Tuesday
Quinn
When Quinn arrives at school, someone has spray-painted “RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY” in huge letters on the sidewalk. During lunch, Guzzo waves Quinn over to eat with him and the other white members of the basketball team, who are all sitting together in the cafeteria. Quinn remembers that Paul once told him that Springfield had once been nearly all white; now it was only about thirty-seven percent white, which Paul had claimed made his job more difficult. As Quinn gazes out over the cafeteria, where he realizes only white students are eating, Jill approaches him and suggests that they sit outside by the graffiti. Quinn agrees, but Guzzo insists that he and Jill sit with him, and they sit down at Guzzo’s table. Guzzo questions Quinn’s loyalty and brings up his early departure from the barbecue, but Jill defends Quinn by saying that it’s only natural for him to be acting strangely after having seen Paul beating Rashad. Angry that Jill knows they were outside Jerry’s that night, Guzzo warns Quinn not to tell anyone else and mentions that Paul will probably be facing a lawsuit. Jill tells Guzzo to think of Rashad and his family, but Guzzo refuses to listen and accuses Quinn of betraying Paul before storming off. As Quinn stands up to leave, Dwyer urges him to fix his problems with Guzzo for the sake of the team and their futures.
During practice, Coach Carney pushes the team to exhaustion and then has them practice free throws, keeping score to evaluate which players will make the starting lineup. Quinn makes nine out of his ten throws, and English makes all ten. In the weight room, Quinn and English pair up. Quinn asks if English knows who tagged the sidewalk, but English refuses to say. When Quinn then proposes Paul may have just been doing his job and that Rashad could have been high, English angrily tells him that Rashad did nothing wrong and could have died. He points out how easy it is for a privileged white boy like Quinn to forget about racial injustice and walks away, leaving Quinn feeling ashamed.
Back on the court, Guzzo thanks Quinn for defending Paul to English and suggests that they retaliate with graffiti of their own, but this upsets Quinn; while he believes it was wrong for someone to tag the sidewalk, he believes what Paul did to Rashad was wrong as well, and he tells Guzzo not to be an “asshole,” angering Guzzo again. When practice resumes, Quinn apologizes to English but misses his shots, and Coach Carney forces him to run suicides. As he sprints up and down the court, Quinn realizes that he doesn’t want his life to change because of what he saw Paul doing to Rashad and feels sick at the thought of what his desire to ignore the situation might say about him.
When he arrives home, Quinn wishes his mother were there instead of at work. He helps Willy with his homework and makes the two of them dinner, which he overcooks while distracted with thoughts of Rashad. Over the course of the evening, Quinn reflects on his white privilege and realizes that if he wants to make a difference, he needs to watch the footage of the beating. He watches three different YouTube videos of the incident on his phone, then texts Jill to ask if she can talk. When she calls him, they discuss how divided the cafeteria was that day and how several Black students’ lockers were searched for spray paint. Jill points out that trying to...
(This entire section contains 1390 words.)
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ignore the issue is a form of racism, and the two of them decide that even if they don’t know how yet, they have to take a stand.
Rashad
On Tuesday morning, Rashad plugs the television back in and watches the news, which includes two interviews pertaining to his story. In the first, the woman who took the video of the beating says that Paul was brutalizing Rashad, while in the second, a cab driver claims that there is no way to know if Rashad is innocent and admits that he doesn’t pick up passengers who look like Rashad. Rashad wonders what exactly the cab driver means. After the news story, he mutes the television and works on his art. Clarissa arrives to check his vitals, and Rashad thanks her for taking care of him. When they notice the chief of police on the news, they unmute the television and hear the chief state that the force trusts Paul’s judgment. “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” Clarissa tells Rashad.
That afternoon, Rashad’s mother brings him a letter from his JROTC officer and watches the news with him. When Rashad tells her that some people are saying Paul was “just doing his job,” his mother becomes angry and tries not to cry. She tells Rashad that he did nothing to deserve what happened to him and calls Paul an “asshole,” which surprises Rashad, as she almost never swears. When his mother begins to sob, Rashad holds her and finds himself crying with her.
As Rashad and his mother recover by laughing at Family Feud, Spoony and his girlfriend, Berry, arrive. Berry is in law school, and Rashad describes her as not only intelligent but beautiful and “so cool.” Rashad and his friends all used to have a crush on her, but that ended when she started dating Spoony. Berry takes out her phone and pulls up an image of the graffiti at the high school: “RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY.” Rashad immediately recognizes it as Carlos’s work. Berry tells him that there are tags all over Springfield, and as he looks through some of the pictures, Rashad realizes that not all the graffiti is by the same artist. The phrase from the tags has even become a hashtag, Berry says, and some of the students from Rashad’s school are organizing a protest. Rashad’s mother voices concern over the idea, worrying that more people might be hurt, but Spoony and Berry argue that protesting is an important way for people to make their voices heard.
Rashad is relieved when Shannon, English, and Carlos arrive, until they immediately ask if Rashad has heard about the protest. They tell him that Mr. Fisher, a history teacher, is supporting the protest and explain that people are tired of the racist policing in Springfield. After Shannon, English, and Carlos all share stories of times that they were unfairly detained or questioned by police, Rashad decides that he will stand with them at the protest if he is released from the hospital in time.
Analysis
In “Tuesday,” it becomes clear that Quinn and Rashad’s school is becoming more divided than before, and largely along racial lines: all of the white members of Quinn’s basketball team sit in the cafeteria at lunch, while all of the Black players opt to eat outside by Carlos’s graffiti. Quinn’s initial decision to eat outside with Jill suggests that he is beginning to take sides in the issue of Rashad’s beating, but he is waylaid when Guzzo strong-arms him into sitting at the white basketball players’ table. In this way, Guzzo acts as a physical embodiment of a major reason for Quinn’s reluctance to choose sides: he does not want to betray those close to him. His hesitance, however, already makes him a betrayer in Guzzo’s eyes. Quinn is similarly alienated from English when he questions the appropriateness of the graffiti and attempts to seek justification for Paul’s actions. Unless Quinn chooses a side, he will be no one’s friend. Rashad reveals a similar, though less pronounced, hesitance when he questions whether or not he is worth the media attention he is receiving and acknowledges to his mother that not everyone sees him as a victim. This deeply upsets his mother, who assures Rashad that he is “not a criminal”; and later, Spoony, Berry, English, Shannon, and Carlos all work to convince Rashad of the necessity of the protest. For both Rashad and Quinn, attempting to remain neutral is no longer an option, and neither narrator can avoid what has begun to feel like a responsibility to act.
