Some months passed.
I finally saved up enough clean, legal money to buy my own ride. Pedro covered the remaining balance for me with absolutely no strings attached, so I owned the car outright. It was nothing crazy, just a nice little Jeep. But I made sure to spend some of my cash putting cameras all around this hoe so that every single inch of the car was covered. I even put a tracking device on it and made a small investment in bulletproof glass. I know it might seem like a bit much—like I’m actively planning for somebody to shoot this bitch up—and yeah, that’s a little fucked up.
But come on. There’s nothing wrong with making sure you have extra security.
“Damn, bro,” Tariq said, looking around the interior as we drove down the highway. “This car is nice as hell. You just got this bitch? It smells like straight-up new car.”
“Yeah,” I smiled, turning the wheel. “You gotta love being self-employed. Paying taxes is a pain and a half, but since this thing is fully paid off, I’d say it’s worth it.”
“True, true. So where are you taking me, anyway? I thought you’d still be a bit salty about the disrespect I showed you the last time we talked.”
“Oh, hell no,” I laughed. “Ain’t nobody worried about that. Come on, man, you’re my brother. You’re supposed to be the man of the house when your dad is gone. I’m just proud to see that you’re actually getting your grades up in school instead of acting like these dumbass, wanna-be hood niggas. Even though you do sound like a straight YN.”
“Shiii, it’s just how I talk,” Tariq muttered, adjusting his dreads.
“I’m not a hood nigga, but I’m a
real
nigga, though. Hood niggas are bums. They’re always flexing about money they don’t actually have, and they don’t do shit for their mamas or anybody else. A real nigga handles his business, makes sure all his people are straight, and doesn’t act dumb as fuck. But I do appreciate those civil rights things you talked about in those texts you sent me. When some cop tried to ID me and I said 'Fuck the Police,' I told him it was protected free speech. His ego-ass just walked on somewhere.”
I grinned. “That’s exactly what you gotta do to those pigs. When you know you’re right, it makes them less likely to fuck with you, because they know you can fuck up their money in court.”
“Ohh,” Tariq laughed. “You’re so gangsta for real!”
“You’re goddamn right,” I said, signaling a turn. “As for where we’re going? Me and you are going to the carnival.”
Tariq let out a groan. “Tsk. Why?”
“What the fuck do you mean, 'why'? All kids love going to the carnival. Even I did back when I was in foster care.”
“Nobody’s going to have fun playing those scammy-ass games, bro,” Tariq said. “Yeah, the food and the rides are fun, but still.”
I let out a low, slow chuckle, my eyes catching the flashing neon lights of the fairgrounds in the distance.
“Oh, don’t worry, bro,” I grinned, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. “These niggas have been running scams since day one. But I’ve been plotting, nigga.”
We got into the fairgrounds, and the whole place was buzzing with flashing lights, loud-ass pop music, and the smell of hot grease. Before we did anything else, we hit the food stands. We grabbed some deep-fried Oreos and a massive funnel cake. It was basically a heart attack on a paper plate, but it tasted delicious.
“Alright,” I said, licking powdered sugar off my fingers. “It’s time to go show these carny motherfuckers how a real hacker operates.”
Our first stop was the basketball shootout. I walked up to the counter and pulled a metal tape measure straight out of my thobe pocket.
The carny running the booth looked at me like I was insane. “Yo, what the hell are you doing, man? You can’t measure the hoop!”
“Why not?” I asked, stretching the tape all the way up to the rim. “You got something to hide, nigga? Because a standard basketball hoop is ten feet high. But this bitch right here? It’s eleven feet high. And your three-point line is twenty-eight feet back instead of twenty-four. You’re deliberately trying to ruin people’s muscle memory so they shoot short.”
The carny started trying to push my hand away, getting in my face. “Get that tape measure out of here before I have security throw you out!”
“Oh, you don’t want me to measure it?!” I turned around and shouted to the crowd of teenagers gathering behind us. “Yo, listen up! This whole booth is a scam! The hoop is too high, and the line is too far back! If you play this, you aren’t winning on skill—you're winning on pure, randomized luck!”
The crowd started murmuring, and a few kids actually stepped out of the line. The carny was absolutely livid, his face turning red.
To prove my point, I handed Tariq the tape measure, picked up one of their lightweight, over-inflated basketballs, and took a step back. I knew the rim was eleven feet high, so I adjusted my arc, threw the ball higher and harder than usual, and drained it clean through the net.
“Give me my prize,” I said, leaning over the counter.
He didn’t want any more drama, so he gritted his teeth and handed me a giant stuffed teddy bear. I threw it to Tariq.
Next, we walked over to the pitch-speed radar game. Tariq threw a absolute heater, his arm looking like a whip. The ball slammed into the tarp, but the radar screen only registered sixty-five miles per hour.
“Bullshit,” I said, stepping up to the counter. “My brother is on the varsity track and plays football. There is no way in hell he’s throwing sixty-five. Your radar gun is calibrated fifteen miles per hour too slow to keep people from winning.”
“Nigga, you’re crazy,” the carny muttered.
“I’m a computer scientist, nigga. I know how sensors work,” I retorted. “Your shit is fraudulent.”
Rather than letting me make another scene and scare away his customers, the guy just grabbed a giant stuffed panda and shoved it into Tariq's arms. “Just take the prize and keep moving, man.”
“Bet,” I grinned.
We ended the night at the ladder climb. It’s the game where you have to crawl up a rope ladder to ring a bell. I’d watched at least fifty kids try it, and every single one of them flipped over and fell onto the inflatable mat the second they took three steps.
“That one is the biggest scam of them all, Tariq,” I explained, pointing at the single-point attachment on the wall. “A regular rope bridge is supported at two points on each side, which creates an area of support. But this ladder converges to a single point. It reduces your area of support down to a single, thin line. If your center of mass moves even a millimeter off that line, you rotate and fall off.”
I walked up, paid my three dollars, and got on the ladder. Since I’d spent months doing brutal, failure-level calisthenics with Mr. Bone, my core strength and balance were on a completely different level. I kept my center of mass perfectly aligned, moved my hands and feet in perfect opposition, and crawled straight to the top to ring the bell.
The carny’s jaw completely dropped. He looked like he’d just seen a ghost.
“Give me the banana,” I said, pointing to the top shelf.
When we finally walked out of the fairgrounds, Tariq was carrying a massive stuffed teddy bear and a giant panda. I had a giant stuffed banana with dreadlocks slung over my shoulder, looking like an absolute menace.
Tariq looked at me, his eyes filled with pure respect. “Rico... you’re literally a supervillain, bro. You completely finessed the whole carnival.”
I chuckled, looking up at the Florida stars as we walked back to my Jeep. “I told you, little brother. I’m a combat scientist. The math never lies.”
We tossed the giant stuffed animals into the back of the Jeep. I unlocked the doors, and we both climbed inside, the new-car smell still thick in the air.
“You see that, little brother?” I said, starting up the engine. “That is how you actually finesse. You beat them not by yelling, but by using your brain.”
“Hell yeah,” Tariq laughed, adjusting his seatbelt. “Bro was madder than a bitch when you called him out about the hoops. I knew something was off about that shit, because I know I got a nasty three-pointer.”
“Yeah, it was actually four feet too far and a whole foot taller off the ground,” I said, pulling out of the parking space. “That makes your muscle memory completely useless in a 'skill-based' game. But they still won at the end of the day, even though we called them out.”
Tariq looked at me, confused. “Huh? Why?”
“Because, my sweet brother, we paid three dollars to play. Those plushies and toys they got on the shelves cost them like seventy-five cents or less each. That’s a three-hundred percent markup from that one transaction alone. And don’t even get me started on how much they make off of people missing when they pay a few dollars for a bundle of throws.”