Chapter One
The Borrowed Blazer
Saturday morning came into the little house on Alder Street the way it always came in December: gray and cold at the windows, warm and smelling of toast in the kitchen. Darius Cole lay in bed with the blanket pulled to his chin, staring at the crack in his bedroom ceiling, and wished with his whole heart that he could be sick.
Not really sick. Just sick enough.
Tonight was the Winter Lights Gala at Harrington Academy, and Darius was going the way a person goes to the dentist: because it had to happen, and because his mother said so.
"Darius!" His mother's voice traveled up the stairs, bright and busy. "Up and at 'em, baby. We've got a big night."
He groaned into his pillow.
Downstairs, the kitchen was doing its cheerful morning bustle. Tanya Cole stood at the stove in her scrubs, flipping something in a pan with one hand and checking her phone with the other. She was thirty-eight, beautiful on no sleep, and she moved the way she always moved before a long shift β like a woman who had decided tiredness could wait.
"Morning, sleepyhead," she said, sliding a plate of scrambled eggs toward him. "Eat. You need your strength for all that standing around looking fancy."
"I'm not looking fancy," Darius muttered. "I'm looking like a kid in a costume."
Tanya's smile softened. "You'll look handsome. You'll see."
The blazer hung on the back of the kitchen chair like an accusation. It belonged to Mr. Abernathy from church, a man the size of a refrigerator, and Mrs. Abernathy's sewing machine had worked it over until it approximated a twelve-year-old. It was navy blue and smelled faintly of mothballs and peppermint, its sleeves cuffed so many times the folds had folds.
Darius eyed it the way you eye a sleeping dog you don't trust.
"Put it on," Tanya said. "Let's see."
He stood, pulled the blazer on over his T-shirt, and felt swallowed immediately. The shoulders sat an inch past his own. The cuffs, even folded, brushed his knuckles.
From the doorway came a sound like a balloon losing air.
"Oh, wow," said Caleb.
His sixteen-year-old brother leaned in the doorframe in basketball shorts, arms crossed, grinning like the universe had handed him a gift.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Caleb announced, "the navy blue tent."
"It's fine," Darius said, tugging at the sleeves. "It's supposed to be roomy."
"Roomy?" Caleb circled him slowly. "D, there's roomy, and then there's 'the blazer is wearing you.' You look like a magician's assistant. Where's your top hat? Where are the doves?"
"Leave him alone," Tanya said, but she was laughing too, one hand over her mouth.
"I'm serious, Ma, check his pockets. There could be a whole other kid in there." Caleb lifted a hanging lapel. "Hello? Anybody home?"
"Ha ha," Darius said. He tried to scowl, but the blazer slid off one shoulder, and the scowl cracked.
Tanya crossed the room and fixed the collar with gentle hands, the way she'd done when he was small. Her fingers were quick and sure, and for a second the kitchen smelled like her lotion, like home, and Darius felt five years old again.
"You look wonderful," she said quietly. "You look like my boy, all grown up and going somewhere important."
"Going to stand in a corner," Darius said.
"Going to a gala," Tanya corrected. "The Winter Lights Gala. Do you know how many people would love an invitation to that room? Staff families are invited, which means you and Caleb are my dates."
"I'm the better-looking date," Caleb said.
"You're the date with the curfew," Tanya said. "And Darius β you'll be fine. You don't have to talk to anybody. Just stay where I can see you, and don't touch anything expensive."
"There's going to be a piano," Darius said. He hadn't meant to say it out loud.
Tanya paused, her hand still on his collar. "I know, baby."
"It's a Steinway. Mr. Banks says the ones at Harrington β "
"I know." She smoothed the blazer one more time. "And you'll look at it from a respectful distance, like a normal person at a museum."
Caleb snorted. "A museum of rich people."
"Caleb."
"What? I'm just saying. That school costs more per year than our house β " He caught his mother's look. "I'm just saying it'll be an experience."
Darius looked down at the blazer, at the navy wool that wasn't his, at the cuffs Mrs. Abernathy had folded with such care. Underneath the teasing, underneath the mothball smell, there was a smaller, tighter feeling he didn't want to name. It wasn't just that the blazer didn't fit.
He was afraid he wouldn't fit either. In the shining hall with the chandeliers and the people who belonged there the way the chandeliers did β like they'd been hung from the ceiling on purpose.
At the Eastside Community Center, in the drafty rec room with the battered upright, Darius knew exactly who he was. His fingers knew the keys better than his own pockets. But that room didn't count, did it? That was the room nobody saw.
Tonight, everybody would see. Everybody would see the borrowed blazer, and the boy inside it who didn't belong.
"You okay?" Tanya asked. She always knew.
"Yeah," Darius said. "Just thinking."
"Good thoughts?"
He shrugged. "Working on it."
Tanya kissed the top of his head, right through the worry. "That's my boy. Now eat your eggs before they get cold, then help me find my good earrings, because your mother is going to look like she runs that first-aid station."
Caleb ruffled Darius's hair on his way to the fridge β the universal signal that the teasing was over and the love was underneath. "Don't worry, D," he said, his voice dropping so only Darius heard. "Rich people put their pants on one leg at a time. Probably with help, but still."
Darius laughed despite himself. And for a moment, in the warm kitchen with the toast smell and his mother's hand on his shoulder, the borrowed blazer didn't feel quite so big.