Every week, join two twelve-year-old friends from Pike Street, Kitty as they navigate life in Guyana.
Three days.
That was how long Wilar had walked past Speedeet on Pike Street without saying a single word. Not Actually. Not a sigh. Not even a look. Just his red glasses pointed straight ahead and his sneakers slapping the pavement like Speedeet wasn’t even there.
Three days was a long time on a street as small as Pike Street.
It had started, like most things, with a plan.
Speedeet had needed a lens to finish the periscope. The periscope was made from two cardboard tubes, a broken hand mirror, and — this was the critical part — a second lens to angle the reflection. Wilar had a spare pair of glasses sitting on the step. Wilar himself was inside eating lunch. The plan would take five minutes.
It took four minutes and forty seconds. The last twenty seconds were Speedeet watching the red frames bounce off the step, skid across the concrete, and stop under Mr. Persaud’s fence with one lens cracked clean across the middle.
He had tried to explain. Wilar hadn’t let him finish.
On the fourth morning, Speedeet sat on his back step with a mango he wasn’t eating, turning it over in his hands.
“You still moping?” Miss Eulie called from inside.
“I not moping.”
“Yuh been sitting deh since seven o’clock. Dat is moping.”
Speedeet didn’t answer. He set the mango down and walked up the street to Mr. Persaud’s shop. The old man was already leaning in his doorway, arms folded, watching nothing in particular.
“Wha yuh want?” Mr. Persaud said. “You want something or you just here to lean?”
“I want tape. De clear kind.”
Mr. Persaud looked at him for a long moment. “Tape cyah fix everything, yuh know.”
Speedeet paid for the tape and left without responding because he was pretty sure that was not just about tape.
He knocked on Wilar’s gate at half past nine.
Wilar came out, saw who it was, and turned to go back inside.
“Wait,” Speedeet said. “I fix dem.”
He held up the glasses. He had wrapped the cracked lens in three careful strips of clear tape, smooth as he could make it. It wasn’t invisible. It wasn’t even close to invisible. But the lens held together, and you could see through it, mostly.
Wilar looked at the glasses for a long time.
“Yuh cyah see through tape, bai,” he said finally. It was the first thing he’d said to Speedeet in three days. His voice was flat.
“Is temporary. Till we get a new lens.”
“We?” Wilar looked up. “Is you break dem, Speedeet. Not we.”
Speedeet opened his mouth. He closed it.
Wilar pushed the glasses back toward him. “Me mum gon get me new ones. Keep dem.”
He turned again.
“Wilar.” Speedeet’s voice came out quieter than he meant it to. “I shoulda ask yuh. I know dat. I shoulda just — I shoulda ask.”
Wilar stopped walking but didn’t turn around.
“Is not de glasses,” Wilar said, to the fence. “Me mum gon get new glasses. Is de fact dat yuh just — yuh just take dem. Like yuh didn’t even think I woulda say no.”
A car passed on Pike Street. Somewhere down the block, Miss Doreen was sweeping her yard, the broom going swish swish swish in the morning quiet.
“Woulda yuh say no?” Speedeet asked.
A pause.
“Dat is not de point, bai.”
Speedeet stared at the ground. “Yuh right. Dat is not de point.” He held the taped glasses out one more time. “I sorry, Wilar. Fuh real.”
Wilar turned around. He looked at the glasses. He looked at Speedeet. He pushed his perfectly-absent glasses up his nose — stopped — realized what he was doing — and dropped his hand.
Despite everything, his mouth moved.
Speedeet started laughing first. Wilar lasted another two seconds before he lost it.
They were sitting on the step sharing the mango Speedeet had abandoned when Wilar finally put the taped glasses on, just to see.
“I cyah see nothing through dis side,” he said.
“De other side good though.”
“Speedeet. Dat is not how eyes work.”
“Actually,” Speedeet said, in a very bad impression of Wilar’s voice, “it working fine.”
Wilar took the glasses off and held them up to the light, examining Speedeet’s tape-work with the face of somebody reviewing a crime scene.
“Next time,” he said, “yuh ask.”
“Next time,” Speedeet agreed. “I ask.”
Wilar handed him back a piece of mango.
Down the street, Miss Doreen’s broom went swish swish swish, and Pike Street sounded exactly like itself again.
Speedeet & Wilar is a children’s story series set in Pike Street, Kitty, Georgetown, Guyana. New stories appear weekly at tradewindsbrief.com.