Checkmate by Walter Dean Myers Page A

details,” Mom said. “That’s when the black newspaper came out. They didn’t print news about black people in the white papers.”
    “Really?”
    “Really,” Mom said. “You can tell a lot about how well people are doing just from what’s written about them in the newspapers.”
    That gave me a whole idea in one sentence. Bobbi was going to deal with basketball and numbers and I liked that, but maybe we could also check out how different kinds of people were being treated by just looking at old newspapers and seeing how they were covered. I told the idea to Mom and she didn’t like it.
    “You’d have to read five hundred thousand newspapers,” she said. “What are you giving up? Basketball? Sleep?”
    I still thought it was a good idea.
    At first everyone was saying that the chessboard and numbers that Sidney published in
The Cruiser
represented aperfect chess game. Then they were saying that the numbers were New York City zip codes. That made more sense.
    “It’s got nothing to do with zip codes,” Bobbi said. “It’s a simple substitution code.”
    “You know what it says?” Kambui asked.
    “Yes, but I think maybe we should let Sidney tell us.” Bobbi was painting her fingernails black. “The message is kind of personal.”
    “If we’re going to be the ones who help him, we need to know what the problem is,” Kambui said.
    “If we’re going to be the ones who help him then we’d better make sure that we
can
help him,” Bobbi said, looking up from across the lunchroom table. “And we need to know if he
wants
our help.”
    “So what you saying we should do?” Kambui asked.
    “Sidney and I are going to a chess tournament Saturday to watch Jamie Pullman, a student at Thurgood Marshall Academy,” Bobbi said. “He’s first board. Why don’t you guys come and we can talk to Sidney casually after the match.”
    “I can’t go,” Kambui said. “I’m working Saturday.”
    I said I could go and Bobbi and I agreed to meet at her house in Brooklyn. The chess tournament was being heldat the Brooklyn Public Library, which was only a few blocks from where she lived.
    “I don’t get all the mystery,” Kambui said. “Why can’t you just tell us what the message is and get it over with?”
    “You don’t understand why Sidney is messing with drugs, either,” Bobbi answered. “But he’s got a real problem and your simple answers don’t always work.”
    “Yo, dig Bobbi.” Kambui pointed his index finger across the table at Bobbi. “She just joined a new terrorist group — Al Calculus.”
    “You’re mixing two language groups, Arabic and Latin,” Bobbi said. “The
Al
is from the Arabic, and
Calculus
has a Latin root.”
    “Shut up,” Kambui replied.
    I could see that Kambui was getting mad so I said I had to go to the media center. He told Bobbi that her nails looked stupid and that the Cruisers weren’t about going goth. Bobbi said that as far as she was concerned the Cruisers might not be about anything soon. She said that to Kambui but she was looking dead at me.
    I remembered what she had told me about Mr. Culpepper still wanting to break up the Cruisers, when I saw Caren Culpepper in the hall and caught up with her.
    “Hey, Caren, what’s happening?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Hey, I heard your father was trying to bring some grief to the Cruisers,” I said.
    “You think he’s racist?”
    “Racist?” I looked at Caren to see if she was serious. She was. “What makes you think that?”
    She shrugged and turned into one of the classrooms. I followed her into her Geography classroom. When she started taking some books off the shelf I put my hand on them to stop her.
    “He said something?”
    “Zander, you’re black and I’m white. So why don’t you call my father and tell him you would like to take me out Friday night,” Caren said, looking over her glasses. “See what he says.”
    I felt my stomach jump, as if I was afraid. Caren didn’t look at me, just took the