Free Tutored by Allison Whittenberg Page A

children under two to the hospital each year.”
    She went on to say that babies like Malikia should always be in a sterile environment and avoid crowds. He thought about the parties Leesa had and wondered if maybe the kid was just naturally immune to this RSVcrap. He had certainly never thought to wash his hands before touching Malikia. He always did that afterward.
    “You really know your stuff,” he told her.
    “I’ve got a lot to learn in order to be a doctor. Even after that there’s a lot that’s unknowable. Medicine’s an art, not a science.”
    As she reached for the door, he thought,
Okay, it’s sink or swim. Now is the time to do it. So start like you mean to finish, Hakiam
.
    The streetlights shone down on them, and Leesa, from up above, peered out of a dingy window.
    A couple of fellas on the corner twisted around to see.
    Here goes nothing
. His hand searched up her back, then back down the curve of her spine, and he went in for a landing.
    At first, she pushed him away.
    He smirked at that. She was a quick one, always with her guard up.
    Their eyes met and then she seemed to better understand his intentions. Her defenses melted.
    This time she initiated it. She moved her lips closer to his.
    They kissed for a few minutes, pressing their bodies together.

20
    “Y ou went where?” was her dad’s predictable response.
    “Fifty-first and Ruby, Dad, and before you MapQuest it, yes, that is square in the slums.”
    “You’re not in the least bit amusing, young lady. I know very well where that is. What did you go there for?”
    Wendy told him that she had gone to see the young man she’d been tutoring.
    He pointed a stiff finger at her and said, “You’re making house calls now? Don’t you ever, ever go there again.”
    It was something Wendy, as the perennial good daughter, had thought she’d never hear. She was actually forbidden to do something! This was cause for celebration, or at the very least a diary entry.
    What followed was all new to Wendy. Though her dad had always done a lot of spying on her, this time there was actually substance and not just shadows he waschasing. That Wednesday, he hovered by the doorway of her room after he’d heard her phone go off.
    “Is that Erin?” he asked, entering from the hallway.
    “Is she the only person I know?” Wendy answered his question with a question.
    “It better not be that boy,” he warned.
    “I’ve got to go, talk to you later,” Wendy told Hakiam, and tried to hang up.
    Her father grabbed the phone, saying, “Hello, hello!”
    “He’s gone, Dad.”
    “It was him!”
    “Dad, you are a genius of detection.”
    “This has got to stop, Wendy.”
    “What has got to stop? Me having harmless conversations on the telephone?”
    “Yes. I’m canceling this phone.”
    Wendy sprang to her feet. “What?”
    “You don’t need it.”
    “I don’t need to communicate with the outside world, Dad?”
    “Exactly!” he answered.
    “Fine!”
    “Wonderful!” he said even louder.
    “
Fantastic!
” she screamed.
    With that, her dad exited the room. She thought she was rid of him for the night, but he came back wagging his finger at her. “Let me tell you something else, young lady. Martin Luther King was a great man, but he basically died for nothing when you look at this current crop. His dream of black and white children holding hands—”
    “Why are you giving a recitation on black history?”
    He continued, “Who in his right mind would want to live next to those people, let alone hold hands with them?”
    “You’re kind of sweeping through history, aren’t you?”
    “If I had to live in the ghetto, I’d move.”
    “Dad, if you had to live in the ghetto, you couldn’t move. That’s the idea of a ghetto.”
    He shook his head. “I did move. I grew up on Fifty-first and Kingsessing, and it was a dump back then. I can’t imagine what it looks like now. You grew up in the lap of luxury, but I grew up in a fire, Wendy. A fire.