He paused for a moment.
“I’ve known him for a long time,” he said. Then he smiled at me. “My whole life . . .” He gazed off into the distance. Eerie. Quiet. Frozen. And then, “Just the chance to make music. That’s all he ever wanted. . . . Any of us.”
“Piper, I’m real sorry about your friend . . . But I’m real glad it looked like he’s gonna be okay. You think?”
He looked at me and smiled. “Yo . . .” he said. “I appreciate that. He will. He’s gotta be, you know?”
In that moment, I knew it was worth it. All the trouble I was sure to be in with Gramma. To be sitting here in Akron, Ohio, making Piper smile.
“Ay,” Sir Gee’s voice snapped me to attention as he and Raq approached the table with trays full of food. “We about to get sick wit’ all this food,” he said, ready to inhale all that he’d purchased. Piper said grace—“Yo, thank you, Lord for this food. Bless the hands that prepared it. Bless us as we consume it. Bless those who don’t have it”—and then, we slammed.
Piper started it first, making silly toasts with our milkshakes.
“Yo . . . here’s to fine dining at Burger King.”
Raq laughed real loud and posted up her shake as well. “And to fly riding in a Hummer . . .”
Sir Gee laughed, “To Nuuuu Yorrrrk. Here we come, big pimpin’.”
We cracked up.
“Yo . . .” Piper said. “To Big Pun . . .”
Raq said, “To Pac . . .”
Sir Gee added, “Jam-Master . . .”
Piper said, “To Cyn . . .”
A hush. Then we all smiled and toasted again.
Piper added, “To better days for him . . .”
“For all of us,” Gee added. Then we toasted some more.
“To hip-hop,” Piper said.
I said, “And to Piper MC.”
Everyone raised the milkshakes just a tad higher this time and chimed in, “To Piper.”
Piper said, “Yo . . . I can’t wait for New York.”
“You ain’t never lied,” Gee offered. “I can smell them funky-assed streets already.”
We all laughed.
“So um . . .” Raq said, “is Buckstarr coming, too?”
Sir Gee let out a loud guffaw. “Naw! She gotta tape some reunion for her show—what is it Pipe?”
“Flavor of Chance When I Wanna Be a Housewife or a Bachelorette and Dance with an Idol.”
“Yeah.” Gee stuffed a bunch of french fries in his mouth and chuckled. “That show.”
We all laughed.
Raq grinned. “Bummer. I thought she seemed real cool at the studio. Woulda been cool to hang with her.”
Raq nodded. “And I was hoping I would get to see her perform live Thursday, you know? She’s real good on ‘Liar, Liar.’ That’s my jam . . .”
And finally, Raq saw the opportunity to give Sir Gee and Piper what she’d been holding inside. In a voice raspy like Mariah’s but soulful like Mary J’s and in a register sincere like a blues singer, she surprised even me.
Ooooohhhh . . .
Liar . . .
A liar I desire . . .
Set my heart on fire . . .
I lovvvve you . . .
Oh yeah.
Raq had the melody down but her tone was different from Buckstarr’s. More sorrowful. More sincere. Less sexy than Buckstarr’s and more aching. It was more hip-hop meets the blues, less sex kitten. Judging from the silence around us and Sir Gee’s and Piper’s eyes on Raq, I knew I wasn’t the only one affected.
“Yo . . .” A smile crept onto Piper’s face, his interest piqued. “What’s your full name again?”
She smiled. “Raquel Marissa Diaz. But Raq is cool.”
Never try and trump the queen on your first move.
Wait. And be calculated.
12
Me and my best friend. Check.
The hottest up-and-coming hip-hop star. Check.
On our way to New York City, the birthplace of hip-hop. Check.
Freedom from the drudgery of school and my grandmother. Check. Check.
No rules. No limitations. Just excitement, hope, and possibility.
It was a fantasy come true and I wanted to believe in it.
Instead, all I kept thinking about was Gramma.
Gramma.
Gramma.
Gramma.
Later, we stopped at another rest stop, and me and Raq went to use the restroom. It was the evening by that point, and according to Gee, we were less than forty miles away from Pittsburgh. I could hear her cell phone vibrating incessantly, and as soon as it would stop, it would begin again, adamant and obnoxious. I had heard it doing that all day but had tried to convince myself the calls were for Raq, not for me.
I was standing at the rust-stained metal sink, brushing my hair into a fresh ponytail, when Raq slipped her phone from under the stall she was in. I peered down at the stark bright screen, now tinted blue, and it was screaming A. MICHELLE’S GRANNY like a broken traffic light. Bizzzzzzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Finally, I snatched the phone from Raq and pressed SEND to answer it. “Hello?”
I heard Raq gasp and then giggle. I held my breath, having no idea what I was going to say next.
Gramma sounded relieved. “Oh, Ann! Is that you?” she said.
An impossible weight of guilt fell into my stomach. “Hi, Gramma . . .”
She cheered. “Where are you?”
I leaned against the bathroom wall. The tile felt so cold. This whole morning of being free and on the road had felt like a foggy fantasy. Now it was time to come back to a clear reality. “I’m at Raq’s,” I said, wondering how I was going to say the same thing tomorrow, too, and then again the next day.
With the relieved smile fading from her voice, Gramma replied, “Well, I’ll just come on and pick you up. Since apparently you missed first thing in the morning this morning. You got homework I need to check?”
I banged my head against the wall. My eyes fixed on the ceiling, I said, “Gramma, it’s okay. Raq just ordered a pizza. We’re gonna eat and then—”
“And when you get home,” she said, her voice forcefully calm, “I’m taking you in for a drug screen. Just say yes or no . . . Has that child exposed you to smoking things?”
“Right! Gramma, come on. I’m sixteen years old. Why do you talk to me like I’m a kid?”
She sounded cross now. “Child, I know how old you are!” And then: “Are y’all somewhere having sex with boys?”
“Gramma! You’re not serious!” Gramma has Raq pinned as some weed-smoking promiscuous girl, but in one of our first serious conversations, Raq had confided in me that she was still a virgin, and that she hated drugs because of what they’d done to her mother.
Gramma continued, “I’m coming to get you. Right now. Put your shoes and socks on. What’s the address?”
I took a purposefully long deep breath. “I’m just . . . I need to . . .”
“You need to what?” Gramma asked in her no-nonsense voice.
I swallowed. “I’m uh . . .”
It was official—God had completely tied my tongue and deserted me. I couldn’t even think of a lie.
Without my permission, panic slipped out with my words and my voice cracked. I said, “I’m sorry. Okay? Gramma, I . . .”
She sounded as angry as she did confused. “Sorry? For what—”
I pulled the phone from my ear, put my hand to my chest, and felt my heartbeats.
Standing in front of me now, Raq pulled the phone from my hand and pressed END. Just like that, she’d dismissed it all.
“Anyhow. Did you see how they looked at me, chica? They know I’m better than Buckstarr for that hook. She ain’t got nothing on your girl!” She tousled her hair a bit. “That song is mine by the time we get to New York.”
Raq clearly didn’t want to talk about what had just happened with Gramma, and I didn’t want to either. I was disappointing my grandmother, something I had n
ever done before, and I felt horrible. But on the other hand, I felt a little free. This was my life, wasn’t it? And this was my time to live it. Going on the road with Piper was a one-in-a-million opportunity, something Gramma wasn’t going to understand.
I tried to smile in agreement as I brushed my ponytail some more.
“By the way,” Raq said. “The whole ponytail thing is gettin’ played, all right?”
I looked in the mirror, turned my head, and checked my side profile. Raq was right. But without a flat iron, curling iron, or anything else, what else could I do?
Raq reached up and slid the rubber band from my hair. She finger combed it down until it hung straight. Despite the dent from the elastic, it actually looked okay.
“I’ll do some spirals or something when we can get us a curling iron. And stop looking so worried,” she warned me. And then she smiled. “We belong here, chica! This is our world. We gotta act like we own this. Your grandmother will be fine. She heard your voice and now she’s got no reason to worry. She knows you’re not dead. Now she’ll just be mad. And since she’s already mad, you might as well enjoy this. You’re here now. Don’t let her ruin it for you.”
Raq was right, I knew, but there was a part of me that wasn’t so sure that Gramma wouldn’t take some extreme measure. Wonder if she’s calling the police right this second. At the very least I figured she’d call Raq’s foster parents. I had told her their names when I first started hanging out with Raq. I thought knowing that Raq had had a hard life would make Gramma go a little easier on her. I was so wrong.
On the way back to the car, Raq suggested that we stop in the gift shop and get some stuff. We grabbed a red plastic basket and tossed in candy and chips, sodas and gum, T-shirts and yo-yos, magazines and coloring books, a Slinky and Silly Putty. As usual, Raq didn’t bother to look at any of the price tags. I wondered how much money she even had on her debit card. Must’ve been plenty.
I noticed a shelf full of Ohio postcards and maps on a turnstile by the counter. Without meaning to, I started to reminisce. When I was little, Gramma and I traveled this very turnpike heading to Cedar Point in Sandusky, the best amusement park in the world. Sometimes we passed by here to go to Hershey, Pennsylvania, too. We used these very roads to get to Pittsburgh, where we’d visit my great-aunt Maybel, Gramma’s older, meaner, and even more religious sister. While she and Gramma had Bible study with church ladies, they’d enroll me in some church camp where all the kids would want to play and laugh and be silly together but mostly we had to learn Bible verses and be serious. There was one teacher—Sister Jo—who was nice, though. She’d let us go outside at the end of the day if we were well behaved and sometimes she’d even join us in puff-blowing on dandelions. Honestly, I never minded the lessons on God and the verses we had to memorize. The hymns really were lovely to me. But all I ever wanted was just to have a little fun, too, to feel free.
Raq emptied the basket and plunked everything down on the counter.
The owl-faced lady rang up our goods. “Sixteen twenty-three,” she announced, and Raq handed over her card. This time I caught a glimpse of it: American Express. Wow. Must be nice. I thought she just had a debit card. I didn’t know Raq was balling like that. I didn’t know a whole lot about credit cards, but I thought that was a fancy one.
At the last second, I reached back over and grabbed a postcard and slid the cashier the fifty cents for it. I thought maybe I’d send it to Gramma. I was showing Raq the card and we were whispering about how crazy it was going to be when Gramma got it in the mail when our talking was interrupted by a loud beep.
“Your card’s been declined,” the cashier said. “And there’s a message to call the credit card company.” And just that quick, the lady was dialing.
I was going to offer to pay with cash—I still had that same twenty dollars I took with me last night—but then I realized I should hold on to it in case I really needed something later on. I felt bad, though. Raq had already spent so much on me.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Raq said. “We’ll just pass on all this stuff.” She reached over at the register and tried to take back her card, cool and smiling, like it was no big deal. I didn’t think it was a big deal either. Gramma’s card had been declined once because she grabbed one that had expired a long time ago— she had forgotten to cut it up—and the cashier gave it back to her without event.
But this lady snatched the card back from Raq’s reach and kept the phone to her ear.
“Chica,” Raq said under her breath, turning to leave, “let’s go . . .”
Right on her heels, I followed.
Once we got to the door, Raq said, “Runnnn!”
And we did.
I had no idea why.
And my heart was skyrocketing.
We piled into the backseat of the truck and Gee turned back to look at us. “What y’all doing? Racing or something?”
“Yeah,” Raq said, out of breath. “We can’t wait to get to New York.”
I tried holding my breath to calm my heart, but it was beating so loud I was sure Gee and Piper could hear it.
“Yo . . .” Piper said. “Y’all all out of breath and thangs.” He laughed.
Gee pulled off and rolled through the parking lot without asking any questions, but I was sitting behind him and I peeped the look in his eyes in the rearview mirror. He was looking back at me, so I offered a smile, hoping he would think that everything was okay. Finally, he shifted his eyes away and concentrated on the road. I wished I could do the same.
The car was silent for the next few miles, but eventually we all started talking again. Like it had never even happened. But it had. It definitely had.
WELCOME TO PENNSYLVANIA, the sign read.
It felt like we’d been on the road forever when we finally left Ohio and headed into Pennsylvania toward Pittsburgh. The simple landscape gave way to winding roads and majestic hills and grand mountainsides. There was a difference, too, in Gee’s driving. Slower. Less persistent. Until finally he asked, “Wanna just get a room?”
Sounding exhausted, Piper replied. “Might as well.”
I looked at the clock. It was only 9:32. But so much had happened that day that I guess all of us needed to rest.
I was approaching twenty-four hours past curfew now.
I hoped we were getting two separate rooms. Piper and Gee were cool, but I wasn’t comfortable sleeping in the same room with them. And I couldn’t wait to shower.
Plus, me and Raq needed to talk.
“How the heck are we going to pay for a room, Raq?” I whispered to Raq. “That lady took your card, didn’t she? I only have twenty dollars. . . .”
With an annoyed expression on her face, she pulled a National City Bank debit card from her purse. Her name, she made sure I could see, was written across the front.
On the double bed next to mine, in a room adjacent to Piper and Sir Gee’s, at a random Holiday Inn Express, Raq lay on her stomach on a flower-print bedspread still hinting of cigarettes from the guest before us. She closed her eyes and pressed her face to a pillow she’d just balled up. Directly across from her on the other bed, I sat erect and nervous. We were miles away from the rest-stop incident, but it was still very much on my mind. She, on the other hand, seemed totally at ease.
“How are we going to pay for the rest of this week—food, motels, all that stuff?” I asked.
“I’ve got at least four hundred cash.” Raq turned her head slightly and let her big brown eyes drift open again so she could get a good look at me. “Okay?”
Wow. Four hundred bucks? Jeez. Maybe Kitty’s brother could hook me up with the job Raq had just quit.
Then she said, “I was saving it for the mall, but we can use some for the motel, too. I was thinking . . . We really need to get to a store where we can take our time and find us some really fly gear for New York.”
“Okay, but what was all that about at the rest stop? Why didn’t you wait to get your card back?”
She grunted. “Oh my goodness, chica! Loosen up. That lady is probably waiting on some old man buying Depends by now. You think she’s worried about us? Come on.” With a crooked little smile she said, “Besides, catching Raquel Marissa Diaz has never been done. Okay?”
“Excuse me?” I said. “Catching you . . . why would you need to be caught?”
She rolled her eyes, acting like what I was saying was so ridiculous.
“Relax.”
“You weren’t saying that back there in the store,” I reminded her. “You told me to run.”
“Okay, so what’s the big deal? We didn’t do anything. We left. What? Are we going to get arrested for running out of a store?” She groaned. “You know what? You are really messing up my mind right now.”
I could sense that things were going to get real tense between us if I kept going, so I decided not to say anything else. Raq, however, surprisingly wouldn’t let up.
“Always thinking with your mind.” She tsk-tsked. “It’s not gonna get you anywhere in life, chica. Might work for books and those damn tests you’re always acing, but trying to do the smart thing, the right thing, all the damn time isn’t gonna get you nothing but stay-at-home-with-Gramma boredom for the rest of your life. All right?”
With that, she turned over and flopped on her back.
But at least I won’t have to run out of stores, I thought.
After a while she said, “Last summer, I saw this thing on the news, right? I was living in ’Nati still . . . This guy had a credit-card machine . . . Like, he was so good he could make credit cards, chica! It was crazy wild. But anyhow, it was nine years before they caught him. Nine years! And you know what he got?” She sat up and looked at me again, all animated and thrilled by the thought. “A shitload of fines. And that’s it. Okay, so really, you think they’re gonna care about some random kids trying to buy potato chips and a toy or two? Chica . . .” She offered me a look of pity.
I was afraid to ask but I had to. “So it was a stolen card, Raq?” I grimaced. “Are you serious? You cannot be serious!”
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