DRIVE-BY ID

Cotton O’Connell

Officer Santora tells Derek and me not to worry — it’ll only take another minute, five at most. But my little brother is worried. It radiates off him, the way he shifts his weight between feet and chews his thumbnail. 

My worry is different. I’m afraid Derek will mouth off to Santora, and then this thing, which was nothing, will become something.

We know Santora, and he knows us. He coached our baseball team in elementary school with some other cops. I have good memories of him even though I hated baseball, especially when I had to be in the outfield. I’d get distracted by birds or clouds or just about anything my eye could rest on, then forget about the ball until one of the coaches barked at me to go fetch it. It felt like we were golden retrievers, and I was the runt of the litter.

Derek, of course, was the best player, but he didn’t really like baseball either. The head coach — a big-bellied guy who was Santora’s boss, a lieutenant or captain or some such — acted mad when Derek decided to quit so he could focus on basketball and football instead, like my brother had been wasting their time on purpose. But Santora wasn’t like that. He’d been the young, easy-going one who teased me about having my head in the clouds without acting like it was a defect that had to be corrected. 

I’m fifteen now and haven’t played baseball in years, but I still see Santora around, even before today. I always give him a wave, like the time I spotted him at the pizzeria in jeans and a goofy Star Wars T-shirt with his family. He had his two toddlers and his game-show-hostess pretty wife with him. She was so tiny beside him it was almost funny. Santora’s jacked — the kind of huge that comes from spending real time in the gym targeting every muscle group, not the kind that happens when a former football player starts craving doughnuts. If you just glanced at the two of them, you could mistake her for one of his kids. 

I’d also wave to Santora when he was outside my school after the last bell, breaking up fights or arresting kids for shoplifting from the gas station across the street. We’ve got some real characters at my school. A couple of them used to pick on me, but they mostly leave me alone because of Derek now. He already plays varsity football even though he’s just a freshman, so they respect him. Maybe they also figure he’d kick their asses if they messed with me. They don’t know our mom and how we’ll do anything to avoid her getting that look we call the Deep Freeze, where she doesn’t speak to us or look us in the eye for days at a time. Derek would probably get the Freeze for a month if he ever tried fighting. Even if he was protecting me. She’s that obsessed with non-violence — Gandhi and Dr. King and those guys. It starts making more sense when you know about her cousin who got addicted to drugs, then went to jail for armed robbery. You could argue the violence was sort of incidental; the drugs were more the problem. But I don’t argue with my mom.

Some people might hate if their little brother was their protector. Me? I’ve never minded, and I do plenty to balance the scales. I’m really patient helping him with homework as we go through equations. It takes longer than if I just gave him the answers like he wants, but he needs to learn. He listens to the music I like, plays the video games I’m into. Sometimes he even eats the food I cook — stir-fried beef, beans and rice, nothing crazy — when Mom works a late shift. He depends on me. There’s no doubt about that.

When I saw Santora outside school those times, he would wave to me all friendly, like he wished he wasn’t busy arresting one of my schoolmates so we could catch up over a slice of pizza. But right now, while we stand by the trunk of his car, it’s like he’s never seen us before.

All he said when he stopped us was that we fit a suspect’s description, and the victim was on their way to do a drive-by identification. I asked what sort of victim they were. He said, in this new, closed-off voice, that there was no other info he could give right now.

To pass the time while we wait, I count the trees in the massive front yards. Every house on this street practically has its own little park, so the counting could take a while, but it’s better than watching Santora and trying to read his mind.

Twice, he steps away to talk softly into his handheld radio. At least he hasn’t turned the police lights on, but drivers still slow down, craning their necks to see who the criminals are. No one I recognize yet, but we’re less than a mile from home, though you wouldn’t know that just to look at our surroundings. This part of town is all neat hedges and shiny mailboxes and long driveways that wrap around the backs of houses. You don’t see a car here unless it’s driving. In our neighborhood, across a busy two-lane road not far from here, it’s apartment blocks and two-family homes and side streets jammed with parked cars. Concrete is a lot more visible than trees, but it’s not awful or anything.

Our bikes are on the sidewalk, where we left them when we got stopped. I think about moving them to the strip of grass next to the road where they would be out of the way. In our current predicament, it seems like the sort of thing that could help score points with Santora by reminding him of what a rule-follower I am. But I think of the grief Derek would give me later for sucking up and stay put.

I’m starting to shiver in my T-shirt. The temperature is dropping fast this November afternoon. I hadn’t bothered with a hoodie since we’d just been over at my best friend Weston’s house, playing Fortnite, a few blocks from here. I hadn’t planned on being outside very long, plus it was in the fifties when we left home.

Weston’s house is one of these mini-mansions with a park in front. He hardly sees his dad, who’s a lawyer in the city. Weston jokes that his dad might have another family. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s a joke.

His mom is sweet. She’s like one of those mothers you see on TV who makes perfect, corny snacks like we’re still seven—ants on a log, apple smiles, that kind of thing — and who always seems to be headed to or coming from the beauty salon. If someone else comes over when I’m there, like a friend borrowing a book or a handyman fixing a leaky faucet, she’ll introduce me as her other son. It’s nice but also weird. I’ve been friends with Weston since second grade, so I guess she’s known me a long time. But she and I never really bonded over anything, other than me saying I like her snacks or her house, then her telling me the house is a hundred-year-old mess with bad plumbing and raccoons in the attic. 

My mom once told me that rich people can be like that. Compliments from someone like me, from a family like mine, make them nervous. They don’t know how to just say thank you. 

That’s not to say we’re poor. We have enough. Maybe even a little more than enough. Mom’s a nurse who takes care of premature babies. It’s a good job, but she has the two of us to raise without my dad helping out much financially. They’re divorced, and he’s an actor who’s always on the road, doing theater in different cities. He’s a talented guy, and I’m actually proud of him, but it’s not exactly a money-making career.

So we get the presents we want for Christmas and new clothes when we outgrow our old ones (though I end up with some of Derek’s hand-me-downs, since he’s been taller than me for a couple years now, despite me being seventeen months older). But no trips to Europe or Disney World, and no dinners in restaurants unless it’s someone’s birthday. 

Honestly, the difference between us makes Weston more uncomfortable than it makes me. It’s one of the reasons I know he’s a good person.

I suddenly think of Weston’s mom and how she just offered to drop me and Derek home on her way to an appointment, but she couldn’t since we had our bikes. I wonder what she would make of seeing us here, if she turned in this direction. Would she park behind Santora and get out of the car, all livid the way she gets when she’s stressed, then point out the goosebumps on our arms and tell him, “Shame on you”? Or would she keep driving, hoping I didn’t recognize her BMW?

Mom made me bring Derek to Weston’s today, even though he’s fourteen and old enough to be home by himself, but she doesn’t completely trust him. Maybe she’s right, because I can tell he’s about to pop off with something stupid right now — something Mom wouldn’t approve of, since she’s always told us to be polite and say “yes, sir” if police stopped us for any reason. I can tell from the wild look in Derek’s eyes that he’s remembering this and trying to hold the words in, but they’re ready to explode from his mouth.

“So what are these suspects supposed to look like anyway? Are they kids? You know I’m only fourteen, right?” Derek keeps his voice low, but his right eye is twitching. It usually only does that when I’m tutoring him and an answer is beyond his reach.

“Look, Derek, I was asked to stop people who fit the description within a range of ages,” Santora says, dropping the whole pretending-we’re-strangers thing, but still using his cop cosplay voice. Which is weird to say about someone who’s actually a police officer, but Santora never tried to act like a cop around us before. “The perp tried to get in through the cellar of one of these houses about twenty minutes ago, then got scared off when he heard someone moving around. The witness got a good look at him as he was leaving the premises, so I’m sure you’ll be cleared in no time.”

“We’re casting the net wide so nothing falls in the cracks,” he adds more brightly a few seconds later, like he’s proud of himself for digging that cliché out of his mind. “I’m just doing my job.”

“So you’re stopping every Black person you see is what you’re saying.” 

I knew exactly what Derek was going to say—the question that wasn’t really a question — before he opened his mouth. His words are so familiar that, for a second, I wondered if I was the one who actually said them.

I look to where Derek is standing up super straight, no slouch in his shoulders. At his full height, he’s nearly as tall as Santora. In most situations, my brother’s size is a good thing, but right now it’s scaring me. It makes us vulnerable, less likely to be given the benefit of the doubt.

I worry Santora is going to make Derek pay for what he said, but the officer just rolls his eyes and stomps to the front of his car, muttering into his radio. This time, he’s loud enough for us to catch him asking for an ETA. 

Another squad car pulls up a minute later and idles in front of us.

“Face the road, please, guys,” Santora says all nicely, like he’s trying to show how benevolently he can wield power over us.

I do what he says. The car’s windows are tinted, but I still recognize the girl in the back seat. She’s in my pre-calc class. I think Ava is her name. There are many Avas in my school. This one never raises her hand and went to the nurse’s office last week with a nosebleed. I can tell she’s staring at me, but not whether she recognizes me. I try to play it cool, like this is nothing, just a regular Sunday. I turn to look at the trees in the front yards again.

It takes a long time — two or three minutes, maybe — but Santora hears something on his radio, and the second squad car pulls away. Then he says we can go. 

“All good, guys. Sorry for the inconvenience,” he says, his chummy old smile back on his face. “And great season, D. When you’re in the NFL, I can say I knew you when. See you around.” He hesitates, then starts to leave when Derek doesn’t crack a smile.

When his car door slams, I can’t figure out what to say. Derek is like a statue with dark, alien eyes — waiting, I guess, for Santora to drive away. I wonder if this is the version of him Ava saw when she took so long with her identification. She had to look and look to make sure there was no trace of the guy who broke into her cellar. 

I wonder if I’ll say anything to her in class tomorrow. “That was weird,” or “What did the guy actually look like?” or “Why did you take so long?” I wonder if she’ll say anything to me. Probably not. We don’t really know each other.

“Come on, man, I’m freezing,” Derek says, a little impatient now, a little more himself. His eyes are their usual warm brown again. Down the road, I see Santora’s car turning a corner. He’s driving really slow, like even now he’s second-guessing whether he ought to come back as the friendly version of himself and ask how much Derek is bench pressing these days.

Derek pulls his bike off the sidewalk, climbs on, and starts pedaling before I can answer. I wonder if he’s trying to cut me off before I launch into a big social justice speech. Sometimes he gets annoyed with me for trying to explain how the world works. That’s when he’ll hit me with, “You’re not my dad,” to make me shut up.

Or maybe he’s just cold. My legs feel like jelly, but I somehow get on my bike and ride home.

We pull up to where another cop is standing with two guys — boys, really — on the sidewalk, but the officer driving us around doesn’t park his car. We just sit in the middle of the road, engine humming. I’m in the backseat with Mom.

A half hour ago, I was watching TV while Mom was out running errands and Dad was playing tennis when I heard weird scurrying sounds from the kitchen, like a little dog pawing at a door. I told myself it was my imagination at first. Our house is old, or “historic” as my parents like to say, so it’s easy to imagine some random bump or creak is a footstep. But the noise got louder.

I walked to the kitchen and froze, eyes on the locked basement door. I felt someone — a him, I just knew — on the other side. He didn’t make a peep for a while, so I’d almost convinced myself I’d been up in my head when I heard him take the stairs back down to the basement, one at a time, trying to be stealthy. That’s when I realized he must’ve gotten in through the old, slanted cellar doors outside.

I rushed to the back door, unlocked it, and flew down the steps onto the blacktop where my parents park their cars — when they’re home, that is. The cellar doors are just to the side of the back steps, but I didn’t stop to look for signs of damage, just kept moving, fast. I stopped under the big silver maple in our side yard, not wanting to be inside with him, not wanting to abandon our house either. If he came outside and looked dangerous, it was a straight shot to the street, and I’m a decent runner.

Two minutes later, he came from the direction of the cellar doors and walked past me on his way up the driveway. He was moving fast, jittery, like he’d just chugged a liter of Coke and was hopped up on sugar but also had to pee. When he spotted me under the tree a few yards away, his eyes got all wide. He looked terrified of me, which was weird because I’ve never exactly struck fear into anyone. (I’m five foot one and maybe a hundred and five pounds soaking wet.) He didn’t change his weird, twitchy walk. Just kept going with it as he looked over the top of my head and said, “Just passing through.” 

At the end of our driveway, he took a right and disappeared down the street. Somehow, I knew it took every bit of self-control he had not to run. Running in street clothes would’ve looked too suspicious.

As I sat on the maple’s dead, crunchy leaves and waited for Mom to get home, I thought about how the guy must’ve assumed no one was home after seeing no cars in the driveway. That honestly made him kind of dumb, but I guess he meant me no harm.

 I almost felt bad we would try to find him, but there was no way around it. A minute after Mom’s Volvo pulled into the driveway, she was on the phone with the police.

“Take a good look now,” the officer says from the front of the car, through the mesh that separates Mom and me from him. 

I recognize one of the boys standing near the curb — Alex, from AP Pre-Calc — though it takes me a second to place him. He’s a total brain, probably taking all AP classes and signed up for a thousand after-school activities to help his college applications. The sort of kid Mom wishes I was. He’s with another boy, taller and wider in the shoulders, with a version of the same face — definitely his brother. It’s a nice face, twice over: high cheekbones, full lips. I didn’t realize how nice before seeing it here in duplicate.

Alex is one of the smartest kids in class, but he isn’t obnoxious about it — doesn’t always raise his hand, the way some of them do. He has this quiet confidence. I honestly never gave it much thought until now.

“It’s not the guy,” I tell the officer. “Like I said, he was older. Thirties, I think. I go to school with those boys.”

“I’d give it another minute,” he answers. “They match the description of another perp who’s broken into homes in your area. I just want you to be really sure.” His voice is overly patient now, like he’s talking to a six-year-old.

“One of them is literally in my math class. I think I’d have recognized him if he ran out of my basement.”

“There’s no harm in being thorough, honey,” Mom says, but I can tell she isn’t convinced.

“Just take another beat,” says the officer.

I look at Alex and see him looking right back at me. My face goes hot. Somehow, I thought the glass of a cop car was like one of those one-way mirrors in detective shows, where the person inside can’t be seen. Dumb. I get this urge to jump out and tell Alex I cleared him and his brother already, but, duh, there are no handles in the back of a police car, so I’m trapped here, totally humiliated.

I turn away, cheeks still burning, and stare at the back of the officer’s head.

“Done.” I spit out the word.

“I think we’re finished here, officer,” Mom says, her words rimmed with ice now.

He hisses out a long breath. “If you don’t like how we do our job, you should’ve been more specific with your description. ‘Black male in his thirties.’ That’s all you gave us to go on.”

“Those boys aren’t in their thirties, officer,” Mom says.

“Whatever you say, ma’am.”

Officer Douchebag starts driving us home. I ignore Mom trying to make eye contact with me and replay in my head how it went down when the officer showed up at our door, tablet in hand, ready to take my report. I’m positive I mentioned more than the guy’s age and race — that I at least described his clothes (navy blue hoodie, gray trackpants) and his weird, jittery, maybe drugged-out walk.

Maybe it wasn’t the most detailed description in the world. They still didn’t have to stop two actual kids.

Tomorrow in class, maybe I’ll speak to Alex. Tell him I’m sorry about what happened, even though that’s the worst kind of apology. Who likes being told, “I’m sorry you found that thing I did or said upsetting”? I hate when my parents do that.

It’s possible he didn’t recognize me. I’m the sort of kid who blends in with the furniture. There’s nothing very special about me. Apart from my drawing, but he wouldn’t know about that.

The officer pulls up to our house, then parks, gets out, and opens Mom’s door from the outside. I scooch out after her, and we stand facing him. He’s somewhere in his forties, with green eyes and freckles and graying red hair. It’s a handsome face, but his smile doesn’t quite make it to his eyes.

“Be sure you get a locksmith out to fix that cellar door ASAP. There are plenty of bad guys who’d see this place as a real prize.” He glances over our heads at our house, and I feel embarrassed by the size of it for three people — just Mom, Dad, and me.

Mom thanks him again, and he looks bored, like he’s over this whole thing already.

“If we pick up any other suspects in the area today who match your description, we’ll bring them around so you can take a look,” he adds. It feels a little like a threat.

He leaves after that. We walk down the driveway and go in through the back door. Mom says we can order pizza for dinner tonight, even though it’s not a Friday. Clearly, she thinks I’m traumatized or something. I don’t correct her.

Instead, I go to my room and sit on my bed with my sketchpad and try to draw the man who broke in, so I can give it to the cops. But all I can picture clearly are his startled eyes — the rest of him is a flash of hoodie and patchy facial hair that’s already fading. So I start to draw Alex instead, which is so much easier. But for what, I ask myself when I’m nearly done? To prove I saw him clearly, that he was instantly recognizable to me?

The drawing takes twenty minutes. It’s pretty good when I’m done. Out of all the boys in our school, you would know who it was.

I know I won’t have the courage to show it to him. When I’m coming in and out of pre-calc, I’ll keep my head down, like I usually do, and if our eyes happen to collide by accident, I’ll pretend his face is generic to me. And I’ll tell myself it’s for his sake I’m doing this — that he wouldn’t want to be reminded of that day, freezing in his red T-shirt as he waits for a stranger’s judgment. He and I are still strangers, after all. Today hasn’t changed that.