The final bell shrieked through the hallways like a living thing, and Jeremiah flinched before he could stop himself. Around him, desks scraped, backpacks zipped, and voices rose in the familiar symphony of escape. He stayed seated for an extra minute, letting the rush thin out, watching through the window as students poured toward the gates like water through a broken dam.
Four more classes, he told himself. Fifty-two more days this semester. Then winter break. Then spring. Then graduation. Then out.
He packed his backpack slowly—binder first, then his math worksheet (folded carefully so the edges didn't tear), then the crumb-covered napkins from his sandwiches. He checked his pockets: phone, house key, nothing else. No wallet because there was nothing to put in it. No money for the bus because the bike was free.
As he stood and swung the backpack over one shoulder, his mind drifted to the apartment. To the small kitchen with its humming refrigerator and the saucepan with the loose handle. Is she home? He knew the answer before he finished the thought. His mother's second shift started at four. It was now three-fifteen. If she was home, she'd be asleep on the couch, still in her housekeeping uniform, one shoe off and one shoe on. Or maybe she'd left already, rushing out the door with a protein bar in her teeth, the apartment already dark and cold.
Maybe she cooked something, he thought, and immediately felt guilty for hoping.
She worked so hard. Two jobs, sometimes three when the rent went up or the light bill came due. Her hands were cracked from cleaning chemicals, her back ached from standing at the register, and still she came home with day-old pastries from the hotel kitchen and pressed them into his hands like they were gold. He had no right to expect dinner on the table. No right to be tired of cooking the same thing over and over.
But God, he was tired.
Rice with stew. That was his specialty—if you could call it that. He'd learned from watching YouTube videos on the library computers, pausing and rewinding until he memorized the steps. Rinse the rice until the water runs clear. Brown the chicken or beef if you had it, which you usually didn't. Sauté the onions and tomatoes and bell peppers in oil that spat at his wrists. Add the spices—the ones he could afford, which wasn't many. Let it simmer until the kitchen smelled like something other than loneliness.
He could make other things. Scrambled eggs. Oatmeal. The occasional boxed mac and cheese when his mom remembered to buy it. But rice with stew was the only thing he could make without hovering over the stove, heart in his throat, waiting for it to burn or bubble over or just taste like nothing. It was safe. It was familiar. It was also the only thing he'd eaten for dinner four nights in a row now, and the thought of it made his stomach turn.
Stop complaining, he told himself, stepping into the hallway. Some people don't eat at all.
The halls were quiet now. Echoey. His sneakers squeaked on the waxed floor, and the sound bounced off the lockers and came back to him a second too late. The four girls from Ms. Chen's classroom walked ahead of him, their voices lilting and easy, talking about someone named Tasha and something that happened at a party he hadn't been invited to. They passed him without a glance—not mean, just unaware. He was used to that. Being invisible was better than being seen.
He was almost to the side exit when he heard it: footsteps behind him. Not the shuffle of someone in a hurry. Steady. Measured. A deliberate pace that matched his own.
Jeremiah glanced back over his shoulder.
Dre.
The red bandana was still wrapped around his head, though it had loosened through the day, a few more dreads slipping free. His backpack hung off one shoulder, unzipped, a corner of a textbook visible. He wasn't looking at his phone anymore. He was looking at Jeremiah.
Jeremiah's first instinct was to speed up. His second was to slow down. He did neither. He just turned his head forward again, pulled his hood lower, and kept walking.
The footsteps got closer.
Then Dre was beside him, close enough that Jeremiah could smell something clean and sharp—soap, maybe, or cologne, something that cut through the hallway's stale air.
"What's up?" Dre said. His voice was deeper than Jeremiah expected. Not loud, not trying to be hard. Just… normal. Like they'd known each other for years and this was just another conversation.
Jeremiah's mouth went dry. "H-huh?"
"Going home?" Dre asked, glancing at him sideways. His eyes were dark, calm, with a little crease at the corner like he might be amused but was trying not to show it.
Is he talking to me? Jeremiah thought. Why is he talking to me?
He realized he hadn't answered. "I—um. Yeah. I'm… yeah."
Dre nodded, slow. They walked a few more steps in silence. The exit doors were visible now, the afternoon light spilling through the small windows in dusty rectangles.
"Why you always stay until the end of the day?" Dre asked. Not accusatory. Just curious. Like he'd noticed. Like he'd been watching.
Jeremiah's heart stumbled. "I—I don't know. I just…" He swallowed, forced the words out before his stutter could lock them down. "To get into… into uni. University. I gotta study."
Dre was quiet for a moment. Then: "Hm."
That was it. Just hm. But it wasn't mean. It wasn't mocking. It was the kind of sound someone made when they were turning something over in their head, looking at it from different angles.
"Is that it?" Dre asked.
What else would it be? Jeremiah wanted to say. What else is there? But he just nodded. "Yes."
Dre looked around the hallway—at the scuffed lockers, the flickering fluorescent light, the bulletin board with its faded posters about staying in school. When his gaze came back to Jeremiah, there was something in it that Jeremiah couldn't name. Not pity. Not judgment. Something else.
"Aight," Dre said. "Well. I'll see you around."
And then—so quick Jeremiah almost thought he imagined it—Dre's hand came up and brushed his arm. Just below the shoulder. Just for a second. His fingers were warm through the hoodie sleeve.
Then Dre was gone, walking toward the street, his sneakers loud on the asphalt.
Jeremiah stood frozen by his bike, one hand on the seat, not breathing. His arm tingled where Dre had touched him. The skin underneath felt electric, like a live wire.
What the hell just happened?
A car engine rumbled. Jeremiah looked up. A black sedan with tinted windows and spinning rims pulled up to the curb, bass thumping so hard Jeremiah could feel it in his chest. The song was Young Thug—"Wyclef Jean," maybe, or something off Jeffery, the beats chaotic and syrupy at the same time. Dre opened the passenger door and slid inside without looking back. The car peeled off, tires squealing, and disappeared around the corner.
Jeremiah stood there for a long moment, the bass fading into the distance. Then he shook his head, unlocked his bike, and swung his leg over.
The ride home was a blur.
He pedaled on autopilot, his body knowing the route better than his mind did. Left at the liquor store. Right at the church with the chain-link fence. Straight through the intersection where the stoplight had been broken for two years. The wind cooled his face, and the rhythm of the pedals was almost meditative—push, pull, push, pull—but his thoughts were a tangled mess.
Why did he touch my arm?
He touches everyone. Guys touch each other all the time. It doesn't mean anything.
But he doesn't even know me. Why would he talk to me? Why would he notice that I stay after lunch?
Maybe he's just bored. Maybe he was waiting for his ride and needed someone to talk to.
Then why didn't he talk to the girls? Why me?
He passed the laundromat. The memorial with the teddy bears. The corner where the old men sat on milk crates, already deep into their evening cans. One of them raised a hand in a lazy wave, and Jeremiah nodded back out of habit.
The apartment complex came into view—a brown stucco building with bars on all the ground-floor windows and a staircase that groaned like it was dying. He locked his bike to the railing, climbed the steps, and fumbled for his key.
The apartment was dark. And quiet. And cold.
Of course.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, leaning against it for a moment. The air smelled like nothing—no garlic, no onions, no promise of a meal waiting. Just dust and the faint chemical scent of the air freshener his mom plugged into the wall last month.
He checked the kitchen anyway. The refrigerator held a half-gallon of milk (expired tomorrow), a jar of pickles with one spear left, and a Tupperware container of something brown that he didn't want to investigate. The counter had a bag of rice, a can of tomato paste, and an onion starting to sprout.
Rice with stew it is.
Jeremiah sighed and got to work.
He rinsed the rice in a colander, the cold water running over his fingers until they went numb. He set it to boil with a pinch of salt—too much salt, probably, but whatever. The onion made his eyes water as he chopped it, the knife dull and wobbling in his grip. He didn't have bell peppers today. He didn't have meat. He had the tomato paste, some dried thyme from a jar that was mostly dust, and a bouillon cube he found stuck to the bottom of the spice drawer.
It would have to be enough.
He heated oil in the saucepan—the one with the loose handle, which he held steady with his left hand while he stirred with his right. The onion sizzled and went translucent. He added the tomato paste, watched it darken, then poured in water from the tap. The bouillon cube dissolved slowly, reluctantly. The thyme went in last, a sad sprinkle of green-brown flakes.
While the stew simmered, he checked his phone. No messages. His mom had read his text from this morning—"have a good day at work"—but hadn't replied. She was probably in the middle of cleaning a suite, or ringing up someone's groceries, or sleeping in the break room with her head on her arms.
He set the table for one.
The rice finished first. He fluffed it with a fork—or tried to; it was a little mushy on the bottom—and spooned it onto a plate. Then the stew, ladled over the top, thin and orange and smelling faintly of regret. He sat down at the small folding table, said a quick thank-you to no one in particular, and took a bite.
It was fine. It was exactly the same as last night. And the night before. And the night before that.
Jeremiah chewed slowly, staring at the wall. The apartment was so quiet he could hear the refrigerator humming, the water heater ticking, the distant thump of someone else's music through the thin walls. He thought about Dre—about his warm hand on Jeremiah's arm, about the way he'd said "I'll see you around" like it was a promise and not just a goodbye.
He probably won't even remember tomorrow, Jeremiah told himself. I'm nobody to him. Just another kid who stays after lunch.
But the vanilla on his wrists still lingered, faint now, and when he closed his eyes, he could still feel the ghost of Dre's fingers through his sleeve.
He finished his dinner, washed his plate, and went to his room. Homework waited on his desk—more math, some history reading, an essay outline for English. He sat down, pulled out his binder, and forced himself to focus.
But every few minutes, his gaze drifted to the window, to the darkening sky, to the street below where a black sedan with tinted windows might—or might not—drive by.
It never did.
He worked until his eyes burned, then brushed his teeth (skipping the perfume this time—that was only for mornings), and climbed into bed. The springs groaned under his weight. He pulled the thin blanket up to his chin and stared at the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the plaster like constellations.
Maybe tomorrow, he thought. Maybe tomorrow he'll talk to me again.
He didn't let himself finish the thought. Hope was dangerous in a place like this. Hope got you noticed. And getting noticed was the last thing a boy like Jeremiah needed.
But as he drifted off to sleep, the faintest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
And somewhere across South LA, in a different apartment with different walls and different secrets, Dre pulled off his bandana and wondered why he couldn't stop thinking about a boy in an oversized hoodie who smelled like vanilla.