I braced myself. Would I get booed?
Dr. Sam, with his hands draped casually in the pockets of his khakis, moved quietly up the carpeted aisle until he was parallel with my row. Every neck and eyeball twisted to follow him. He was the messiah. He was the light.
For us journalism geeks, he was The Man.
He lowered himself onto the wooden arm of the auditorium seat at the end of my row.
“Well, not having an idea now is perfectly fine,” he said.
Note to Shiny Hair—Perfectly Fine. Did you get that? Hmm? Hmm?
“It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about it because I have but I’m interested in a lot of things and I just haven’t decided . . . um, figured out, which one I should focus on.” I was blabbering. Couldn’t stop. Wanted to, but couldn’t. Then I tucked my lips inside my mouth.
“It’s good to keep an open mind. Although sophomores seldom get bylines in the first semester, we encourage you all to work on projects over the summer. We always save space on what we call the second Page One, which is the back page. But if you don’t make it, it’s not the end of the world.”
Dr. Sam stood, gave the seat back two quick taps and looked over at me again, hard this time. “It doesn’t cost anything to try, Miss Dean. The story the staff picks could be yours.”
He started down the aisle and I flopped back against my upturned auditorium seat. But before he got to the bottom, he turned back toward me.
“Miss Dean?”
I sprang up like some crazed jack-in-the-box. “Yes, Dr. Sam?”
“You were just picked for the dance team, right? My granddaughter, Nena, is on the squad. The Lady Lions?”
Once again all eyes were on me. But their pitying gasps were replaced with bug-eyed “Duh! What? Not her!” expressions.
“Yes, Dr. Sam. I . . . um, I’m a . . . on the team.”
“Good, good, then. You’ll have no trouble coming up with material to write about, I’m sure. My granddaughter is the light of my life and she always has something fascinating to say about that dance team. The success of that team after only five years in existence shows that students can be scholars, but they don’t have to be one-dimensional.”
Shiny Girl looked like she’d just swallowed a frog. The deep-down evil Kayla wondered if the frog was homeless, and if so, if it had been discriminated against. “I play the flute!” she yelled.
“Um, I coach hockey,” another overachiever chimed.
Then it went on like that until Dr. Sam couldn’t take it anymore. Poor man. Probably feared if they didn’t quit kissing his butt soon he’d wind up going home with no skin at all. He waved them off. I was still mute, unable to think of a single thing to say.
Once Dr. Sam guided us back toward why we were there, to talk about the J-program, everybody settled down.
I slid down in my seat.
Nena is his granddaughter.
I didn’t feel like a steely undercover reporter. I felt like a deceitful little deceit monger. The yellowest of yellow journalists scrounging for story bits.
How was I possibly going to write an exposé saying that his precious granddaughter was, as Rosalie claimed, part of an evil hierarchy that robs women of their natural power and leaves serious women strewn like roadkill across the cultural highway?
I was so dead.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
Pappy doing better; we’ll be back next Friday evening. Can’t wait for Saturday’s session. After the success of “Crown,” we’ll take over RPA and the Lady Lions will be nothing. “Justice of right is always to take precedence over might.”—Barbara Jordan
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
Tick, tock . . . Kayla gets a visit from her hormonal clock. Is there cause for alarm or will she snooze and lose?
WORLD CLOCK
New York/Fort Lauderdale 8:00 PM
London 12:00 midnight
Tokyo 8:00 AM Friday
Paris 1:00 AM
Baghdad 3:00 AM
PUBERTY Thursday, 7:44 PM
Okay, here’s the deal:
What happened next on my journey into high school popularity destruction should go down in some sort of book, the annals of high school crushes skidding horribly into the fires of damnation.
Despite my open-faced drooling recently over the Gardner of the Gods, my one and only true love fantasy boyfriend was Roger Lee Brown.
Period.
Case closed.
So when my dad offered to jog with me in a nearby park—-one thing Father and I had in common was that we liked to run off our frustrations—how could I know it would turn into both the high and low points of my nonexistent romantic life?
Father had barely broken a sweat when we finished our first mile. We’d run almost side-by-side. We didn’t really talk, which I appreciated. That kind of bold-faced bonding would have been way too much for me. After mile two, he looked over his shoulder, winked, and sped up. By mile four, he lapped me because I was walking and wiping my forehead with the tip of my t-shirt.
“Hey, be careful. I almost could see your . . . you know,” said my father. Then he sped off, looking embarrassed. My “you know” was my sports bra. Could he be more of a caveman?
By the time I peeled off toward the edge of the track, I could hear my father’s feet going boom, boom, boom against metal bleachers. He was going up and down, up and down, making quite a clatter. I wondered what was on his mind. Like me, he took off in his gym shoes when he had to work some things out.
I definitely needed to work some things out.
My head buzzed with voices. Rosalie’s voice and what she wanted. JoJo and what I thought she wanted. Miss Lavender and her comments about my look and what she wanted. Even my Mom’s voice. I could hear them all buzzing in my head, telling me what was best for me, telling me how to be Kayla.
But the one voice I couldn’t hear clearly was my own.
Sweat dripped down my neck. A thin magenta stripe of setting sunlight swooshed against the sky. My father’s silhouette looked navy blue in the distance. He took off toward the trail. I was near the parking lot, stretching and sweating.
That was when I saw the car.
When it parked, I froze and when I heard the driver’s door open, my breathing caught. Familiar voice.
“It’s me, um, we sort of bumped into each other at the practice field. You were trying out for the Lady Lions.”
Roger Lee Brown stood with his thumbs hooked into the rear belt loops of his too-big khakis. His back was to the west, which meant the darkening orange and purple sky outlined his chocolate brown body to perfection.
WARNING! WARNING! THIS IS NOT A DRILL, PEOPLE —Roger Lee Brown is in the neighborhood park at sunset wearing khakis and no shirt.
And talking to me!
My heart and knees did weird noodle imitations. I couldn’t stop myself, I glanced at my watch:
7:44 PM—the precise moment that puberty kicked in. I felt it actually kick. I will not tell you where.
He stared.
I stared.
I frowned. “What?” I said.
He nodded toward my head. “Your hair, man.”
My eyes widened. He instantly shook his head. “No, um, I mean, it’s just, so . . . bushy. I mean, it’s kinda dope, you know, how there’s so much of it. It’s all right.” But he didn’t say “all right”—he pronounced it the cool way—ah-ayt.
Shame! Hot, liquid shame, shame, shame!
Frogs croaked. Crickets chirped. Night birds sang night bird songs.
He said: “Hey, listen.” He leaned forward against the car door as he spoke.
He was shifting from one foot to the other.
Did I make him nervous? Then an awful, terrifying thought occurred—maybe he was afraid that since I’d seen his you-know-what, I was making some kind of judgment.
Oh, great! Maybe he thought I’d seen lots. Of penises. And thought I was some sort of penis expert.
Dr. Kayla Dean,
World’s Foremost Penis Peeper
I could never say “ ugh” enough.
“I didn’t really see it that good.” Before I knew what was happening, it just popped out of my mouth.
First he frowned.
Then his mouth fell open and slowly he began to back away. I prayed for a dimple, a crease in the time-space continuum big enough to swallow me up. Once again I needed that runaway gator to eat me whole and save me from my nasty self.
By this point, he was moving back around the car no doubt to use it as a shield, protecting himself from Broward County’s foremost penis expert and neighborhood perv. “Well, ma, I gotta bounce. Maybe one day after you get out of practice and I finish with football, we can, you know, hook up or whatever? Hang out.”
He was love-song beautiful.
I was falling through space and time. He was not seeing me at my brainy best. I was a thinker. A serious young woman. I wanted to scream: “I AM AN INTELLECTUAL, FOR GOD’S SAKE!”
Roger Lee Brown was almost back in his car when he paused. He drummed the roof of the car. He had long fingers. He came back around the car toward me.
Was I downwind? Oh, geez. After jogging and stretching out here for nearly an hour in the heat, I smelled like bad canal water. Involuntarily, I sniffed at my pits. I didn’t jab my fingers under there and take them out and sniff them, but I did sort of lower my head and take a whiff. Then I winced because it was not good.
He looked at me like I was on loan from a museum.
“Pretty bad, huh?” he said.
My mouth hung open. Crickets chirped. Frogs croaked. Cars on the road beyond us whizzed along. Night birds kept doing their thing and all that.
I said nothing.
“Um, anyway . . . yeah. So, anyway . . .” Our eyes met. The purple and orange light in the sky had vanished behind the trees. Darkness was getting thicker. He looked confident and unsure at the same time. Our eyes locked, and for a crazy moment, I thought he might actually want to kiss me.
Then . . .
“Teeeeeeeeen-hut!” my father’s voice barked. “’Bout time to roll out, Captain Smarty Pants. Getting dark. Perfect time for gators to come hunting.”
Then he shot Roger Lee Brown a look and said, “Son, do me a favor and step away from the teenage daughter.”
I could actually hear the blood vessel in my head exploding as my head whipped around. Between clenched teeth, I gritted, “FATHER!”
And you know what the big ape did?
He grinned. Big, white, toothy grin.
Roger Lee cleared his throat. He was definitely trying to get away from me now. He was in his car when he called, “See you, Kayla!” Shrapnel from the tires filled the thick night air around us as he peeled away.
“You will do anything to make my life miserable, won’t you?” I hissed.
At first, he looked at me with a face full of shiny defiance. Then he seemed to deflate. He let out a big exhale and started up the truck. He said, “You like him? That boy?”
Now it was time for my expression of defiance to change to one of red-faced embarrassment.
“None of your business,” I said. I was not going to discuss this with him. He paused a beat, then seemed to yank the truck onto the road.
“You know, all of us are just trying to be a family. Me, ya mama, my mama, we just want to be part of your life. We can’t be JoJo, but how long do you plan to keep pushing us away?”
I turned my head. It was like he’d slapped me. Was that why he’d needed to run to clear his head? Was I the big problem he was trying to figure out?
Blurry stars sharpened against the deepening darkness. We rode in silence for a few seconds and a whispery “yes” spilled out of me and blended in with the whirring A/C. As in, “Yes, I do like that boy.” As in, “Yes, I do want to be part of our family.” As in, “Yes, I do want a connection.”
But my father didn’t hear me. He had his army face on, eyes locked straight ahead. Hands at ten and two o’clock on the steering wheel. Jaw clenched tight.
We drove home in silence.
Even as I tried to sleep later, as I wanted to think about the sexy, chocolate, love-song heat coming off Roger Lee Brown, it was my father’s voice I kept hearing. Another buzz ringing in my head, telling me I was doing a lousy job of being me.
POET EMILY DICKINSON LIVED AS RECLUSE AND INTELLECTUAL; DIED IN SECLUSION
Kayla makes great discovery—seclusion is for dead poets not young dancers!
Love—is anterior to life—Posterior—to death—Initial of creation, and The exponent of breath.
—Emily Dickinson
Degradation-elation!
Dis-bliss!
Jubil-infamy!
No one word, not even a Kaylaism, defines how I felt or what happened over the weekend.
I had never felt so—alive.
I had never wished so hard for death.
Like most calamities, it started when D-squared arrived back from her cruise. Demolition Diva gave out orders like souvenirs. She gave me a bottle of perfume and ordered, “Dear, wear this tomorrow at dinner, all right?”
Of course, my head tilted to one side and I made a Scooby-Doo-like sound, “Ruh, roh?”
She beamed brightly. “Oh, dear, you remember. My church sister, Irene. Her grandson. So adorable. Baggy pants but he comes from a good home.” Then she frowned and she made the Scooby-Doo face as she looked at my hair.
“Grandmother. . . .”
Her finely arched brow rose, no doubt, because I was giving her The Tone.
“Grandma Belle,” I said. We were in the living room, the whole family. The others were looking at me and I didn’t know what to say. “I . . . I’m not really interested in meeting anybody.”
Desperate I swung around. Amira, always looking so smug. I remembered her with my cell phone, reading my text message. I smiled sweetly. “Why don’t you take Amira, Grandma Belle. I’m sure she’d love to meet Sister Irene’s nice grandson.”
My smile was positively beatific. ( Beatific is a wonderful word and you can’t believe how difficult it is to work it into regular conversation.)
Amira locked eyes with me. I expected her face to flush with the agony of defeat, but instead, she seemed to glow. She stepped forward like the last, insipid contestant remaining on one of those mind-numbing reality shows where Prince Charming is choosing between two poor, pathetic girls who are neither serious nor intellectual.
Her smile was as bright and fake as mine. “I can’t go with Grammy Belle tomorrow because I have a date.”
Aaaaaaaaaa daaaaaaaaate.
My younger, shapelier, better-traveled sister was now going to go on a date.
Before me.
I wasn’t supposed to care. Didn’t think I’d care.
But I cared. I cared. When God sent out breasts and curves to some girls, did he include some sort of tracking device guaranteed to beep-beep-beep when boyfriend-bait was approaching?
Twin daggers of humiliation and sadness sliced me. I staggered like a backup Juliet in a really bad Shakespearean production. “With who?” I asked.
“ Whom, my dear. With whom,” Demolition Diva corrected.
After that, I couldn’t go on. The date was bad enough, but the grammar—well, that was too much. Simply too much.
To my retreating back and hasty goodbye, D-squared called, “Dear, please be sure to wear your pearls tomorrow, won’t you.” Then, in a generalized stage whisper, “If she won’t do something with that bush on her head, at least we can distract the boy’s eye with classic jewelry.”
Ugh!
Of course, to further boost my self-esteem, I received a Rosalie update. She had taken to just e-mailing quotes. What was waiting for me before the big dinner:
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.—Texas politician Ann Richards
Well,
I had no idea how stirred up my system was about to get.
Turns out, Miss Irene, D-squared’s church sister, was the grandmother of someone I knew. Just seeing him, that was bliss.
“Kayla? Kayla Dean?” Roger Lee Brown looked as shocked to see me as I did to see him. The scheming grandmothers exchanged glances that had to be the white-glove version of high fives, signaling they’d made a good match.
Dinner passed in a blur of stolen glances between me and Roger Lee. Demolition Diva looked proud despite the near coronary she’d had when I showed up to go wearing her beautiful pearls with a “Feed the World” t-shirt and a pair of black jeans.
When it comes to how long I tried getting ready, I can’t even go there. I mean, I wear mostly second-hand clothes because, it’s true, I do think we as women are encouraged to bow down or whatever to a totally superficial fashion god all for the sake of consumerism.
But there’s another reason.
Dressing up and getting all girly, it makes me feel stupid. I mean, it just doesn’t feel like me. At least, it didn’t used to. Sitting at the table with Roger, though, I wished I had some of Amira’s outfits, not to mention her curves.
After dinner, the grandmothers encouraged us to walk off the sweet potato pie. Miss Irene’s house sat on a canal.
“You’ve heard about the alligator that’s supposed to be hiding in the neighborhood somewhere, right?” he said.
My heart was moving too fast in my chest and my mind had all but stopped. I felt so out of place. I couldn’t talk, so I just nodded.
We walked some more, and after a minute or so I felt I could speak without croaking like a frog. We were passing the rear side of Miss Irene’s house, beside the canal. A boat bobbed gently in the slip. “Is that your grandmother’s boat?” I asked.
The Kayla Chronicles Page 8