which makes anyone on the other side of her advice
feel stupid or even worse, young & stupid.
Lay Li was held back a year in middle school.
She say it was right when her mama went off the deep
end & she had to raise her younger sisters, Liz & Leah,
before her daddy stepped in.
One day after school
I watched her washing mismatched plates & cereal bowls
little trails of her younger sisters’ breakfast left in the sink
her eyes never blinked but she almost smiled.
Her given name is Liliane
But she say “My mama gave me that name
& I don’t keep nothing that woman gave me.”
LAY LI SAYS GOOGLE MAKES
everything perfect
Look it up:
How do you fix a run in your stocking?
You don’t.
How do you make a boy fall in deep like?
Focus on your lip gloss
Always apply a second coat
Touch his arm whenever you can
Don’t let him grab you up
How to kiss?
Find a mirror
Purse your lips together
Kiss the glass
Make sure it isn’t wet when you pull back
& stare at the impression of your breath
Do it again
How to fight the sadness?
Dance to your favorite song loud loud
Call your friends & talk them into walking the mall with you
Call someone that likes you more than you like them
& let their adoration fill you up
Put on your favorite pair of leggings
& strut to the corner store slow
Buy something small:
a pack of gum, a candy bar, or a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos
Laugh loud in front of your enemies
Don’t write about it Don’t write about it?
Nah, don’t leave evidence of the sads.
& never ever let it take you somewhere you can’t come back from.
NOW, WHEN I GET A CHANCE TO HAVE MY FIRST KISS
I jump
Literally
Out my skin
Then I climb in the closet with Adrian from the junior class.
The thing is my shorts ain’t short enough
& my tank top ain’t tight at all
I figure I ain’t too much to look at no way
So, when Adrian
choose me for a round of “Seconds in Heaven”
I decide he know what to do with a kiss
Besides
He got the freshest flattop
& run the Edison Alternative School
the one opposite RFK Prep Academy up the hill
You know,
The one we heard all the bad stories about.
STORIES
like the ceiling with water falling in on the classrooms even after it rains for days on end. The desks are moved to the front of the room leaving the blue wastebaskets to collect the water before one of the students is assigned with dumping the water in the nearest bathroom sink.
STORIES LIKE THE BOYS
who compare videos of girls in their locker rooms. Like the boys who leak the videos online when they mad. Like the boys who leak the videos online when they get bored. How the videos made the girl into a mess her mother would have to clean up. Like the time the mother transferred the girl out of school because her daughter couldn’t walk into a room without people whispering & giggling. Like the boys were expelled from the entire school district. Like the girl went to a whole other school & by the time she got there the videos had surfaced over there too. Like the boys never really felt no kind of way because they were too busy being celebrated & given high fives from their homies.
STORIES LIKE THE ONES WE HEARD ABOUT ANGEL
She was once the one everyone wanted to be like. Until Lay Li arrived on campus. Tight jeans with patches
strategically placed everywhere: Hip. Butt. Right knee. Left shin. It made the eyes check out her fly. Her baby hair
was eco style perfect and her lips pouted with the shiniest MAC sheen ever. I didn’t really hang with Angel then.
But I thought she was nice enough. We all dance in a circle at homecoming one year when we still thought
a bunch of barrettes and a set of earrings made you special enough to be remembered.
Angel had light light eyes. Like green, light. Like tree, bright. She sport her ash-blond hair
bone straight. Which was pretty hard to do surrounded by all the valley’s humidity. But Angel
ain’t gave up. She kept a brown brush in her back pocket & tied the handle with her green scrunchie.
Angel had four younger siblings. All of them heads full of ash-blond hair. Curly tight bangs
covered their eyes like a perfect Disney character. But they mama being the janitor at our grade school
made them the butt of everyone’s jokes. I ain’t laugh. Ain’t nothing funny about making sure your kids fed.
But Angel couldn’t get away from the laughter.
STORIES ABOUT ANGEL’S MAMA
began to circulate like a wasp’s nest, bothered. Someone said they socks went missing.
Someone said they lunch money went missing. Everyone blamed Angel’s mama. Sat in her face
in the lunchroom and dared her to pounce. But Angel was sugar sweet. At first,
she didn’t like to fight. Rumor has it her daddy beat her mama. That’s why
her mama walked slow around the rooms, cleaning & humming. No hurry. No care
for the things that children might say about her. Just feeling like she had to get
from one task to the next, safely. One day, it’s like Angel woke up.
Just wound up her fists & started swinging.
Some think maybe she started to fight so people would stop focusing on her mama.
But Angel’s anger grew until it had legs, arms, and its own nervous system.
She stole a car once. She fought on the back of the bus another time. She smacked a girl over lollipops in the back of the team van. As it drove the cheerleaders to the away game across town.
STORIES CAN CHANGE WHO YOU ARE TO YOURSELF
Shoot, stories can change your whole world. Look at Angel. Darius became her world. & here comes a whole new story about who Angel is & how we will remember her. Darius became a new story. He was an older boy at Burbank High that took a real liking to her. Saw her at one of the away games & told her to sit beside him after the game was finished. He wasn’t a ballplayer. But he was respected. Black hoodie and army fatigue jacket covered his shoulders. And he didn’t smile much. But when he saw her, he did. In no time Angel and Darius were inseparable. People stopped talking bad about Angel’s mama. But Angel ain’t stop swinging. Angel quit cheerleading altogether. Darius was known to be hot tempered and even more hot handed. He swung on anybody. He connects like Iron Fist. Like Street Fighter. Like Mortal Kombat. Him & Angel began to turn on each other. It got to the point Angel ain’t allowed to walk too far away from Darius when she visits him at the away games. My mama said that’s a bad recipe. & the way her & my pops broke up, I believe her. Boys from other schools who don’t know what’s the what. History ain’t always passed easily. And Angel is beautiful like that. She caused boys to stop and talk about silly things. Talk about anything that would keep her attention. Darius get to swinging on the boy that look too long into her pretty eyes. He doesn’t listen to Angel screams, telling him to stop. He tried to swing on her school security too. That’s how he got kicked out of Burbank and afterward the only school that would take him is Edison Alternative. At least that’s the story I heard.
B
UT I THINK MY STORY ABOUT MY FIRST KISS
begins here.
With Adrian & me facing each other
In a closet.
Adrian smells like fresh-cut grass & hay
It makes my nose itch
But at least he looks at me
& not through me.
I’m so used to people looking through me to get to Lay Li.
I don’t even realize it.
I just know my nose itches
& my palms are sweaty
& he is looking at me
His hand on my shoulder
My hand on his knee
I try to keep still to ignore the itch of my nose
But it takes my attention & won’t let go
My stomach swirls & dips
that’s got to mean something.
THE THING
about a kiss is:
if it’s too wet
it’s the worst
& if it’s too dry
it hurts.
I learned these rules reading my grandma’s Harlequin romance novels.
Someone always graces the cover in a ball gown
with the moonlight peeking from behind a castle or something
The woman’s arms are almost always wrapped tight
like a scarf around a rich-looking white man’s neck
Both their eyes closed lips locked & looking
some kind of sleep.
IN THE CLOSET I SIT & WAIT FOR ADRIAN
to close his eyes
like the romance book cover
like the movie Pretty Woman.
But he doesn’t
He looks
right
at
me
Eyes not blinking or nothing
Mouth hanging open like a barn door
& he leans in quick
Except I’m quick
TOO
Too quick
I put my head down
& give him a headbutt to the nose.
Red violet spills open everywhere.
The closet begins to smell like pennies in a wet fist
& before I can blink
The door is flung open
Adrian is tumbling out with his paws over his flooded face.
Everyone is laughing
Everyone except Lay Li.
I guess it’s cause she knows this means:
she has more work to do.
Except I ain’t never asked for her help
Just asked for her to be my friend.
HERE COME THE SENIOR BOYS
from Burbank High School
It’s been ten days since I found myself on Lay Li’s porch,
waiting
I found myself lost
This is what I remember now
Sitting by myself at an away game
Clifton on the other side of the gym with his friends
Me by myself with my memories
REMEMBER WHEN?
Lay Li said to no one in particular.
“Why she always looking at me?”
& I looked around to see who she was talking about.
“Who?”
Lay Li blinks at me slow
like I’m stupid
like she can’t believe I asked such a dumb question
Lay Li blinks slow like the red hand warning
“STOP”
& then responds
“Angel! Look at her. She always staring
at me like she want smoke!”
& I nod like I agree & I have all the answers.
REMEMBER WHEN I DIDN’T HAVE THE ANSWER?
but I pretended real quick
“I don’t know what she’s looking at!”
My eyes shoot daggers defending Lay Li
& Angel’s eyes go down down down
to her shoes
shell-toed sneakers with the label
faded & holding her jeans like a prayer.
Angel’s smile goes down down down
to the pit of her stomach like nightfall
like the room is spinning & she might be sick.
Then I feel sick
Because here I am with a chance to do different
& instead of being loyal to myself
I rather be loyal to Lay Li.
My mama say I got a mean mug
when things ain’t going my way
& I perfected it for moments just like this
To protect my friends
It’s what I wear when I walk home alone
It’s what I wear when I’m on the court playing ball
It’s what I wear when Essa talk slick & now
It’s what I wear when Lay Li say someone is bothering her.
Angel walks past
The boys can’t help but turn they heads.
Like Lay Li she’s pretty
But unlike Lay Li, she act like she don’t know it.
REMEMBER WHEN LAY LI SAID
“If you see something you like
You got to pretend you don’t like it so much”?
& I tried on her swag
I walked around the mall full of its see-through things
Sort of looking at boys
Sort of looking at shoes
Both of these I can’t afford.
I don’t trip
Until the air changed
& right ahead of us stands Angel
surrounded by a flock of dudes.
She’s laughing in her crop top & acid-washed jeans.
We catch her eye
& Angel smiles in my direction.
Angel got pretty eyes & wear her ponytail to the side
Lay Li suck her teeth
Stuff her hands in her back pocket & turn on
her heel digs into the marble floor
her back to Angel’s eager glance.
I REMEMBER WHEN IT ALL CHANGED
This was weeks before the Shawn incident
But after I proved I was willing to be mean to a girl
That ain’t never did nothing to me
Me & Lay Li were hanging out at my house when Essa came home
I was trying on outfits & Lay Li sat on the edge of the bed grimacing
“No”
“Absolutely not”
& “Damn! You ain’t got anything else? Besides those ugly basketball shorts?”
Essa stood at the doorway & laughed a laugh that shook the walls before she said
“She’s so corny! She ain’t got nothing that I ain’t give her.”
& Essa was right. Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from her or summer basketball T-shirts with the sleeves cut off.
Essa & Lay Li laughed & laughed & laughed
& laughed & laughed & l a u g h e d
So long the hairs on my arm stood up electric
The air sizzled & a levee behind my eyes broke
Rivers & streams stream down my face I face them both
& before I can speak Essa tosses her hand in the air.
“You’re such a crybaby. We were only playing, dang.”
I bend over to throw my clothes in a pile in the corner of the room
& change my mind
Lay Li isn’t laughing anymore
But she ain’t speaking either
As I pick up an armful of clothes I toss them at Essa’s face
I don’t realize until it’s too late that a sneaker is in the pile
Until she’s howling & holding her eye with one hand
Lay Li never said sorry
Lay Li never said sorry
When I finally look in the mirror
to wash my face
I don’t even recognize my reflection
Black streaks & smeared lip gloss
With a black scowl cover my face
Lay Li never said sorry
Lay Li never said sorry
She just ran to the kitchen to help Essa with ice for her blackening eye
HERE COME THE VALLEY HIGH BOYS
As Clifton & his friends hoot for the hoopers
He sees me staring at him a couple of rows away
& walks over to me. “You okay?” he asks.
& I smile because my voice is somewhere
Far away tucked deep inside my yesterdays.
“Come over here.” He grabs my hand & guides me to
A new day.
Which is really just another set of bleachers
With girls waiting for their boyfriends to return
To their side & pay them some attention
I don’t mind. I guess I’m used to the background
I don’t mind. I need some time to think.
All the things floating in my head keep me dizzy
Off centered I lean both elbows on my legs
& breathe deep
“Hey, you okay?”
I don’t realize how far I am from now
I look to my left, head still in the cup of my hands
& see Kiyana for the first time
She sits there staring at me worried
“You don’t look so good, are you okay?”
I nod. I nod.
I sit up & clear my throat
“I’m good. I’m good. Thanks.”
“My name is Kiyana. I think you play ball with my brother,
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