“A cat?” Julia says. “Don’t even mess around with us like that.”
Isabella quickly shoves her phone back into her pocket. “Not a cat, a kitten. And isn’t he the cutest? Just a sweet pile of fluff. He’s like a tiny cloud.”
“He is adorable,” I say, feeling oddly relieved, “but your mom is never going to let you get another cat. You already have three.” Isabella loves cats.
“My dad has a new girlfriend,” Isabella says. “And you know my mom. She’s all freaked out about it, and worried that I’m going to freak out about it, so she might say yes to a kitten.”
When Isabella’s parents first got divorced, they both bought her a lot of stuff as if they were competing to see which one she’d pick to love best. That seemed just plain silly to me. It’s not as if she was divorcing them.
“And if she says no, I’ll ask my dad,” Isabella says. “He needs a pet.”
“Okaaay,” Julia says. “But I was talking about boys.”
“My mom says boys are nothing but trouble,” Isabella says.
I have to laugh. “My mom says the same thing.”
“Just wait,” Julia says. “I bet I’m right. You’ll be the first to have a boyfriend, bruh.”
“Save me from that drama,” Isabella says, rolling her eyes.
Save me too. “She’s not a bruh,” I tell Julia.
Julia blows hair out of her face with a huff. “Don’t be so salty, Shay.”
I’m a big bag of barbecue chips salty.
13
Facials
I know Daddy loves me as much as Hana, but sometimes he looks at my long legs and long arms like they’re such a waste. After basketball was a total fail for me, he thought volleyball could be good. He got really excited thinking I could be the volleyball version of Serena Williams. But I was terrified of getting a “facial.” That’s when the ball smacks you right in the face. I saw it happen once. The girl’s face was so red, and not just because she was crying really hard. Volleyballs are harder than dodgeballs!
But there are no balls in track. And really no elbows either. That’s part of the reason I decided even I can run around a track without getting into too much trouble, or at least not get an elbow in my eye.
But after having a whole week to think about it, I’m sure I’m making a mistake. I just don’t know how to get out of it. So, on the first day of track practice, I walk real slow to the locker room, dreading changing, dreading running, dreading doing this at all without a friend.
I’m especially not happy about having to wear my PE clothes. I know how bad I look in the horrible shorts and bright yellow T-shirt. I should’ve asked Momma to take me shopping over the weekend, but I was afraid I was going to chicken out about going to practice.
The locker room is empty when I get there; everyone else must’ve already changed. I send Isabella and Julia a group text.
Me: Am I crazy for doing track?
Isabella: I think you’re brave!
Julia:
Nice.
I shuffle outside. This is the first time I hope Jace is not around. If he sees me in my PE clothes, I will never have a chance with him.
A bunch of kids stand around waiting, and my palms get all itchy because there is a small group of Black kids standing together. Carmetta is one of them. I don’t know if I should go over there. That might sound like I don’t know I’m Black, which isn’t true. But I don’t know how to walk over and act like I belong.
Sweat forms on my big forehead, and I rub my hands on my ugly PE shorts.
“Shay!” someone hollers.
I bite back a tiny scream. Bernard. Standing next to him is like standing next to a mountain.
“Uh, you run track?” I squeak. Nothing about Bernard makes me think he can run fast. Which is maybe a good thing. I could totally get away if he starts chasing me.
“Shot put,” he says.
“Uh . . . ?” I don’t like the sound of anything that has the word shot in it.
“It’s a heavy thing you have to throw,” Bernard says, like I should have known that. He puts up a hand to shield the sun out of his eyes and licks sweat off his upper lip.
Coach West comes outside and herds us all together.
“Okay, everyone, we’re going to stretch it out, and then once we’ve got those muscles ready to go, we’ll do a quick warm-up. Then we’ll do a few drills so you can all get an idea of what’s involved. Carmetta? Show everyone the stretches we want them to do, and then release them for four times around the track.” Coach West sounds excited, like she’s ready to find the next US Olympic track star.
A mile is our warm-up? Uh-oh.
Carmetta shows all the newbies like me the proper way to stretch. And then, too soon, it’s time to run a mile.
“You like running?” Bernard huffs as we start our first lap.
I don’t know why he is running with me except maybe because I’m slow and he is slow. “I guess?” I huff back. I start running faster, and now it feels exactly like Bernard is chasing me.
After our mile warm-up, Coach West explains how we’re going to try a bunch of different things, and she assigns us to groups. I’m relieved I’m in a different one than Bernard.
I jump a few hurdles, run a 50 and a 100—I don’t think I’m much of a sprinter—try to high-jump, and foul out a bunch of times on the long jump. Coach West has some of the eighth graders taking notes and keeping track of our times. Angie Watkins is one of the helpers.
Angie has long eyelashes that she makes even longer with mascara. She has on cute spandex track shorts, and although she isn’t very tall, she has long, strong legs. Her hair is braided in a complicated pattern that she must’ve sat for hours to get. We are both Black, but we don’t look anything alike. Although if I was allowed to wear mascara, I could at least have long eyelashes like hers, and that would be something.
When she sees me try to jump over some hurdles, she smiles at me. I smile back, but it makes me trip over the hurdle, and I almost fall right on my face. Angie puts her hand over her mouth quick, I guess to hold back all her laughter. I can’t exactly blame her. I don’t know what it is about someone falling that seems so funny.
After Coach West says we’re done for the day, I head to the line at the water fountain to get a drink. Someone behind me bumps that space right at the back of my knee.
“Hey!” I say, whipping around.
Bernard.
My throat gets tight. “Sorry,” I mumble, even though he nudged me.
“Got you,” he says, pointing to my leg and laughing.
I turn back around. I don’t want to be pounded.
“You did good,” he says to my back.
It takes me a second to realize he paid me a compliment. “Thanks,” I say, confused. I take my turn at the water fountain, wondering why he would be nice all of a sudden. When I finish slurping, I turn around and Bernard is still standing there like I’m supposed to say something else. “I, uh, like the hurdles,” I say. I wipe water off my mouth. “But they’re hard. I guess you need really good timing.” I overheard Angie tell that to Carmetta.
“It’s rhythm!” he shouts. “Can’t you dance?” He starts dancing around me, which of course makes a bunch of kids look over.
I freeze. My face is so hot, it feels like someone smacked it with a ball.
Angie comes over and says, “Oh, that’s what I’m talking about.” And she starts dancing too. She swings her head around, making her braids swirl. Then she gives Bernard a little push and walks off.
Bernard laughs and then he gives me a little push. Except a push from Bernard is like a really hard shove, and I stumble back into the water fountain.
It doesn’t exactly hurt, but it sure doesn’t feel great.
Coach West signals me to come over. I just know she’s going to say she made a big mistake and I don’t need to come back to practice.
“Looks like you could use some better-fitting shorts,” she says.
I nod hap
pily. It feels like the first good thing that’s happened in forever.
Doesn’t it just figure that if Bernard is doing track, he’d do something that sounds like there is a gun involved?
I wish I looked like Angie Watkins. I wish I was Angie Watkins.
For the record, I actually CAN dance.
14
Broken
When Momma picks me up after practice, I tell her it was fine. “I think we’re supposed to have running clothes, though.”
“Mm,” she says. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye, and for a second she has her N-O face going, but then she says, “Maybe we can go to Big 5 this weekend.”
At home I write in my eyeball journal about Isabella being so cute now, and Bernard chasing me at track practice, and how bad I felt for not standing up for Alex. He’s my friend, and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make Jace mad. I know what a friendship manual would say about that.
But maybe Jace was just going along because he didn’t know how to stand up and do the right thing. I bet he felt bad about it after.
On my phone, I have a video from the first week of school when we had a Spirit Day and Jace and some of his friends did some coordinated dance moves. It wasn’t that impressive, but I was glad I had an excuse to video him.
He’s so cute.
If he was my boyfriend, I’d tell him to be nice to people.
I think about that a whole bunch until Momma calls me for dinner.
Momma made chili for dinner, and it’s just the way I like it, super spicy with hardly any beans. I notice Momma and Daddy don’t talk about that trial at all while we eat. I think they don’t want to worry me, and they probably don’t want to get Hana started. She gets so mad about the police shootings, it’s almost like she knew the people who got shot. Like they were her best friends or something. I’m bothered about it too, but I guess it makes me more scared than angry.
I decide to ask Momma a question that’s bugged me about her broken-bone story. “Momma, when you were telling me about Black Lives Matter being like a bone, were you saying that Black people are broken?”
Momma passes me the water jug because she can tell my face is getting all steamed up from the heat of the chili. “No, sugar, we’re not broken. We’re just the ones who need attention right now.”
“Because people keep trying to break us,” Hana says. She claps after each word.
Momma cuts her eyes at Hana. “You keep focusing only on the bad in this world, and that’s all you’ll ever have.”
“It’s not my fault so many brothers are getting killed,” Hana says.
Sometimes Hana gets really close to the line of talking back. As I’m pouring myself some water, making sure I get some ice, I take a quick peek at Momma to see if this is one of those times when Hana crossed the line, but Momma just looks sad instead of angry.
“I’m going to Regina’s,” Hana says, and starts to get up from the table.
I frown at my bowl. I’m not finished yet, but I’m close, which is supposed to mean we’re at the part of dinner I like best, when the four of us are sitting at the dining table, knowing it’s time to get up and put our plates in the dishwasher, but being too full to move. Daddy will usually crack jokes, and Momma sometimes will tell stories about back when she was a kid. Momma is the youngest of ten kids, and her brothers and sisters were always terrorizing her. She probably didn’t think it was funny then, but she makes it seem funny now.
“Excuse you?” Momma asks Hana, not really asking anything. “Did I hear a question just now?”
Hana sets her bowl back down and twists her hands up like she’s praying hard. “Can I pleeeeease go over to Regina’s?”
“It’s a school night,” Momma says.
“But we need to make Black Lives Matter posters.” Hana’s eyes are all shiny, and I can’t tell if she’s excited about making posters or if it’s just her usual reaction to seeing Regina.
I see Momma and Daddy exchange a look, and I know they will let Hana go. They are serious about school nights, but they are more serious about Black Lives Matter.
Momma tells Hana, “You better hurry and get going, Miss Thing, so you won’t be out too late.”
I wonder if Ms. Jacobs is right. Would Emerson really support Black Lives Matter even though he’s a (dead) white man?
15
Sisters & Brothers
It’s late and I’m in bed, but I am not having much luck getting to sleep.
When I think too much about Jace, I feel happy and sad at the same time. Maybe he will never like me back. And I want to have a thing. Julia has basketball and a whole group of other friends, and Isabella has art and is all beautiful now, so she has that too. Hana has Regina and Black Lives Matter. All I have is an eyeball journal. If Jace liked me back, I’d have a really good thing.
When I hear the front door open and close, I know Hana is home.
I hear her murmuring with Momma and Daddy and then I hear her in her bedroom. A few minutes later, I hear the bathroom door, and I risk creeping out of bed.
I bet Hana can tell me how to get Jace to notice me.
I knock softly on the bathroom door, and with a huff, Hana says, “Come in.”
She’s wrapping her hair up for the night, and I go ahead and risk joining her in the bathroom. Hana likes me to leave her alone mostly, and interrupting her nighttime routine makes my hands itch, but I have to ignore them.
Hana doesn’t even look at me for a few minutes; then finally she says, “What?”
“I have a question about . . . um . . . boys.” I start fiddling with the cream hand towels that are just for decoration. The towel we use for actual hand drying is on the counter.
“You don’t need to be dealing with no boys,” she says, but then maybe because she knows she sounded way too much like Momma, she sets her comb down and faces me. “Somebody trying to talk to you?” She sounds so serious, I worry that this was a bad idea.
“No,” I say. Obviously boys talk to me, but that’s not what Hana means. Talking means liking each other. Before you are boyfriend-girlfriend, you are talking. So far I haven’t been talking with anyone.
Hana’s eyes narrow like she’s trying to see me better. “Then what?”
I’m not used to having my sister’s attention focused all on me, and I start talking too fast. “There’s a guy in my first period who’s really cute. He has the greenest eyes and he makes everyone laugh all the time.” Thinking about Jace gets me all tingly, like small moths are settling all over my arms and legs. It’s a strange feeling. I don’t even know if I like it.
“Is he nice?” Hana asks.
I ignore that question, because that’s not really the point. “Julia said that Isabella will probably get a boyfriend before either of us do.” I still can’t believe she said that. Like Isabella is all that, and I’m just a five-head pile of dog food.
“Not everybody wants a boyfriend, you know,” Hana says.
“But Jace is really cute. I’ll show you.” I search through my phone and pull up the video of Jace.
Hana stares at my phone for a minute. “He’s a brother?” she asks, all shocky voice.
“So?” I say.
Hana hands me back my phone. “I’m surprised he’s Black. I didn’t know you would be down with that.”
“Ha, ha,” I say, and it’s all I can do not to roll my eyes at her.
“Check out little sis,” Hana says, like she’s showing me off to someone. “Next thing you know, you’ll be protesting with me. You want me to get you an armband?”
Hana told me she wears her armband to make sure people don’t forget about us mattering. To remember those who died. The armbands might make people remember, but it also seems like it might make people angry, and that’s sure to be trouble, so I tell Hana, “No thanks.”
Hana grips my arm hard. “Black Lives Matter is important, Shayla.”
“I know!” Hana thinks I don’t care about being Black sometimes si
nce I’m not like her, but she’s wrong. “I want people to know we matter too. I just don’t want to wear an armband.” If I started wearing an armband, everyone would ask me about it and make a big deal. And I don’t think it would stop anyone from dying.
Hana sighs really loud, like she is in pain or something. “You can’t just want things. Sometimes you have to do something. Like if you want that boy to notice you, you can’t just sit there waiting for it to happen.” Then she tells me to get out of the bathroom.
I’m back in my room before I realize she didn’t tell me what I’m supposed to do to get Jace to notice me. No, not to notice me, but to like me.
Family is the most important thing ever, so when you think of Black people as a big family, it’s easier to get why we say Black lives matter. I know Black Lives Matter is important—obviously. Hana acts like I’m dumb sometimes. But does she ever get embarrassed wearing her armband? Doesn’t she worry people will think she’s trying to start some trouble?
Until Hana said it, I didn’t even think about Jace being a brother.
16
All the Girls
Momma busts me before I make it out of the house in the morning.
“Oh, no, ma’am!” Momma says, with one hand on her hip and the other clenching the car keys. “I know I do not see a bunch of junk on your face.”
Hana told me I had to do something, and wearing makeup to school somehow seemed like a good idea, even though it’s against Momma’s rules. I don’t know what I was thinking, though. It’s not like I don’t have to sit next to her on the way to school.
“But Momma, all the girls—”
“Did I hear you right? Are we all the girls all of a sudden? What have I told you about makeup?”
My head hangs even lower. “Not to wear it,” I mumble.
“So why are you about to step outside looking like a clown?”
“I don’t—” I cut myself off. There is no point arguing that I don’t look like a clown even though I actually think I look good.
A Good Kind of Trouble Page 5