Sierra Santiago and the Invisible City

Chapter 12 - Night Out

When Sierra got home at four-thirty in the afternoon she found her father in his pajamas reading the Bed-Stuy Community Courier and drinking a steamy café con leche.

"Hey pops," she said, kissing his scruffy cheek on her way past him. "You heading off to work soon?"

"Yeah, Sierra. You know this Treme boy from school?"

"He's a friend of a friend," she called from halfway up the stairs.

A little blinking icon on her desktop wanted her to read four new emails. Two were from some scam company telling her about free vacations to Bermuda and one was a cheesy forward from Little Malik about ten things to do now that summer had come. She rolled her eyes and deleted them without opening. The third was from an address she doesn't recognize: SkeTcHbOY718@movementmotion.net and it was titled simply, tonight. Sierra's heart did a little tap dance of anticipation as she double clicked to open it.

hey sierra

watzgood its robbie

Wanna meet tonight?

sorry I blew out like that @ party - long story...

things uh a little crazy right now lol...

hit me back there's somewhere i wanna take u

r

Sierra's smile stretched from one side of her face to the other. She read the email four more times through, taking in a different part each time. Then she read it out loud, just to hear herself saying the words. She wanted to run up and down the stairs once or twice to calm down but instead she typed a quick note back:

Yeah, when and where?

And then quickly deleted it cause it sounded desperate. She scratched her head and looked over at Tinibu, who was putting her school supplies into neat little piles on her dresser. He hadn't noticed that her heart was about to explode out of her chest and splatter across the computer screen.

Ok.

Where you wanna meet?

I'm free whenever.

Better, this one, but still somehow off. She cringed that she was doing rewrites on an email and then went ahead and deleted the last line, threw a (hopefully) casual looking lowercase letter s a few return keys below it and clicked send. Then she stared at her screen for a full minute waiting for an answer and knowing it wouldn't come that quickly.

"Yeargh!" she yelled with delight. Tinibu looked up from his piles. "Tinibu! Yeargh!" she moaned. Tinibu had apparently had some experience with melodramatic teenagers before. He calmly returned his gaze to the pencils and notebooks.

Then the computer let out a ping and a new email from Robbie appeared on the screen:

:)itz a date:)

meet me at church ave stop on Q train at 930 tonight ok?

R

"Tinibu!" Sierra yelled.

"Sierra, who are you talking to?" her father called from downstairs. Sierra almost fell out her chair.

"No one, Daddy!" she yelled with a chuckle.

"What's so funny?" a voice said right beside her ear. Sierra pitched backwards in shock and the rolly chair wheels slipped quickly out from under her. She landed in a heap on the floor looking up at Biaque's big goofy smile. Once she stopped laughing and Biaque helped her stand up she got right up in his face, taking the collar of his guayabera in her fists and said: "Don't you ever sneak up on me like that again, buddy."