides so someone inside the hole could pull the door shut if they needed to. Inside the hole were these dusty steps that led straight down to red clay. Shalaya Crump stepped half-down in the hole in the ground and looked up at me. All that was left outside the hole was her boobs, her head, and her bony arms. She looked back at me and said, “Please, City. Don’t let me go by myself this time. I need to show someone.”
    If anyone else in the world, including my mama or Mama Lara, were boob-deep into a hole in the ground, asking me to follow them, I would have run away and called the police. But standing right there, watching Shalaya Crump want me to help her so bad, made me ask myself when was the next time I could count on Shalaya Crump inviting me anywhere dark, small, and secret with her. I figured the worst thing that could happen is that we could get covered in worms or maybe it would be too hot in the hole and my sack would commence to smelling sour. But worms don’t bite, I told myself, and Shalaya Crump’s underarms were already funky as six recesses.
    The hole wasn’t the easiest to get in if you had wide hips, but after a while, I was in. “Now what?” I asked her. “Does my breath stank like stale Miracle Whip?”
    Shalaya Crump grabbed my hand with her left hand and grabbed the handle with the other hand. “Don’t let go,” she said, “until I open the door again, okay?” Shalaya Crump pulled the secret door closed and darkness swallowed everything you were supposed to see.
    “Your eyes closed, Shalaya?”
    “Naw,” she said. “Yours?”
    “Yeah.” I kept them closed for about ten seconds and tried to find Shalaya Crump’s hand. “What about now? Your eyes still open?”
    “Yeah, City. You should open yours, too.”
    “Mine are open now,” I lied. “I ain’t