Excerpt from A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Santos began imitating Sister Pamela, making the same face he used when mocking Chinese people. Freddy laughed.

"What an old bitch," Santos said. He whispered because they were sitting near the front.

Freddy laughed again. "You can't talk that way about her."

"She's just a wrinkled-up raisin wrapped in a sheet."

He was being a friend when he made fun of her, but Freddy wanted to change the subject anyway. He didn't like it when Santos said such things. Before she got sick, Aunt Ava had been thinking about becoming a nun.

When the van pulled into the street, the twelve kids, all boys, clapped and cheered. Sister Pamela sat beside the driver, looking back when it got too loud or when one of the boys said a bad word.

"What do you think the pool will be like?" Freddy said. "And the house. And what will they make on the grill?"

"The food's always great," Santos said. "Burgers, hot dogs, whatever you want. There's even steak. You can get seconds, no problem. Thirds too."

His know-it-all tone annoyed Freddy, but he smiled anyway. He'd been looking forward to the trip, imagining it for many weeks. This was his first summer with the camp, his friend's third. The sisters of the Missionary of Charity ran St. Rita's, and a few times every summer they'd take a van out to the suburbs, in New Jersey or Connecticut or Westchester, where some friendly white people would welcome the city kids into their house. It must have been their way to feel closer to God, or at least to Mother Teresa. She had started the Missionary. Last summer she had come to visit the Bronx. Even Freddy's mother had gone to see her. It had been important for her to spot Mother Teresa with her own eyes, as if that would improve things for her younger sister, Ava.

"The house is great too," Santos said. "Really freaking big."

"How big?" Freddy said, though he had asked this question before.

Santos grinned. "Wait till you see. I know."

"Liar."

"Your mom."

Freddy sucked his teeth. "How could you know?"

"I do know. I heard Sister Spamela say we're going to Scarsdale.

I've been there before," Santos said. "Twice," he added, holding two fingers up in Freddy's face. "If it's Scarsdale, it's the Johnsons' house. We always go there."

Freddy had pictured the Johnsons' house before, and now he imagined it in more detail. As the van made its way out of the city, he saw the house's open garage like the ones on TV. Inside, two cars were parked side by side, their hoods shiny in the sun. The lines of bushes leading him to the front door were shaped like animals: a squat baby elephant, two fat pigeons, and a panda lying on its back. The house was white, it was true, with blue shutters and roofing, but different kinds of white existed, and this one was special, like a patch of new snow. In the kitchen, half the size of Freddy's whole apartment, the refrigerator was silver, not brown; it stood tall and wide, and didn't make a sound. It was dizzying to go down to the basement, where the floors and walls were like gold, and back up to the first and then the second floor, where he peeked into the bedrooms, before going back down again to change into his bathing suit. The path out from the back door, made of weird pale stone, felt warm on the soles of his feet. To his right, the garden had almost every color he'd ever seen and the flowers nodded and shook from the movements of fat bugs. He and the other kids fit easily into the pool—it could have fit almost twice as many of them—and there was no need to worry or watch out when anyone jumped into the deep end or flew down the slide into the cool, clear water. At lunchtime, they all sat under an outdoor shelter, like a little house itself, and its roof and the trees protected them from the sun and from summer rain. They breathed in the smoke of meats grilled over charcoal. Then they ate tender slices of steak and laughed, and their laughter was even louder and more relaxed than the sounds they were making on the van as it sped away from the city. And through it all, Mrs. Johnson floated around them like a spirit, a gentler sort than he knew in his world, her hair gold like the walls of the basement, her face softened by a smile.

Excerpt from "I Happy Am" from A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley. Copyright © 2018 by Jamel Brinkley. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.