The Stars Beneath Our Feet

Lolly sneaks past his mom and her girlfriend Yvonne and goes straight to his bedroom. Lolly loves Lego kits; he has 46, which he builds exactly how they appear on the box.

The doorbell rings and Lolly hears Vega’s “loud Dominican voice” (9). Vega is Lolly’s best friend. According to Lolly, Vega and his family look “basically Black,” until they open their mouths and say something in Dominican or Spanish. (10) Lolly’s skin isn’t as dark as Vega’s—he is “reddish brown” with “truly tiny eyes” that he hates (11).

Lolly sits on Jermaine’s old bed. Vega makes a joke and Lolly laughs, but his laughs sound weird lately. They don’t last long before the darkness creeps back in. Vega asks if Daddy Rachpaul, Lolly’s dad, will be coming tonight. Lolly hopes so, but his dad isn’t the most dependable.

The doorbell rings again—it’s Lolly neighbor Steve Jenkins. Steve is “tall and light-skinned” (12) and used to be best friends with Jermaine when they were little, just like Lolly and Vega. When they turned 13, however, Jermaine started staying out more on the streets, while Steve spent more time in after school and art programs. Now 20-year-old Steve makes movies.

Lolly thinks again about Jermaine. He keeps wondering if maybe it was all a trick and Jermaine isn’t dead but hiding like Tupac (real life rapper Tupac Shakur was shot to death in 1996, but there are conspiracy theories that he might still be alive).

Steve looks at Lolly’s Lego builds and tells Lolly he’d make a great architect. He encourages him to try and do something new rather than make exactly what’s on the box: Lolly has a rich imagination. Steve thinks that lack of imagination stymied Jermaine: He could only see one way of life, dealing drugs, so he “got caught up in that street lifestyle” with Rockit and his crew (14).

For Christmas, Steve gives Lolly a (fictional) book called A Pattern of Architecture that has pictures of buildings famous architects have built all over the world. It isn’t something Lolly would ever ask for, but now it seems like something he always wanted.

Lolly’s mom works as a security guard downtown, collects Pez dispensers, and intimidates people because she is “really big”—she and Yvonne are built like “New Yorks Giants linemen” even though they are very gentle (17).

Lolly’s dad blames Mr. Jonathan, a gay man Lolly’s mom is friends with, for her being gay; his dad claims Mr. Jonathan convinced her she was gay because he was jealous of their happiness. Lolly wonders if you could really “make somebody gay” just by talking to them (18). He hopes not because he talks to a lot of people who are gay. Even though he likes them, too many people hate them and call them names—even his dad calls Mr. Jonathan “dat limp-wrist friend of your mum” (17). Lolly figures being gay can’t be something someone chooses—why would someone pick to be gay when it is so much easier to be straight?

Vega asks Lolly when he is going to open his Christmas present from Rockit. Lolly thinks it is must really be from Jermaine, since he and Rockit used to hang out. Vega bets Rockit gave him drugs or a Glock. Lolly hates everything about Christmas right now, but he is drawn to the present. He thinks back to when Rockit gave it to him. Rockit had told him that Jermaine wanted him to have it. Lolly hopes that there is a letter from Jermaine, maybe a note saying he is actually alive and just undercover. When he opens it though, it is a new video game console, a model that costs over 400 dollars. Lolly is disappointed. He doesn’t even like video games, and he can’t figure out why Jermaine would have wanted him to have it.

Later that night, Lolly takes all his Lego kits off the shelves and pulls them all apart. He doesn’t know why, but he suddenly wants to make something new.

The next morning Lolly sets up his new phone. His mom says not use his phone where everyone can see it or tell anyone about his new game console. She suddenly starts sobbing, thinking about Jermaine. Lolly remembers his dad “cried like a little kid” the last time he was here (28). Lolly hugs his mom until she stops crying and asks if she thinks his dad will come over for Christmas today. She says if he’d been around more, maybe Jermaine would have turned out different.

The door buzzer rings, and Lolly runs to the door hoping it’s his dad, but it’s Yvonne. She is carrying two big trash bags. She has been his mom’s girlfriend for years and is a custodian at Tuttle’s Toy Emporium at Rockefeller Center. She acts like Lolly’s auntie, just like Mr. Jonathan, and she loves to spoil Lolly. Inside the trash bags are Lego pieces—Yvonne got them from her job because they were going to throw them out. Lolly is speechless.

Winter break is over, so Lolly and Vega are walking down the street to school. Lolly asks how Vega’s violin is going. Vega has been playing violin since he was nine years old. Vega then asks him how Lolly’s castle is coming along—Lolly has been building a castle in secret ever since Yvonne brought home the bags of Lego. The castle is so big it no longer fits in his bedroom, so he is building in the living room, which annoys his mom because it takes so much space.

The two older boys who followed Lolly on Christmas Eve are following them again. They are trying to get Vega’s cousin to join their gang. Vega and Lolly run so the older boys won’t catch them.

In their after-school program, Vega and a girl named Sunnshyne Dixon-Knight, Sunny for short, pick on each other like always. According to Lolly, Sunny isn’t “bad-looking, but her attitude [makes] her ugly” (37). Sunny makes fun of Vega’s hair and rudely calls it “nappy” (37). Even though Sunny is mean to Vega, she seems to like Lolly and maybe even has a crush on him.

Mr. Ali, the head of the after-school program, calls Lolly into his office.

Mr. Ali is a licensed social worker with an MS in psychotherapy and training counseling youth. He wants to talk to Lolly about Jermaine’s death. Lolly doesn’t like being in Mr. Ali’s office. While Mr. Ali is talking, Lolly pictures Jermaine lying in a bed of Lego blocks. When Mr. Ali says it might be time to move Jermaine’s bed out of Lolly’s room, Lolly furiously kicks Mr. Ali’s desk so hard he leaves a dent. Mr. Ali tells Lolly that he needs to accept Jermaine’s death.

Lolly’s mom takes him ice skating in Central Park, but he is still in a bad mood from Mr. Ali’s conversation. Lolly doesn’t like thinking about Jermaine because he thinks that he let Jermaine down.

A week later, Mr. Ali calls Lolly into his office again. Mr. Ali tells Lolly to deal with his anger and asks if he is mad at Jermaine. Lolly is offended—he loved Jermaine, the only person he could talk to even without speaking. Mr. Ali cautions that if Lolly doesn’t work through his anger, it will evolve into bad behavior. When Mr. Ali asks who Lolly is mad at, Lolly thinks about what happened between him and Jermaine before he died. He hasn’t told anyone about it, but it was bad.