by Randi Pink
Headlights beamed into the living room, and the twins’ horn honked twice. “My friends are here! Can I please go?”
“So you just assumed we would let you go? Or you planned to pressure us by getting dressed up and calling people to get you?” asked Mom.
She got me. “Uhhhh…”
The horn honked five more times. “Who are these friends anyway? If they know what’s good for them, they’ll stop honking that horn,” said Mom.
She was right, they were foul for that. “No, Mom. They are such sweet girls. They don’t mean it, I promise.”
Alex let out a nose-snort snicker from the kitchen. “Alex. Get in here,” Mom shrieked. Alex emerged, Debbie cake in hand. “Who are these friends picking up Toya?” she asked. He shrugged. I heard a car door open and slam. Oh God, one or both of the twins were coming to the door.
I panicked. “Please, Mom. They are going to see the house. Please, they can’t see.”
Dad pulled himself from the pillows. “She’s right,” he said. “We don’t even let the pizza man past the porch. Just let her go.” Dad would rather send me off to some random party than let another human being witness how empty his castle was. Not the pizza man, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Girl Scouts, even the cable guy. When the cable went out once, Dad made the technician stand on the porch and yell instructions on how to fix it. We got a courtesy call the next day, telling us to call the 1-800 number if we had any more problems, and they’d walk us through it over the phone rather than roast in the Alabama sun.
“Okay,” Mom said.
“Thank you!” I shot past them.
“Wait,” Mom said. I had almost made it. “Alex is going with you.”
I was horrified, and it must have shown, as Alex dropped his head. “I don’t think she wants—”
“I couldn’t care less what she wants,” Mom interrupted. “You both go, or no one goes.”
Hampton was barking up a storm. Amera or Amelia had to be close. “Okay, let’s go.” I snatched Alex’s hand and drug him through the door. He was wearing a faded yellow Montgomery Biscuits baseball T-shirt with knee-length cutoff blue jeans.
Amera took one look at Alex and said, “Uh, no.” She turned and walked back to the car.
I followed close. “They said that I can’t go without him.”
“I would not be caught dead hanging out with you,” Amera said, looking Alex up and down.
He stopped. “You don’t even know me. And you…” I caught the disappointment in his voice, but I didn’t dare look directly in his face. I looked at the trees, the dirt, my shoes, his shoes, her shoes (cute cobalt-blue Mary Janes), anything but his disappointed face. “How dare you let your new friend speak to me like this? If God is testing you, you’re failing miserably. I don’t want to go to your stupid party. I’d rather walk Hampton,” he said while untying him. “Get yourself back at a reasonable time or I’m telling Mom.” He disappeared into the pitch-dark woods behind our house.
“Loser,” Amera called after him. “Let’s go.”
In the car, Amera gave Amelia the play-by-play. She called Alex every curse word known to man, but she didn’t bring out the N word, which I took as an improvement. I wondered how far into the woods Alex had wandered. There was no path back there, and wooded vines created thick brush at the base of the longleaf pine trees. Hampton would protect him, but not in the way he needed protecting. I shouldn’t have allowed him to venture into the woods alone.
“What’s his deal, anyway?” I realized Amelia’s question was directed to me. “Hello?”
“Oh,” I replied. “I don’t really know him.”
“You live with him.” Amera removed her seat belt to turn and glare at me. “You must know something.”
I panicked. Even though I hated the twins, this was my first party ever and it felt like a massive moment in my life. I didn’t want to blow it. I didn’t want to come off as a concerned sister, because that wasn’t my role anymore. No matter how sad it made me, I couldn’t be Alex’s shield. I was Katarina the powerful. Katarina the beautiful. Most important, Katarina, the girl who fit perfectly in the backseat of their Bug.
“He’s a loser” came out of my mouth. And then, “He collects quarters like a child, and he wears shirts with ridiculous sayings on them.”
They laughed, encouraging me to continue.
“Worst of all, he steals food from grocery stores,” I added, matching their chirpy up-speak. “It’s pathetic.”
“That is pathetic.” Amera rebuckled her seat belt as if satisfied with my tirade.
Somewhere deep down, I suspected that moment would come back to bite me. Hard. I shook off the dread.
Amelia changed the subject. “So, Kat, it turns out Josh likes being dissed, because he can’t keep your name out of his mouth now.”
“Yeah, he told Stephen that he’s only going to the party for you.…”
“Do guys in Ohio like punishment, too?”
“Kansas City,” I said through clenched teeth.
“I thought for sure he would never speak to you again, but—”
“It made him like you even more—”
“Crazy!”
“That’s what I’m saying. Crazy.”
I wondered how they would ever get married. They would have to find twin brothers and live in the same house as twin sister wives to twin brother husbands and have two separate sets of twin sister-and-brother cousins. I hated them, truly, but I loved the experience. The glitz of riding in cars without parents and dressing up for parties. Boys checking me out.
“That dress washes you out a little, but you still look cute,” said Amelia.
“Yeah, I’m not brave enough to wear that color. It makes me look so white.” Amera glanced at her forearm. “We should go tanning tomorrow.”
Tanning. Another thing I never understood about white people. They go on about how disgusting black people are and then roast like Conecuh sausages in tanning beds. I overheard Heather Hinkle and Sharon Murray in English class fighting over whose tan was the darkest. I’m darker! No! I’m darker! You’re still pasty white compared to me! Hey! I’m so dark I could pass for black! No, you couldn’t! I could! But they knew good and damn well they didn’t want to pass for anything except tan white people. If they wanted to be dark so badly, why hate the people who were born that way?
We pulled up to a decent-sized Edgewood home. Edgewood was broken into sections. Ultra-snob rich Edgewood, baby-stroller-on-the-porch middle-class Edgewood, and under-the-viaduct lower-middle-class Edgewood. Even the latter homes cost nearly two hundred grand, but people dropped a cool two mil to live in the ultra-snob subdivision. This home’s price tag could be four-fifty easy. We parked in the one empty place at the edge of the driveway.
“Good timing,” I said.
“No. Not good timing.” Amera giggled. “They always save the best space for us. Two summers ago we told everyone that we would never show up to another party if we had to walk two blocks to get to the door.…”
“We get what we want,” Amelia completed Amera’s thought.
As we climbed from the Bug, twelve white girls came barreling toward the car. Six blondes and six brunettes—the symmetry was almost comical. They bellowed compliments and praise of our outfits, hair, and shoes.
We crossed the yard into a cozy home filled with furniture. The front room had three flowered couches. Pictures lined the walls in HGTV-style haphazard synchronization. A large painted family portrait of four smiling white people and a golden retriever hung over the fireplace. Golden retrievers were sweet, but they represented the worst kind of whiteness. The kind that shouts golly gee when they stub a toe or gosh darn it when a daughter gets pregnant. Even I didn’t wish to be that white.
“What genius decided to throw a party at this dump?” Amera asked, her face twisted with repulsion.
“I was thinking the same thing,” replied Amelia. “One keg takes up half the living room.”
“Whose house is this?” Amera
asked no one in particular. No one answered immediately. Her question started a domino effect of partygoers asking Whose house is this? Whose house is this? Whose house is this? Until the dance team captain, Charlotte, timidly raised her hand and said, “It’s mine, sorry.”
The twins rolled their eyes and shifted attention to the party. The space was small but the energy was magnetic. Heads bobbing, kids gobbling vodka-melons—watermelon injected with vodka. No dancing, though. I had assumed no dancing at house parties; good thing, too, because I was no dancer. Southerners assumed that all black people could dance, but I busted that myth wide open. Black, white, Swedish, or otherwise, I danced like a sick chicken.
“I’m dry now,” Josh whispered from behind me. What a dumb thing to whisper to a girl.
“Great for you.” I didn’t bother turning around. Like the twins, I couldn’t understand his spiked interest. I had humiliated him. Within an hour of the swim class incident, the twins told the whole school that Josh had swim snot, yet there he was days later drooling over me. Mom says men are gluttons for punishment. They prefer women who treat them like dirt—that’s why sweet loyal housewives end up with STDs. According to Mom, every sexually active person and all girls who wear bikinis have incurable STDs.
He brushed his finger down the length of my arm. “Let’s talk upstairs. It’s loud down here.”
I followed him.
I can’t say why I did it. My body led and my mind trailed behind without protest. Josh was a douche, but he still represented something that I’d wanted a piece of for so long.
No, it was deeper than wanting. I’d scrutinized him. Memorized him, like Alex would memorize a passage from To Kill a Mockingbird or The Scarlet Letter. There was a time when I could close my eyes and see which side of his head he parted his hair on. A time when I noticed fresh New Balance sneakers and new button-down shirts. When I could discern which sport he was playing depending on how his Edgewood T-shirt clung to his body. During football season, his deltoids bulged like mini steaks. When he ran track, his body leaned out. And when he swam, his entire frame formed an uppercase Y. After all those years of mental energy, my body went on autopilot and followed him up those stairs. Something inside me had to see what was waiting up there.
He ushered me into the first bedroom. The decor screamed typical teenager—unframed boy-band posters hung on all four walls; a full-sized Taylor Swift duvet covered the bed. A laptop, fancy mini-speakers, and a cell phone charging station crowded the desk.
“Taylor Swift is hot,” said Josh. Taylor Swift was the golden retriever of human beings.
“What do you want, Josh?” I asked. He sat on the bed and grabbed my hand, pulling me down next to him.
“I like you. You’re different.” How right he was. Before I knew what was happening, he leaned in to suck on my face. My first kiss. He tasted bitter, like acid reflux and beer.
I pushed him back. “Ew! Stop with the kissing, no!” I scrubbed my lips and walked toward the door.
He grabbed my elbow. His grip was strong—and painful. “I don’t know how they do things up north, but here in Alabama, if the quarterback kisses you, you kiss him back.”
“Back off! Let me go!” I screamed a Mom decibel, but the music blasted so loudly that I doubted anyone heard me.
He threw me on top of Taylor Swift, pinned my arms, and sucked my neck till it felt like he must be drawing blood. I yelled out for help, and no one came. His erection felt like a nightstick and I tried to knee him in the balls, but he was too strong; those laps in the pool paid off. “You don’t embarrass me at school.”
He pawed at my maxi, and that’s when the breath left my chest and I couldn’t find air to scream. He felt like an anvil pinning me to the mattress. My knees and elbows locked in place from what I assumed was shock. My mind, however, was as clear as the cloudless Southern sky. How could I have been so stupid? If a guy asks you to an upstairs bedroom, he wants one thing and one thing only. I’d seen enough Unsolved Mysteries to know better. This was my fault.
“You don’t have anything to say now, huh?” He bit down hard on my shoulder.
My body was paralyzed in place. Fear. Anger. Disappointment that I’d let myself become a statistic. My lower lip began to jump, and my eyes welled up, then overflowed.
“Jesus!” I screeched.
The door creaked open. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, sorry ’bout that, y’all,” said Deanté as he started to close the door.
“Help!” I squeaked. “Help!”
Deanté reopened the door. “You attacking this chick?”
Josh slid off me, adjusting his pants. “No, I don’t have to,” he chortled nervously. “I have a whole gang of girls downstairs to fudge.” (Only he didn’t say fudge.) “She’s a lying loser.”
I held my elbow in the air. A bright red man-sized handprint wrapped my forearm. “He grabbed me and held me down,” I said while gulping terrified breaths.
“That don’t look like lovemaking to me, dude. Get out ’fore I call the cops on your ass,” said Deanté.
Josh bumped Deanté’s shoulder on his way out.
“Thank you so much,” I gasped, nervously fixing my clothes. “I don’t know what I would have done if you had not come in here. I—I—I didn’t know Southern boys were like this.…”
Deanté stood in the doorway and crossed his arms. “You can stop talking like that, Toya. I know what’s up.”
BUSTED
“What?” I thought I’d heard him wrong.
“I said, drop the act. You’re as much Toya as you’ve ever been.” He grabbed a handful of tissues from the bedside table. “Are you okay?”
Dueling thoughts clouded my concentration—Deanté knew I was Toya, but I’d been attacked by Josh! I could still taste his mouth-slime in the back of my throat. It felt green and toxic, like something I wanted to vomit up but couldn’t. A first kiss should be better. I’d saved it for sixteen years and it was stolen from me. A few more seconds, and Josh surely would’ve stolen more.
“Deanté.”
He stood over me, dressed in a light-blue polo shirt and jeans, his expression wide with worry.
“Yeah?” Deanté whispered.
That’s when I cracked.
He sat next to me and cradled my head between his chin and chest. He smelled freshly showered and clean, like baby-powder-scented deodorant. He gave off just the right amount of warmth to stop me from shivering, almost hot, but not quite. I stayed there until the top of his shirt was soaked dark blue with my tears.
I scrubbed my cheeks, neck, and shoulders with tissues to wipe away Josh’s spit. “Thanks.”
“You really need to watch the company you keep.” Deanté looked sort of scared for me.
“When … I called Jesus, you … just … you … showed up,” I murmured through hiccups.
“Well, I’m not Jesus, if that’s what you mean.” He studied his periwinkle-and-white Jordans, different color, but same design as the ones he’d humiliated me with.
“How did you know?” I said. “Do I still look black to you?”
“I know everything that goes on at that school.” He sounded different. “The first day you showed up, you talked to me, remember? You talked to me in Toya’s voice. Afterward, I followed you. Heard your phone call, which was hilarious, by the way.” He chuckled uncomfortably and then handed me another tissue. “And heard you and Alex talking after that.” His voice was as calm as a person talking about the weather. “I never knew Miss Evilyn was your aunt. That sucks. She’s mean as hell.”
I took a deep breath and attempted to stabilize my heartbeat. “Have you told anybody?”
“Naw, I don’t spread folks’ business like that,” he replied. “But how did you do it?”
I told him about my prayer and Jesus’s visits and Alex’s exchange-student cover story. All of it. After the words flooded from my mouth, I realized just how badly I’d needed to tell someone my story, even Deanté. “You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?”
<
br /> “Not for the reasons that you think,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, I liked the old Toya better than this one.”
“Well, without Toya, who else are you going to publicly humiliate?” Anger swelled in my belly. I glanced at a clock on the side table. It was midnight. “Oh no. I’m late! I have to get home.”
“You need a ride?” Deanté asked, dangling his keys on his index finger.
“You’re not going to try anything, are you?”
“No, I’ll take you straight home. I promise.” He held the bedroom door open for me.
* * *
Deanté’s Mercedes was four blocks away. Well, his mother’s Mercedes was four blocks away; she’d let him borrow it for the party. He remote-started the car long before we got inside.
My head was still spinning. But something he’d said in the bedroom didn’t sit well with me. “So you said that you liked Toya better before the change.…”
He interrupted, “You’re still Toya. Don’t say it like she’s dead and you’re a new person.”
“You should be a shrink. Not today, though. Graduate from high school first, and then college, then some more college, and then you can be a shrink. Until then, Deanté, please mind your own freaking business,” I said.
“Whoa, Toya. That was the blackest I’ve ever heard you talk,” he replied as we ducked into the car. “You want hot seats or cold seats?”
“Hot,” I said, and he twisted the seat-warmer knob to high. “To be honest, I’ve always wondered, why do you act so black?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” He didn’t seem angry—just surprised by the question.
“You know exactly what it means, Deanté,” I said, but he remained silent. “Fine, I’ll elaborate. Act black as in sag your hundred-dollar jeans down around your knees. Act black as in blast hard-core rap in the Edgewood High parking lot. Act black as in hang behind the school talking Ebonic bullcrap with idiots who likely won’t graduate when you’re in the top tenth percentile of your class. But hey, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”