by Ibi Zoboi
I shrug. “Whatever. It’s one thing to look good, but it’s another thing to walk around knowing it.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that? I walk around knowing I look good. Don’t you?” He looks me up and down and licks his lips.
“Warren!” I shove him again and laugh. We reach Broadway, and a train is passing by on the overhead tracks. It’s a cool, breezy summer day and everyone seems to be outside.
We head into Bed-Stuy along Jefferson. We’re now in a part of Brooklyn where some of the brownstones are nicer. A few have For Sale signs in the front, while others are completely renovated. They look less like brownstones and more like museums.
“Real talk, though. Darius thinks everyone’s beneath him. Especially me,” Warren says, after being quiet for a while.
I stop and turn to him. “Spill the tea, Warren, ’cause if you tell me some shit about those boys that pisses me off . . .”
He laughs, then clears his throat. “I started Easton in the seventh grade. That’s their upper school. And back then, there were only, like, seven of us. So me and Darius were cool from the jump, even though he was way too corny for me. In that school, the thing to do was playdates and sleepovers. So I’d go to his apartment in Manhattan a lot, and he practically begged his parents to come to my place, even though I told him about the shootings and drug dealers and shit. I even showed him how to walk down the block and keep his head up in case somebody rolled up on us. He thought it was all fun and games, like the stuff he sees in movies. But his parents were not trying to have their son spend the night with some financial-aid kid at his welfare-queen mother’s roach-infested apartment.”
“What? Did they say that?” I ask.
“They didn’t have to say it. I knew that’s what they were thinking. Me and D were cool for a while, but then I got into a fight outside school. And Mr. Darcy tried to get me kicked out. He thought I was a bad influence on his son. But the worst part of that was that Darius didn’t even have my back. He was all about coming to my house and seeing how it is out here, but when he came face-to-face with that shit, he straight up violated. That’s street code numero uno: Have your friend’s back. Always. Ain’t that some shit? He’s black, but he ain’t that black, feel me? The way we do it out here, if your boy gets into a fight, ain’t you supposed to have his back? But instead, his pops tries to get me kicked out of Easton.”
“Dang, Warren. That’s messed up. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I didn’t know the Darcys were that shady.”
“The Darcys are bougie, but they don’t like drama. They’re real protective about their reputation. My mother had to come up to the school and practically beg for me to stay. She threatened to sue for discrimination. After that, Darius wouldn’t dare look me in the eye.”
I shake my head as something inside me comes to a boil. I’m fuming. Those Darcys can have all the nice things money can buy, but they don’t have decency or compassion. Now I’m especially glad it’s over between Janae and Ainsley. Not only do I have my sister back for the summer, but I know the truth about that family across the street.
“I’m sorry, Warren. Really. What Darius did is not cool,” I say.
In an instant, Warren’s arm is around my shoulder, a little too quick. “I appreciate that, ZZ.”
“Uh-huh, I’m sure you do,” I say, but I don’t move away.
We walk and talk some more, and by midafternoon, we make it back to Bushwick, where the sun is blazing hot and it’s even louder than in Bed-Stuy. We run into a few people he knows and who also know me. We go into different bodegas for water, Icees, chips, sunflower seeds, and it’s all as easy as the warm summer breeze. When we reach the corner of my building, Warren faces me.
Suddenly I can’t look him in the face. Warren is smiling and trying to get me to make eye contact. But I keep turning away and laughing, and he keeps trying to get me to see him.
“I promise I won’t hypnotize you, Z,” he says while gently taking my wrists and pulling me in.
“Yes, you will!” I tease.
“My eyes won’t hypnotize you, but my kiss will.”
I stop fidgeting and finally look at him. He’s grinning so hard that I can’t help but laugh.
Finally I stop. But I don’t let him make the first move. I keep avoiding him until I’m ready to kiss him. I move in when he’s not looking, ready to plant a fat, wet one on his lips, but someone calls my name.
“Zuri!”
It’s Marisol, coming down the block pushing a shopping cart with Layla and Kayla. I quickly pull away from Warren because I’m not gonna hear the end of this from now until eternity—me kissing a boy at the corner for the whole neighborhood to see.
Warren pulls on my shirt as a way of asking me to finish what I started. But I reluctantly step away from him to greet my sisters.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Warren,” I say with a half smile.
“Oh, it’s like that?” he says.
“I said, I’ll catch up with you later.” I walk away and leave him standing there, waiting and wanting more of me.
Fourteen
“YOU THINK HOWARD will take a collection of poems in place of an essay?” I ask Janae as she’s laid out on the bed as if someone has stolen all her joy, all her sweetness, and turned her into a stagnant pool of salty water. Even though Ainsley is out of the picture, he’s still latched onto my sister’s heart. Janae’s not crying, but she’s taking up a whole lot of space with her heavy sighs, and moping around as if she doesn’t have her whole life ahead of her.
“No. You have to learn how to express your thoughts without any metaphors or flowery words,” she mumbles. She’s mindlessly scrolling through her phone. It’s noon and she’s still not dressed.
Mama’s footsteps are headed toward our bedroom door. “Zuri, I need you to go to the check-cashing place and get the money order for Madrina’s rent,” Mama says.
“Come with me, Janae,” I say as Mama starts to walk away.
“Let her be, Zuri!” Mama calls out.
“Why, Mama? You want her to lie up in the bed all day? It’s nice outside.”
“She’s recovering from heartbreak. Let her be.”
“Are you kidding, Mama?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll catch it one day too, Zuri. Just leave your sister alone.” Her voice trails off as she heads into the kitchen.
I exhale, shake my head, and stare at the lump that is my sister beneath the old Dora the Explorer sheets. “Oh, hell no, Janae! You’re letting that stupid boy win. You gotta come out on top, big sis! Let him see that you don’t care. Let’s get outta here and make sure that you look extra cute. Come on, Nae-nae! Please!”
I shake her, but she doesn’t move. I tickle her, and finally her salty self melts back into her gooey sweetness. She keeps laughing long after I stop tickling her. She laughs so hard, tears stream down her face while she sits up, bends over, and holds her belly.
I finally have my sister to myself. Our faces are fresh, our hair is done, her dress is flowing, my T-shirt is poppin’, and we look cute as we walk through Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn. Guys were hollering at us ever since we stepped onto the B26 bus going down Halsey, then after we transferred to the B25 going down Fulton. Still, those guys are not flies and mosquitos. Most of them actually look really good. But Janae and I are focused.
We finished Mama’s errands, and we have the whole afternoon to ourselves without our little sisters, even though they begged Mama to come with us. I had to tell Mama that I was taking Janae out to nurse her heartbreak.
We get a nice booth overlooking Flatbush Avenue at Junior’s, and Janae insists that our meal is her treat.
“I saved up most of my money from working at the bookstore on campus,” she says as she sips her milkshake.
“I can’t wait to get a job,” I say, stirring the ice cubes in my soda. “You know I put in my application to just about every store on the Fulton strip. I shoulda done what Charlise did, stay local and get those white people an
d their boutiques to hire me.”
The waiter comes to serve our food. Part of me worries that we’ve ordered too much and that Janae may not be able to cover it all. And that worry shifts to other worries. Things I’ve held in the back of my mind. I wonder if Howard is the right decision, if they’ll give me a full scholarship and financial-aid package like Syracuse did for Janae, if I should start dreaming about other schools too. Or what if I get to Howard and I don’t like it? What if I want to come home?
“What’s wrong, Z?”
I tell her. I let Janae know all my fears. I lay them out on the table one by one: change, quiet, money, college, job, space, family, home.
“Z,” Janae starts. “Things are gonna have to change, and you just have to open up to it. My whole world opened up the day I took that Greyhound to Syracuse. It’s like, I knew I wasn’t going to be the same person after that. And all it took was a five-hour bus ride. I didn’t realize how closed off from the world we were.”
I sigh. “But what happens if I get into Howard and it’s not for me?”
Janae cocks her head to the side and looks at me just like Mama does. “Then you should go visit.”
“Visit where?”
“Zuri! Howard,” she says.
My insides jump at the idea of going anywhere outside of New York by myself. By myself! But then reality sets in. “Even if Mama and Papi let me go, with what money?” I dip a Buffalo wing into a cup of blue cheese.
Janae pulls out her phone and spends a couple of minutes scrolling. I see her typing something.
She shows me her phone and I read the screen, confused. She’s bought me a round-trip bus ticket to D.C. To Howard. For tomorrow!
I look up at my sister in shock.
“Just go, for a day. I’ll deal with Mama and Papi.”
“Really?” I can barely get the word out, I’m so excited. A whole day to myself, exploring Howard.
“Yes, really. What are big sisters for?”
Of course my whole family has to escort me to Times Square at the crack of dawn, where I’ll be hopping on a six-o’clock bus to D.C. I am so hyped about this trip that I haven’t slept. I keep this giant ball of joy inside me so no one takes it away.
I worry that Papi will change his mind any minute. He’s concerned that I’ll be traveling alone. “I wanna make sure they see my face. And I wanna look each one of those bus passengers in the eye,” he says.
But Mama is excited. It’s starting to sink in that she’s about to have two “baby girls” in college.
Mama packs three Tupperware containers of food for me to eat on the bus, and foil-wrapped snacks to eat over the course of the trip. Marisol typed up a budget for me. I’m supposed to spread out the twenty bucks Papi gave me over the whole day.
And after waving to my family until the bus pulls off, I finally make it out of Manhattan.
I mostly stare out the window, watching this part of the country pass. New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.
I take selfies and pics of the fast-moving world to send to my sisters and Charlise. I text Warren, but he doesn’t text back right away, like he normally does. The last text I got from him was from last night, telling me to have a safe trip. Him and our almost-kiss linger in my mind as the bus zooms toward D.C.
D.C. is almost like Brooklyn, but much cleaner with way fewer people crowded onto the streets. And less black and brown people too, though I wonder if they’ve been boxed in somewhere else, like in Brooklyn.
“D.C. used to be called Chocolate City,” the woman sitting next to me says. She probably noticed how my face has been glued to the window for almost the whole ride.
“Well, I see a whole lotta vanilla,” I say.
“Yep. I’m from Bed-Stuy. We’re starting to see a whole lotta vanilla there too.”
“Is that happening all over?”
“I don’t know,” the woman says. “I haven’t been to all over. Have you?”
I don’t answer her as the bus pulls into Union Station. From there, I take the Metro north, up to Howard University.
I walk toward the entrance, and it’s exactly how I’ve seen it in videos and pictures. The brown brick buildings are regal. Giant green lawns spread across the campus. It kind of looks like Maria Hernandez Park, but without the playground, or the surrounding brownstones and buildings. Most important, without the new white people. There’s just people like me, as far as my eyes can see. And it already feels like home.
All of Howard is clean and airy. No clutter. No sirens and loud music coming from outside. No bodega gates rolling up, and shopping-cart wheels on jagged sidewalks. Being here expands my whole world much farther than I could’ve ever imagined, and I text Janae one giant THANK-YOU in all caps followed by smiley faces, hearts, and balloons.
We have to meet our tour guides in the Administration Building. Inside, there’s a long table with a sign hanging in the front that reads WELCOME TO HOWARD. Two girls are seated behind it, wearing big smiles and the cutest outfits I’ve ever seen. Their hair is done in long braids, and one of them has fancy designs on her nails. So I walk over to them.
“Hi, Zuri!” one of the girls sings after I introduce myself. “I’m Diane, and this is Sage. We’re juniors here at Howard and we’re student ambassadors.”
Sage gets up to give me a hug over the table. “Okay, Zuri. About ten other prospective applicants will join us for a brief tour, and you can learn about Howard University,” Sage says. While her hug felt real, that little spiel didn’t. But I don’t mind because this must be her job.
In just a few minutes, I’m surrounded by other kids who look about my age. Diane and Sage step away from the table and, with clipboards in hand, lead the group toward the other end of the yard.
“And here we have our Founders Library,” Diane says as we approach a large redbrick building. “Built in 1939, it’s open twenty-four hours a day, so there’ll be no excuse to not get those papers in on time.”
The library is majestic with its glowing white clock tower. I feel smarter just by standing in front of it. There’s enough wide-open space for me to feel like I can actually chase my dreams here, and I’ll be able to reach them too.
Diane and Sage then walk us over to the Tubman Quad. I think of Hope Gardens, back in Bushwick, with its quads too, but with less green grass and cleanliness, and less of just about everything. Thinking of the projects makes me think of Warren, so I snap a pic for him and text, You might wanna rethink Morehouse and come to Howard. I send a grinning face.
As we walk through the campus, I get to feel what it’s like to be in college, to be in a place where new ideas and people will reveal themselves to me every single day. And not just any college—a historically black college, one of the first in this country. I wonder what the girls who’ve slept in my future dorm room over the years are doing with their lives right now. I wonder if they’ve gone back to their blocks or their towns and changed them in any way. I wonder if Howard changed them, and maybe they couldn’t go back to their old hoods because they’ve grown too big, too tall. Not in size, but in . . . experience. In . . . feeling. I wonder how I’ll change too.
After about a half hour of touring the lower and upper quads, some of the dorms, and the Cramton Auditorium, it’s time to sit in on a lecture by one of Howard’s professors.
As we finish our tour, some cute guys from across the yard call out, “H-U!”
Sage and Diane respond, “You know!”
Me and the other kids on the tour laugh and look around at each other.
“Y’all don’t get to say that until you get accepted,” Diane says.
But I whisper, “You know!” under my breath anyway as a sort of prayer.
We’re back in the Administration Building, where Diane and Sage pull out another clipboard for us to sign up for a lecture. Fewer kids add their names for this one. Good. Less competition.
The lecture is on African American history, and the professor is someone I’ve read about online. Other hig
h school students are here too. Not the ones who were on the tour. Suddenly my stomach is in knots. This is my competition. I look at my future classmates as we all walk through the campus yard toward Cramton Auditorium, where current Howard students will talk to us before Professor Kenyatta Bello starts her lecture. I wonder which of these kids I can rock with, and which ones I’ll learn to stay away from.
We all spill into the giant auditorium, where there’s a huge stage and screen in the front. Janae told me that some classes are held in auditoriums like this, and I’ll have to always sit in the front to get the professors’ attention. I do just that so I can be seen, noticed, and heard.
But other kids have the same bright idea, and the first few rows close to the stage are almost full. There’s one last empty seat at the other end of the stage, and I head straight for it. This is musical chairs, and I’m trying to stay in the game.
But a girl places her hand on the seat’s armrest, looks dead at me, and says, “Are you with Alpha Kappa Alpha?”
“Who?” I ask.
“The AKA scholarship group? These seats are reserved for them,” she says with an even brighter smile.
“Oh” is all I say, even though I want to know what an AKA is and how I can get into their scholarship group. But I decide that girl doesn’t need to know that—I can look it up online later.
A tall girl with flowing hair and a pink blazer walks over to the seat that should’ve been mine and sits down. I look around at the first few rows and notice that everyone’s already teamed up. They’re talking to each other and laughing, and I wish that I had brought one of my sisters with me. But still, I grab a seat near the back and stay focused. I didn’t come here to make friends.
The first part of the session begins. I listen to every word those Howard students say about the different majors and clubs and activities the school has to offer. I hear about their newspaper, the Hilltop, and their literary journal, Amistad. I’m at the edge of my seat, and my heart feels like it’s about to leap out of my chest from excitement. If only I could skip my senior year at Bushwick and move in, like, next week.