by Jahn, Amalie
“That’s really unfair, Netta, and everything about it sucks. Thanks for helping me understand, though.”
Before she can respond, Alice beckons to us from deep inside the store. “Come see if you like any of these,” she calls over her shoulder before disappearing into the dressing room.
Without hesitation, Leonetta picks up her bag and begins walking between the racks. “It is what it is,” she says. “And you’re welcome. Now come on. Alice needs us.”
Somehow, she lets go of what’s transpired, and I try my best to follow her lead, focusing instead on Alice and the bevy of dresses she’s selected. She shows us a red one. And a black one. And a black one with white stripes. And a pink one with tiny yellow flowers and a halter top.
“I like the striped one best,” Summer tells her decisively. “It makes your arms look amazing and narrows your waist.”
“Netta?”
“You look smokin’ hot in all of them,” she says, ever the diplomat. “But if it helps, I’ll agree with Summer and go with the striped one.”
Finally, Alice looks at me.
“I like the striped one, too,” I tell her. “But you can’t buy any of them.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
It’s not my place to share Leonetta’s truth, that much I know. But there’s no reason she shouldn’t explicate herself.
With a nod of understanding, Leonetta explains what happened with the sales clerk as succinctly as she can. Alice immediately holds the dress at arm’s length, studying it as if it’s a hazardous waste. “You’re right. All these dresses are garbage,” she says, shaking her head as she slips the striped one onto the rack with the others. “I won’t buy from a store where the employees are racists,” she says loudly, taking Leonetta by the arm. “I’m happy to take my business elsewhere.”
Minutes later I’m standing inside Sizzle, a store I never knew existed much less imagined patronizing. Although the calendar claims it’s February, the store’s inventory begs to differ. Tank tops and sheer tees hang on the walls. Shelves are lined with booty shorts adorned with chains and emblazoned with skulls and cartoon characters. I pick up a pair of tie-dyed hot pink shorts and hold them across my hips, trying to imagine how I would ever climb into the barn loft or shovel bales of hay without ripping the seams wide open. They clearly aren’t designed for manual labor so much as attracting the attention of the opposite sex.
“Oh, my God, I found my dress,” Alice cries, encouraging the rest of us to the back of the store.
An employee uses an extension pole to lower it from the display rack above the counter. It’s fitted and bejeweled with sequins the color of a rich, ripe plum. Alice’s eyes widen as the employee drops it into her arms, and she carries it with reverence into the dressing room, while Summer, Leonetta, and I loiter close by. Moments later she appears.
There’s an audible gasp from Summer who takes a tentative step toward her friend. “It’s beautiful,” she says in a hushed whisper.
I search my brain for the right adjective to describe how she looks. Before putting it on I thought perhaps it would be too over-the-top, but Alice’s taut curves reveal the majestic nature of the dress.
“You look like royalty,” I tell her.
She spins around, giving us a 360-degree view of the ensemble. “It’s not too risqué?”
“If you want Calvin to notice you,” Leonetta says, “this is the dress.”
Alice fingers the price tag dangling below her left armpit. “It’ll use half my savings from Krispy Kreme, but it’ll be worth it, right?”
Alice had filled me in about her job as a clerk at the donut shop during one of our early study sessions, confessing her desire to eventually work in a place where she doesn’t have to spend time behind a register. As I look at her now, glowing radiantly in a dress capable of turning every head at the party, I feel certain Alice will be the CEO of some major corporation someday. She’s the type of person who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it.
This Calvin guy better be worthy.
Alice pays for the dress with a stack of fives and tens and carries it proudly through the mall, slung on a hanger covered in a protective plastic sleeve. As we pass back through the food court, Summer stops abruptly.
“Y’all, I’ve worked up an appetite with all this shopping. Who wants something from Dairy Queen?”
“Girl, now you know I gotta fit into this dress,” Alice protests.
Summer glares at her. “You’re a bean pole. One vanilla soft serve won’t kill you. And besides, it’s my treat.”
The rest of us agree there’s no better way to end an evening of shopping than with ice cream. Leonetta chooses an Oreo Blizzard, Summer a strawberry sundae, and Alice and I opt for plain vanilla cones.
We sit at a four-top with Alice’s dress carefully draped across a chair at an adjoining table. Leonetta takes a bite of her Blizzard before asking, “What’s so great about this Calvin guy anyway? I barely remember him.”
Before Alice can answer, Summer interjects. “He checks every box on her list.”
“What list?”
“The ‘Eleven Reasons Why Calvin Watkins is the Perfect Man’ list.”
“Is this one of the lists?” I ask, remembering the steno notebook.
“Of course,” Alice replies, licking a trickle of ice cream dribbling down her cone. “We have lists for everything.”
“So, what’s on it?” asks Leonetta.
Summer disappears into her bag and reemerges with the steno pad. In seconds, she’s flipped to the appropriate page.
“Eleven reasons why Calvin Watkins is the perfect man,” she begins. “Number one: athletic.”
Alice makes a check mark in the air with her free hand. “Check,” she says. “Basketball phenom.”
“Number two,” Summer continues. “Taller than me.”
Another check.
“Number three: doesn’t sag.”
“Doesn’t what?” I ask.
“Sagging,” Alice explains, “is when a guy wears his pants so low his whole butt hangs out. But I don’t want the world seeing my man’s boxers. He needs to hike up his pants where they belong and wear a belt. The way Calvin does.”
I’m familiar with the way some of the guys wear their pants really low so their underwear shows above the waistband, but I had no idea it had a name. There’s no end to my ignorance.
“Number four: book smart and street smart.”
“Isn’t that two things?” Leonetta asks.
“It’s about smartness in general,” Alice explains. “And he’s in college, so that’s good enough for me.”
“Number five: has his own car.”
“Silver Escalade.”
Already down to my cone, I begin munching away, listening to the remainder of the list while considering what my own inventory of necessary guy qualities would include. Of course, my only frame of reference is the boys I grew up with. The ones back in Iowa with their farmer’s tans and baseball caps, who were capable of rewiring a tractor carburetor without ever looking at a manual and could carry a baby calf across their shoulders as if it weighed no more than a backpack. Guys who always respected their mommas and would usually hold the door for you, especially if your hands were full. The ones who were sensitive and funny and serious, all at the same time.
As I’m creating this mental registry, I admit to myself I’m not making a list of traits I’d find desirable in any guy.
I’m listing the traits I find desirable in one guy.
“Number eleven,” Summer is finishing. “Doesn’t wear glasses.”
“What if he wears contacts?” Leonetta asks.
Alice shakes her head. “We have perfect vision in our family. Have for generations. Even my great-grandmomma at ninety-one-years-old doesn’t wear glasses, so you can better believe I’m not gonna risk tarnishing my children’s gene pool by being with a guy who wears glasses.”
“But what if he’s nice?” I ask
, remembering poor Jasper Green, my seat partner on the bus in kindergarten, with his thick, horn-rimmed glasses and eyes as big as saucers. Despite having a smile capable of melting a polar ice cap, I’m certain he’s never kissed a girl, which nearly breaks my heart. Why hadn’t anyone ever seen past those glasses?
“Nice only goes so far,” Alice says with a wink.
chapter 14
Steppin’ Out
Friday, February 15
Geometry’s the only class the four of us have in common which is how Alice, Summer, Leonetta and I end up walking together to the basketball pep rally during last period Friday afternoon. The gymnasium is already swarming with students by the time we arrive, and we’re forced high into the bleachers, caught in the undertow of spectators rising with the tide.
It’s the first time I’ve witnessed the massive assemblage of the entire student body all in one place—almost a thousand teenagers preparing to send our Golden Eagles into victory against the Westover Wolverines.
We are loud.
We are enthusiastic.
We are smelly.
There’s a huge, blue tarp covering the gymnasium floor, but before I have a chance to ask Leonetta about it, our principal, Dr. Emmett, crosses the space in her signature pumps. As she approaches the microphone in the center of the room, a murmured hush spreads across the crowd.
“Ladies and gentleman, welcome to this afternoon’s pep rally. It’s an honor leading such a fine group of players, and in a minute, Coach Dunn and I will be presenting them to you. But first, as a special treat, it’s my pleasure to introduce M.A. Hopkins’s very own Legacy Step Team.”
The crowd erupts around me, pounding their feet and pumping their fists. Although I have no idea what’s going on, I’m too transfixed by the small group of students filing onto the tarp to bother asking. Dressed in matching black suits and patent leather loafers, they fan out in a V formation, place their hands behind their backs, and lower their heads. Immediately, the crowd falls silent for a second time.
“I told you they’d be here,” Alice whispers to Summer.
To my right, Leonetta’s leaning forward, hands on her thighs, grinning broadly in curbed anticipation of whatever awaits us. Realizing the significance of the moment, I turn back to the group as the first note of music blares over the loudspeaker. There’s the sound of a violin, followed by a backbeat and a man’s voice. I can’t understand what’s being said until I catch the words ‘North Carolina’ just before the crowd explodes. As the first stanza begins, two members of the team begin to dance, stomping their feet in time to the music. Then two more join in, followed by the rest of the group until, pair by pair, all twelve of them are stomping and clapping between their legs and above their heads and between each other’s legs. They’re perfectly synchronized with one another, slapping their thighs and shoulders so quickly I can barely keep track of their moving hands and feet. The crowd cries out with each mention of the word ‘Carolina’ and almost everyone is singing along to this song I’ve never heard before.
On my left, Alice rises to her feet and begins to dance, repeatedly, albeit accidentally, knocking into my knee. I’m scooting over, trying to give her extra space to move, when I notice one of the members of the team is a white guy. Upon closer inspection, I recognize him as Brad Wilson, a friendly, outgoing kid from my American History class. This gangly brainiac, who sits in the front row of Ms. Krenshaw’s class and contributes daily to discussions about the New Deal and Roosevelt and the Conservative Coalition, is out there on the gym floor dancing like he was born to step. His wide-open expression mirrors the joy on the faces of his fellow teammates, and I’m transfixed by them, moving as a collective whole, absolutely killing it.
Leonetta edges into me, cheering with an unbridled enthusiasm I can’t help but admire, and I wonder if anyone has ever tried running over the members of the step team for hanging out with Brad the way they did to Leonetta for befriending me.
I suspect not.
The routine continues until the music fades and only the steady percussion of feet and hands remains. There are back flips and acrobatics from the team and cheers and screams from the crowd. The air around me is pulsating and, embarrassingly enough, I’m tapping my foot.
As if, Tess. As if.
At the end, the team freezes, back in their original positions, arms lowered, chins tucked. There’s a beat of silence before the gymnasium erupts into applause. In one fluid motion, I’m out of my seat, cheering with my friends until my palms are sore from clapping and my throat is raw from yelling.
Zander would have loved this.
Dr. Emmett returns, tapping on her microphone to silence the crowd. She thanks the step team as they march back into the locker rooms and without further comment, invites Coach Dunn to begin the presentation of the varsity men’s basketball team. I don’t think the crowd can get any rowdier than they already are, but I’m wrong. As each name is announced, their intensity grows, until in a fevered crescendo, the two captains’ names are read aloud. Seniors Darius Jordan and Kendrick Watts sprint onto the court, arms outstretched, playing to their adoring fans. They showboat to the center of the room, high-fiving the other members of the team until, after what seems like an eternity, everyone settles down so Dr. Emmett can speak again.
“It’s been an honor watching you gentlemen play this season, and I know I speak for the entire faculty, staff, and student body here at Hopkins in wishing you the best of luck tonight in the county championship game against the Wolverines.”
There’s more applause. More stomping. People calling out the names of the players as they retreat back into the locker room.
Moments later I’m being corralled like a herd of my own cattle through the gymnasium doors into the hallway for dismissal. I’m trying to keep track of Leonetta, as we haven’t solidified our plans to get ready for the party, but I quickly lose her in the crowd. Luckily, moments later, she appears beside me, notebook in hand.
“Just use Google maps to get to my house,” she says, handing me a scrap sheet of paper with her address. “My dad’s got Bible study tonight, so we’ll have the house to ourselves if you come after six.”
*
Later that evening, Dad pokes his head through my bedroom door, taking note of the duffle bag full of potential outfits and makeup I’ve packed to take to Leonetta’s.
“Heading into the field for a training mission?” he teases. “Don’t forget your helmet.”
“Just going to Netta’s,” I tell him.
“That’s a lot of stuff to take to a friend’s house,” he says, stepping into my room. He’s dressed in his fatigues, having just gotten home from work, and I double take, still unaccustomed to seeing him as a soldier. “You spending the night?”
I shake my head.
“Then what’s with all the gear? Where else are you going?”
I’d never asked to go anywhere back in Iowa. I came and went as I pleased. Granted, there were only a handful of places to go and I was usually with Zander, but just the same, I’d never been subjected to any sort of interrogation like the one I was facing now.
“To a party with the basketball team after the game.”
“You going to the actual game?”
I hadn’t even considered attending the game.
“No.”
“But you’re going to the party afterward?”
“Yeah.”
“And you were invited to this party?”
I swallow. Hard. I try not to make a practice of lying to my dad. “Alice was invited and she invited me. I’m going with her and Netta and Summer.”
“But you weren’t technically invited by the person throwing the party. A person you have yet to mention, by the way.”
I try to act casual, tossing a sweatshirt into my bag in the hopes of hiding the paltry stash of makeup Leonetta asked me to bring. “Not technically. But I think it’s enough to know somebody who’s invited,” I tell him. “It’s at Calvin Watkins’ hou
se. He’s a basketball player.” I leave out the part about him being a former Hopkins player and a current FSU player because what Dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
He’s leaning against my doorframe now, and his sideways smirk tells me he’s enjoying this cross-examination. It’s something he’s used to doing with Ashley but has never had to do with me.
“Will there be drinking at this party?”
I sigh heavily, throwing myself across my bed. “I dunno, Dad. Maybe. Probably. But I’m not going there to drink. I’m going there to support Alice. There’s gonna be a guy there tonight she’s crazy about, and she’s counting on me to be her wingman.”
Dad likes Alice. They’ve taken to playing chess together after tutoring on Thursday nights.
“Our girl’s finally getting the hang of the game, isn’t she?” he laughs, clearly feeling good about how she’s taken to chess under his tutelage.
“I wish I was catching on to geometry as easily,” I say, glad for the change of conversation. I make a show of glancing at the clock while rising to my feet. “So anyway, I probably should get going. I won’t be too late getting home so you don’t have to wait up.”
“I probably will anyway,” he says, easing into the hallway to let me pass. “And, Tess?”
“Yeah?” I turn to him and there’s a look on his face like I haven’t seen since our days in the barn together. It resembles peace, but not quite.
“I’m glad things are okay for you here. I was worried.”
I shrug. “Grow where you’re planted.”
chapter 15
Hair Apparent
Friday, February 15
Leonetta ushers me through the front door wearing a hat, which, at first glance, I’m convinced is made of an old pair of black tights. There’s no way all her hair is squashed underneath the snug fitting cap, and I’m barely into the foyer before I blurt out, “Where’s your hair?”