Black Enough

by Ibi Zoboi

  Lucas had broken up with me two weeks earlier over some silly shit. I mean stuff. Get this: for the beach retreat, he wanted me to room with Dara (his homeboy Derrick’s girlfriend, who I can’t stand) instead of with Tish (my best friend, who he can’t stand). How crazy was that?

  Anyway, an argument ensued. I told him he was trippin’. He told me our relationship was over. I was like, “Yeah, whatever,” because he was always saying shit—I mean stuff—like that. Then after we hung up, he stopped answering my calls and texts. Not for a few hours like after our normal fights. For days! I must’ve called and texted him like a hundred times. Called and texted until my three usual stages of being ignored—feeling pissed then hurt then stupid—had repeated so much they rolled into one hot, crying mess. Not cute. Not even a little bit. So I stopped calling and crying. I decided that Lucas ignoring me was just another one of his stupid games, and I needed to play if I was going to win.

  “We thank you for these teens, Father God, who have come here to fellowship with one another and build a closer relationship with thee,” Brother Tony, the head of the church’s youth ministry, prayed loudly into the microphone. He was standing on the stage at the front of the giant room, wiping sweat from his forehead. Looked like the combination of his long dreads and the huge chandelier overhead was getting the best of him. But no one could tell. As I looked around the ballroom for Lucas’s face among all the teens, every head was bowed.

  Except for this one boy. Over my right shoulder, a row back and three chairs down, I spotted him with his eyes wide open, staring at me. He had a curly high-top fade and a long face with high cheekbones. I’d never seen him before, and I figured he must’ve been from a different campus.

  Higher Ground had five campuses, and all the teens from each campus were invited to the three-day teen beach retreat. Everybody rode down to Galveston on buses from their respective campuses in Houston and the surrounding areas that morning. Mom dropped me off before meeting her first client at the gym, so I was on one of the first buses to leave the main campus. Lucas was on the last. I know because Derrick posted a picture of them on Instagram with the caption, “Saved the best for last.”

  Now back to the boy. He was cute. I mean stupid cute. So cute I had to give him a pass on that yellow visor he was wearing to match his yellow shorts and smiley-face tank top. Boy clearly liked to coordinate. But I couldn’t even hate, especially when yellow looked so good against his smooth dark skin, when his dimples showed without smiling, and his eyelashes curled all the way back to kiss his lids.

  Hi, he mouthed, smiling, showing his straight white teeth.

  Hi, I mouthed back, trying to yank the balls of my cheeks back down. I couldn’t be smiling at dudes! I had a boyfriend! Well, not technically, because he was acting stupid, but I still wanted to be with him.

  Lucas was my first real boyfriend. We’d been dating for almost a year, since I was a freshman. He was the Lucas Sykes: the pastor’s son, the all-state quarterback, the star of all of the church’s big theater productions, and he interned for NASA every summer. And he drove a white drop-top BMW. Need I say more? Everybody and their mama wanted to be with him. To be honest, I never understood why he wanted to be with me. I was a year younger, never the star of anything, and wasn’t blessed with beauty like Tish, who all the boys wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I was cute. But let’s just say I felt lucky to be his girlfriend.

  But sitting in the grand ballroom that morning, I forgot all about feeling lucky. I couldn’t stop smiling at that cute boy. I was straight-up giddy. Looking at him looking back at me felt delicious.

  That is, until I caught the glare of Lucas. Of all of the places he could’ve been sitting! There he was, six rows back and two seats to the left of the cute boy. Lucas’s arms were folded across his chest and he was staring at me—hard. I mean, super hard. As hard as the muscles he had popping out from his shoulders and arms.

  I quickly turned back around.

  “Amen,” everyone said in unison.

  I looked over at Tish, who was sitting beside me in a long purple sarong, and widened my eyes at her to mean, Girl!

  She raised her eyebrows and cocked her head to mean, What?

  I stiffened every muscle in my face and shook my head in the tiniest movement to mean, Can’t tell you right now.

  She knocked her left knee against my right at least five times like, I’m not having that. Then she whispered, “What? Lucas?” with her face scrunched up. The hate between them was mutual.

  “I’ll tell you in a sec,” I whispered back and faced forward.

  “Keri!” she whispered hard.

  But I kept looking forward. I knew Lucas was probably still watching.

  “Now, I know the next couple of hours is beach time, but it’s not completely free time,” Brother Tony said into the microphone, still wiping sweat. “In each one of your tote bags, you’ll find a booklet of questions we want you to reflect upon and journal about at the beach.”

  “Yeah, right!” Tish and I said in unison, and the room buzzed in agreement.

  “I won’t see y’all again until tonight’s church service,” Brother Tony said over the swelling voices, “so be good until then.”

  People sprang from their seats, ready to head to the beach.

  As soon as I got up, I immediately eye-locked with the cute boy. I swear I wasn’t trying to. My eyes just went straight to his. And once they got there, they snuggled up. Seriously, our eyes might as well have been sitting on a sofa, curled up together under a blanket or something.

  Funny—I tried to do the same thing with Lucas once. Got the idea from one of Tish’s magazines, which said eye-gazing was a good test to see if we were in love. Anyway, we were supposed to do it for like ten minutes. Lucas didn’t last ten seconds. I don’t know how long cute boy and I were staring into each other’s eyes. Felt like it could’ve been a minute. Or ten. Or a hundred.

  “Now, that’s what I’m talking about. Don’t chase ’em. Replace ’em!” Tish said, interrupting the gaze fest.

  “What? Nah, it’s not even like that,” I said, trying to fight the grin spreading across my face.

  Tish twisted her lips. “Yeah, okay.”

  Damn, Lucas probably saw that, too. I looked for him among all the people exiting through the ballroom’s set of double doors, but didn’t see him.

  We’d already raced down to the ocean three times to cool off and were almost done with our lunch by the time Lucas and Derrick ducked down under our blue umbrella with their shirts off and towels around their necks. Derrick, whose light-brown skin was bright red from the sun, sat down on the edge of Tish’s lounge chair and Lucas sat on the edge of mine.

  I wished Lucas didn’t look so dang cute. He had a fresh cut. And something about an edge-up always made his angular face, with its hooded eyes, perfect white teeth, and plump lips, look irresistible.

  Oh, so now you want to come over here and talk to me, I thought, leaned back into the stretchy fabric of the lounge chair, and pushed my shades up the bridge of my sweaty nose. I couldn’t speak because I’d just gotten red apple skin stuck between my two front teeth. I tried to get it out with my tongue but couldn’t.

  Derrick was the first one to say something. “You look pretty, as always,” he told Tish. He wasn’t lying. I was sitting on her left side, her buzz-cut side. On her right side, her hair fell down to her chin and half covered her face. Her glossy, light-pink lipstick was still holding on, and her dark-brown skin always had the fresh, dewy look of girls in ads selling makeup that doesn’t look like makeup. No glow in a bottle for Tish. Her skin was just flawless like that.

  “Where’s Dara?” Tish asked.

  I know that’s right, I seconded in my head.

  “Man, I broke up with that girl last week.”

  I didn’t even like Dara, but the way he said that girl—like they hadn’t been dating for almost two years—made me want to slide my pinky nail between my two front teeth and tell him about himself.


  Tish took a sip of the canned lemonade that the church staff had handed out with the white paper lunch boxes twenty minutes earlier. “Don’t tell me y’all around here synchronizing breakups.”

  Oooo . . . get ’em, Tish!

  Derrick and Lucas looked at each other and exchanged a nervous laugh. Then Derrick slightly widened his downturned eyes at Lucas.

  “So,” Lucas said, and turned to me—face, neck, and chest glistening with sweat.

  I folded my arms across my waist, cocked my head to the side, pretended to have a slight attitude, and waited for him to compliment my dress and Afro puffs. Waited for him to say he wanted me back.

  He did none of the above. Instead, he looked at my hair and hiked up the left corner of his upper lip. (Clearly, he wasn’t a fan of my puffs.) Then he stood up, wiped his face with the towel around his neck, and said, “Well, we were just rolling through. Didn’t want to be rude. Even though we’re broken up, we can still be cordial and all.” And they were off.

  As soon as they left, Tish started in on them. “Why they always trying to act like they got so much game? And why does Derrick think he’s Drake? Did you hear him? I swear, two people tell the boy he looks like Drizzy and all of a sudden he’s switchin’ up the sound of his voice.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, even though I didn’t really notice, and picked the apple skin out of my teeth with the nail of my pointer finger. Then I sat up, warm breeze at my back, and fluffed out my Afro puffs. “Does my hair look okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s supercute,” Tish answered, and ate a Lay’s potato chip. She still had some left.

  She was right. My hair was cute. I’d gotten my mom to part it down the middle, used a little gel and a scarf to slick down the edges, and moisturized the curls in my puffs with a little cream. I’d actually smiled at myself in my bathroom mirror before I left the house. That’s how cute it was.

  But my puffs didn’t feel cute anymore. All of a sudden, they felt stupid. And I didn’t know what possessed me to style my hair like I was two years old. I started taking my right ponytail holder out.

  “What are you doing? You’re gonna mess them up,” Tish said.

  I removed my left ponytail holder, not daring to look at her or open my mouth to reply. The tears, already heavy in my eyes, just needed any little excuse to come pouring down. And I was not about to be the one crying in front of everybody on the beach. Naw, not me.

  “Man, fuck Lucas!” Tish said with so much force she sent a piece of chip flying out of her mouth. She licked her bottom lip and continued, “He ain’t nobody. Miserable ass. Always got something to say about everybody, like he’s the motherfucking authority on fashion. He ain’t shit. Just a rich, spoiled, rude, controlling asshole!”

  Tish was right, but that’s not what stopped me from crying. I was too busy looking around to see if anyone else had heard all the curse words flying out of her mouth. I mean, we weren’t officially in church, but Brother Tony had said we were supposed to treat the hotel and all its premises like church ground. Thankfully, no one appeared to be paying any attention. So I got busy trying to redo my hair. I wrapped a ponytail holder back around my right puff. Tried to do the same with my left, but the ponytail holder snapped.

  Before I even had a chance to react, Tish said, “Damn, it’s hot.”

  And it was. The sun had already started its descent, but that didn’t mean a thing. Outside, it still felt like it was a hundred degrees. Beads of sweat pooled on my body anyplace with a dip or a crease. “Sure is,” I said.

  Then we looked at each other and took off racing toward the waves—hot sand stinging the bottoms of our feet. My toes touched the cool ocean first, and I kept running until I was waist deep. Then I floated on my back, eyes closed, giving the ocean my weight, until Tish caught up and splashed water in my face.

  By the time dinner rolled around, my puffs were back in full effect. Tish and I’d finally made it to the front of the line, to the long rectangular tables covered with white tablecloths and topped with silver chafers. I was spooning out some blackened catfish when I heard a gruff voice say, “Hey.”

  I looked up and there he was. The cute boy. Standing across from me, scooping out an unreasonable amount of dirty rice. I’d just done the same thing—the dirty rice went hard.

  “Hey,” I said, surprised such a rough, low voice could come out of all that cuteness . . . surprised to see him standing right in front of me. My eyes had gotten so used to looking at him in yellow that they’d missed him in line behind us in his white T-shirt and dark-blue jeans.

  “Heeey,” Tish said, with a little extra in her voice. She was already onto the garlic bread.

  “Oh, this is my friend Tish,” I said, like I knew the cute boy well.

  The cute boy balanced his plate in one hand and extended the other, “Oh, hi. I’m Brandon,” he said, looking at Tish briefly and then keeping his eyes on me. His smile was so big and bright, I swear I could see sparks flying from his dimples.

  I put down my plate. “Hi. I’m Keri,” I said, my whole body awash with tingling goodness. I placed my hand in his and held on several seconds past normal.

  After I let go, we inched toward the end of the table, staring at each other and stacking up garlic bread. When there was no more table between us, we stood facing each other, overflowing plates almost kissing.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said, staring into my eyes.

  “Me either,” I said, staring back into his and then at his lips. I swear I wasn’t trying to. His lips were just right there, at my eye level. That’s all.

  “Let’s all find somewhere to sit,” Tish said in a high-pitched tone, nodding and smiling, like we were kindergartners or something.

  We obediently followed her to a table toward the back of the ballroom, where Brandon sat down between Tish and me.

  Tish didn’t waste any time. “So, why haven’t we seen you before?” she said right after scooting her chair in.

  “I don’t know,” Brandon said, and straightened the napkin in his lap.

  “What campus do you attend?” I rephrased Tish’s question.

  “The main campus, I think. The one off of 59.”

  “Us too,” Tish and I cheerily said in unison.

  “Oh, you must go to the eight-o’clock service,” I said, starting in on my dirty rice.

  Brandon had already taken a bite of his fish and waited to speak until he finished chewing. “No, I go on Wednesday nights. Not all the time, though. Only when my dad brings home Indian food. Indian was my mom’s favorite. My dad can’t take all the spice. He only eats it when—”

  “Oooh, that’s why,” I interrupted, talking with my mouth full and totally ignoring everything he said after Wednesday nights. “We always go to the eleven-o’clock Sunday service.”

  Tish took a sip of her sweet tea. “And sometimes the evening service.”

  “Yeah, but only if something’s going on,” I added.

  “Excuse me. We’re gonna get started here in a minute,” Sister Chelsea, the teen girls’ ministry leader, spoke into the microphone on the stage. She rocked a cute bowl cut with a silver strip coming down the middle toward her long, skinny face. “But I wanted to let you know Pastor Sykes won’t be making it tonight to do the welcoming sermon.”

  “Bummer,” Tish said sarcastically. But the room grumbled, genuinely upset. Pastor Sykes was something like a celebrity. Tish and I had been going to Higher Ground for twelve years, since it was just a small church in a shopping center off I-10, so Pastor Sykes was just Pastor Sykes to us. But ever since he got on national TV and started writing best-selling books, people started losing their minds over him, always asking for autographs and pictures and stuff. It was weird.

  “There was a problem with one of the helicopter’s rotors,” Sister Chelsea tried to explain over the groaning in the room. She had a soft voice and didn’t like to yell, but she did anyway. “It should all be resolved in time for the departing sermon tomorrow. Le
t’s just—” And she left the rest of her words onstage and went to sit back down.

  After dinner, Brother Tony turned down the lights and played The Fighting Temptations on two giant screens that lowered from the ceiling in the front of the room. Throwback Beyoncé was all it took to make everyone forget about Pastor Sykes. But I’d already seen the movie a million times and Brandon wasn’t interested. So he broke out his phone and we laughed at memes and videos on the internet—one bud in his ear, one bud in mine. His hand touching my thigh from time to time. His smell—fresh like soap—drifting in and out of my nose. After a while, I looked up at Tish and felt guilty that she didn’t have a bud (she’d seen the movie a million times too), but then she raised her eyebrows to mean, Girl, you better get it, and I felt just fine.

  The next day, the church took us to Galveston’s Pleasure Pier, a small amusement park jutting out over the ocean, and gave us each one hundred tickets. No pockets on my sundress. No pockets on Brandon’s sweatshorts. So, all the tickets went into Tish’s pink cross-body purse and we shared: pizza, fried pickles, cotton candy, and funnel cake. A mini water mister, rotating between us every ten minutes, because Texas’s August sun didn’t play. A photo booth, where we all squeezed in and stuck out our cherry-Icee-stained tongues. Two-seater rides, where we took turns being the odd one out. Our system of sharing had developed naturally, without negotiation, and was working perfectly. Until Lucas showed up.

  We were in line to ride the Texas Star Flyer, a star tower with twelve double swings that whipped around in a wide circle, hundreds of feet above the Gulf of Mexico. Tish had ridden the last ride with a stranger, and it was my turn to be the odd one out. We were standing in that order—Tish, Brandon, and then me—when Lucas, Derrick, and Dara rolled up.

  Brandon immediately laced his fingers with mine. Damn near gave me a heart attack, but I tried not to show it. I couldn’t act brand-new. We’d been holding hands on and off all day. I’d been feeling the rush of tingles pulsing through my body all day. No tingles this time. Not with Lucas standing right there.