You Don't Even Know Me Read Online Free Page A

Kareem’s waiting there.
    â€œY’all open?”
    â€œGo home, Kareem. We closed, for good.”
    He walks in anyhow.
    â€œBut what you gonna do with all them cookies?” His tongue sticks out the side of his mouth. “And how ’bout those?” He’s pointing to the Slim Jims and cheese packs in jars on the counter.
    Kareem is like I was when I was little—always here at the store. But he don’t just come for candy. He comes and tells me things. They found one of my grandfather’s shoes, thanks to him. It was in a vacant building; cut wide open, toe to toe. Grown-ups in this neighborhood don’t snitch. But little kids sometimes do. I never asked Kareem how he knew the shoe was there. He just told the police he was playing and he saw it. So anything he wants from me, he can have. I remember that and reach for the cookie jar.
    Kareem is nine, and little for his age. He wobbles when he walks. My grandmother says he’ll be a little person when he grows up. She’s wrong. He’s already a little person. He was born that way. Because he’s little he overdoes everything, like driving his dad’s car five miles once and crashing it. Or sneaking out the house one night, and ending up in the police station with some guys twice his age. Kareem is the one who gave me Melvin’s name and address; the guy who almost cut me today. “Don’t do me no more favors, Kareem. I almost got killed today because of you.” I sit on a stool and tell him everything.
    â€œI thought it was him,” he says, finishing his cookie. “You sure he ain’t do it?” He sits on my grandfather’s stool and tells me that we’re gonna find the right person for sure if we don’t give up. Then he asks me to open the big jar on the counter.
    â€œPickled eggs never rot or nothing. They keep ’em in the store like for a year before they throw ’em out.” His short, fat fingers go straight for the biggest, slipperiest egg. Then he tells me about the time he put six eggs in his mouth at once. Kareem makes things up sometimes. He lies, I guess you could say. But he’s a kid, so I figure it’s okay. And he wants to be big inside, my grandfather used to tell me. He would let him run the cash register, since the thing about Kareem is that he knows more about money than the people who run the numbers house six blocks away, I bet. And he knows everybody and all the streets around here, too.
    I get to work, standing seven grocery bags in the middle of the floor and putting candy in them. Here’s what I figure: I’ll give some to Kareem and his sisters, then knock on doors and just give the rest away.
    â€œWhat about Llee?” Kareem asks. “He wants some.”
    It’s like Llee and Kareem planned it, because right then Llee shows up. “You giving stuff away today?” he asks.
    I look at Kareem, then at Llee, who is seven and a half. Just like me and Kareem, he can’t stay away from this store. “Where we gonna get candy now?” Kareem wants to know. Llee asks why they can’t get candy here. Kareem explains. I keep working, taking down the frame on the wall with the first dollar bill my grandfather ever made. I’ll put that in my room.
    They eat and talk and try to change my mind. And then Llee says, “I know who killed Mr. Jenson.”
    He’s said it before. I’m not falling for it again, especially after today. So I change the subject and bring up the Boy Scouts. I’m starting a troop for them this summer. A few minutes later, Llee and Kareem bring up the shooting again. It’s always on their minds. There’s something wrong with that, I think, little kids always talking about death.
    Kareem starts talking about my grandfather’s shoes. “You think who killed him spent the money?” he asks.
    Granddad wore penny loafers. There were nickels in them that my great-grandmother