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“Mr. Jenkins said Rickards is an urban high school,” Charles had told Mr. Matherne, his A.P. history teacher and an old friend of his mother’s.

“Jenkins dropped the U on you, huh?” Mr. Matherne shook his head the way he always did when Mr. Jenkins came up, as though the principal’s name was a fly buzzing around his ears. “You know what that means, right?”

“Ghetto,” Charles and Mr. Matherne said in unison.

“It won’t be easy, being the only vegan in the ghetto,” said Mr. Matherne, and that was the double truth, Ruth. Charles’s dad didn’t buy that shit, and his gramma, while she tried, didn’t understand, and so the only people he knew who really understood what the V-word meant were back in Baltimore. Person, Charles would correct himself, person, because even back home he’d never told his friends when he restarted his vegan clock, and while Mr. Matherne was still embedded in 4A waging his one man war against ignorance, Charles’s mom was gone, even if her bones weren’t going anywhere.

Southside was the ghetto, too, Charles soon realized, even worse than the Frenchtown neighborhood that lay bunched up on the far side of the public library. Lie-berry, his gramma pronounced it, and Charles winced every time. For an “urban” area there were a lot of dirt roads linking the narrow paved streets, actual dirt roads shaded by the huge live oaks that peppered Tallahassee, as if the rednecks who had built the place didn’t know the meaning of the word city. The shotgun shack Charles moved into with his dad and gramma was over a mile from the library but three blocks from the nearest liquor store, two if you took the path through the kudzu-smothered vacant lot next door. That’s a ghetto, all right, Mr. Matherne had agreed in his last email to Charles, watch out for drive-bys.

Except Tallahassee wasn’t enough of a city to have drive-bys, at least not real ones. A silver hatchback full of white kids would occasionally prowl down the narrow streets to shout or throw trash at the crack-veterans who patrolled Southside like the world’s shadiest neighborhood watch. They had pegged Charles with a McDonald’s bag when he was returning from a library trip, the car’s bass almost-but-not-quite muffling the sound of laughter. Looking down at the class-trash they had nailed him with Charles felt the old sting in his eyes and the shaking in his legs, then let out a long sigh and kicked the bag away. At least they hadn’t jumped him like the crew of Southside locals that took umbrage to a cheeseduplittlebitchsteppinout, or whatever they had said.

“They just think you’re a faggot cause of your glasses,” Charles’s dad had told him knowingly, his sour breath reeking like whatever was on sale at the ABC. “Next time clock’em in the face.”

“I can’t fight them all,” Charles had said, instantly regretting having told his father. “And don’t say faggot. The community’s ignorance about homosexuality—”

Are you a faggot?” Charles couldn’t tell if his dad was messing with him or not but the way he recoiled reminded the boy uncomfortably of his own reaction when Mr. Matherne had casually mentioned his orientation during one of their first lunches together.

“No,” said Charles, his heart picking up like it did when other kids focused their attentions on him. “But so what? As black males it’s our responsibility to cut out the bullshit homophobia—”

“Don’t take that high tone with me,” his dad scowled. “This ain’t that dumb comic strip, and this community don’t care about hurting your feelers. Fifteen years old and already talkin like her. Comin down here’ll do a world of good for you.”

Her. Charles went inside and his dad stayed on the porch, reflecting through his buzz that it was maybe still a little soon to discuss the problematic rearing his ex-girlfriend had given their only child. He had reason enough to be bitter with her, and once the kid got himself together he’d set’em straight. She’d cut north after graduation, not even telling him about the boy until Charles was five, for christsake, and then refused to take the boy to visit, making him fly up instead, and by then Charles was ten or eleven, already looking like that Urkel kid with those glasses and pressed clothes, so it’s not like he could be blamed for being a deadbeat dad or whatever—he didn’t even know about the kid for years, so how the hell was that his fault?

“These are good,” Charles said as he chewed the turnip greens and surreptitiously pushed the ham further away from his oasis of watery vegetation.

“Long’s you’re in my house you’ll have vegtables,” his gramma said, patting his knee.

“Next time let me know before you cook,” said Charles. “I’d like to learn to cook southern like you, ma’am.”

“Cookin’s good work,” his gramma said, giving Charles’s snickering father a reproachful glance. Since moving down Charles had found himself cooking far more than he ever had at home. There was a hippy grocery store an hour walk or so down Magnolia so he’d been able to spend what little allowance his dad gave him on actual safe food. That, and plain bean burritos at the Taco Bell. Once he had started public school Charles had covertly revolted against his mother’s diet, but ever since the funeral he couldn’t look at meat or smell eggs without getting queasy. He knew it would make her happy if he—

“Jus put the hamhock in with the greens, so they soak the flavor and—” His gramma went on, making Charles’ dad howl with laughter as the boy put down his fork. She broke off, confused. “What? What’s funny, Douglas?”

“Nuthin,” Charles’s dad said, spearing a piece of the pink meat and waggling it at his crestfallen son. “Nuthin at all. Clean your plate, Charlie, or no allowance this week. Serious, now, you need meat.”

Reset vegan clock to zero, Charles thought glumly as he picked up his fork. The longest he had made it so far was four days. By the time he had worked his way through the greens his dad was back on the couch and his gramma took the ham off his plate, winking at him. “Tonight you don’t gotta, but you’ll get sick if you don’t start eatin right, Charlie.”

Charles went to his room and looked at his twin stacks of books. The pile that was on semi-permanent loan from the Matherne Collection consisted of the poetry of Langston Hughes, the fiction of Ernest Gaines, and the autobiographies of Olaudah Equiano and Malcolm X. The other stack came from his most recent trek to the library—non-fiction on werewolves, bigfoot, and more werewolves. Not even losing the only real parent he had ever known had dampened his interest in horror movies and books, although of late his predilections had shifted to what his gramma dubbed “things comin out the woods people never heard of,” instead of more mundane slashers and thrillers. Charles had already worked his way through vampires, and avoided the subject of ghosts as carefully as he tried to eschew meat and dairy.

After a while he put the Dead Prez CD Mr. Matherne had given him into the dusty jambox his dad had left him upon moving out to the living room. Since the self-proclaimed Holten Street Clique had liberated Charles of his iPod, the Let’s Get Free album was the only music not trapped inside his mom’s laptop that he was now only allowed to use for an hour a day.

“They’re from Tallahassee,” Mr. Matherne had told him. “Rickards alumni, even; knew that name was familiar. Pro-veg, pro-active.”

“Really?” Charles accepted the compact disc with the reverence of a relic.

“For real, like Sarandon in Fright Night,” said Mr. Matherne. “I also tried to find The Beast Must Die but it’s out of print. So keep your eyes peeled for that down in the dirty dirty.”

“Are they also positive?”

“Who? Oh, no, it’s a movie. Great white hunter has a dinner party.”

“Except?” Charles smiled.

Mr. Matherne smiled back. “Except all the guests are suspected werewolves. And the great white hunter’s a black guy.”