Everyday People Read Online Free Page A

Pooh Bear? He comes.”
    â€œThat roly-poly bitch? I thought he got shot.”
    â€œHe did. Now he’s a deacon over St. James in Highland Park.”
    â€œGet on.”
    â€œRemember Guy Collins?”
    â€œNow I know you frontin’. Guy Collins’s name is Malik. I know cause his cousin Anthony told me.”
    â€œThat’s when he was inside. When he came out he changed back. He’s married to that gal Florence now, they come twice a week. I’m telling you, you’d be surprised; it’s not like Sister Payne’s old-biddy prayer circle. It might be just what you need.” He was really selling it, his eyes shining, his ham just lying there in its juice. “We got a ramp and everything.”
    â€œThat’s all right,” Crest said.
    â€œDoor’s always open.” He said it like Reverend Skinner, like he owned the whole place, and all Crest could think of was the day U brought home Brother Sony, still in the box. He and Fats and Big Nene had busted into a truck over behind Sears. Used to be like that all the time—full of surprises.
    After U went to put on his suit, Pops leaned across and said not to take it personal. “He’s just a little excited right now. Remember, he was away a long time.”
    â€œI know,” Crest said, thinking: What about me, how long was I gone?
    Now The Doctor leans over Tom Paris’s mouth again, this time with a steel test-tube thing, and one of the girls squeals, “Don’t be doing that, fool!”
    There’s a blast of green light—“Here we go,” Cardell says—and when the picture comes back, The Doctor’s still looking, Tom’s still got his mouth open.
    The Doctor straightens up, stiff like always. “I think we’ve succeeded.” He holds up the test tube, all smug. Inside it, a green light shines.
    They’re going to try to clone it, see if they can get it to reproduce so it won’t go extinct.
    â€œNow that’s just a plain mistake,” Janelle French says, shaking her head.
    But then, in his quarters, Tom Paris gets this headache. It’s killing him. He goes to the mirror, holding his head with both hands, and his eyes are completely green.
    â€œAw yeah,” Little Nene says. “That’s what happens you fuck with that green shit.”
    â€œShow you right,” Crest says, punching the mute button.
    A car cruises by, slides right through the stop sign, and they all watch it hard, thinking it might be B-Mo’s crew from Brushton looking for some payback on Nene and his fellas, but it’s just some old nutty-professor-looking white dude in a raggedy Oldsmobile, his windows rolled up. Must be lost—or on the pipe, looking to cop some rock. As he passes, Cardell walks out into Spofford to let him know he’s being scoped, then comes back.
    â€œAny those Cheddars left?”
    In the middle of the next scene, Little Nene’s beeper goes off, and he and Cardell gotta jet. “Later, C.” Crest watches them down the block, thinking how tight he and Bean were. Boy always had his back, didn’t matter if it was Morningside or North Braddock, Oakland or the North Side, and just like he didn’t want to happen, he sees Bean on the bridge, going over, and he reaches for him and catches his sleeve and then both of them go, the hard white bed of the busway flying up at them like a blank page, a wall of snow. It was only twenty feet, that’s the part he’ll never understand.
    No one knows Tom Paris is the alien. He spreads the DNA like a vampire, biting people in the corridors. When his eyes turn green, the test tube glows. Half the ship is walking around like zombies, and now Crest can’t remember how it ends—something with the Holodeck, or maybe a special drug The Doctor cooks up. It doesn’t matter; Bean is here again, and the minutes Crest spent waking up in the hospital, the light above the table,