He rolled his eyes. “You said you come here in the afternoons, right?”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t an invitation,” I shot back, feigning annoyance.
Michael slumped down into his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, can we not do this today?”
I swallowed back the curse on my lip and played dumb.
“Do what?”
“This,” he snapped, waving between us. “This, where you pretend that everything’s alright with you and that you don’t want company when you know you do and me pretending I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Can we PLEASE just . . . not today!”
My mouth hung open as he ripped a history textbook out of his bag. “What’s up?”
He stabbed his notebook a few times with his pen and sighed. “My dad wants to stay there. In Dubai.”
“Oh,” I said with a shrug until the weight of his words sank in. “Ohhhhhh!”
“Yeah. ‘Oh’ is right,” he muttered. “He says the money is too good. And Mom could get a teaching job out there. He wants me to come visit him next month to look at schools.”
“Wow,” I muttered.
“And the worst part . . . they don’t even have football out there!”
He slammed down his pen, leg shaking the table. No wonder, I thought. Football meant the world to him! I couldn’t imagine moving to a place where I could never dance again.
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“Doesn’t look like I have a choice. Mom already has her first phone interview next week.”
Suddenly, it hit me. If he moved, I wouldn’t have anyone left.
“You can’t find anyone to stay with here?” I asked, grasping at straws.
Michael raised an eyebrow. “Stay with? You mean, like, live with?”
I nodded. “Yeah. There’s a kid at my school that’s staying with his aunt until he graduates. Can’t you do the same? Move in with a family member until you finish school? What about your grandma?”
“My grandma?” Michael rubbed his chin. “Well, yeah. I guess I could ask her. But what about my parents?”
“You’ll still see them! They’ll visit you—you’ll visit them. You’ll all be happy.”
Michael nodded for a few moments, then smiled. “Yeah, you’re right. I’mma ask her. Thanks, Claudia. You got some good ideas cooking up there.”
I laughed. “I’ve been told. And, by the way, you got the date wrong.”
“Huh?”
“The date,” I laughed. “You wrote down the wrong year.”
Michael glanced down at his notebook and gulped.
“Oh! Yeah, yeah, you right. My bad,” he said, ripping and crumbling the page out his book, then nodded at my book bag, one of my gels still poking out sloppily. “So what are you working on?”
Dread rolled up in my throat, thick and solid as cold gravy fat. “Nothing.”
He gave me a knowing smile. “You know, there’s this kid on my team who . . . well, goes to TLC at my school. They give him his own private tutor and everything. He does better on tests than the rest of us.”
“What?”
“Those gel sheets,” he admitted with a guilty shrug. “That stuff Grandma gives you. I’ve seen kids use that at school too.”
My heart jerked and I sprung up. “Are you . . . Did you tell people?”
“What? Naw. Who am I going to tell?”
“Everybody! You know everybody!”
“Claudia, I swear. I wouldn’t do that.”
I shoved the rest of my stuff in my bag, tears brimming, humiliated that he now knew the one secret I worked so hard to keep from everyone.
Ms. Manis opened the studio on Saturday afternoons for freestyle, in preparation for our recital. The other girls never took advantage of the opportunity. Saturdays were meant for chilling with boys and friends. I didn’t have those fun problems.
I leaned into a stretch, widening my legs to feel it deep in my hips. Happy to be alone in the one place I had real control. The one place my past couldn’t touch me. The one place it didn’t matter if I could read or not. A sanctuary from the outside world.
But you can read, a voice inside me said. I believed that voice the more I worked with Ms. Walker, read, and listened to books on tape. What scared me, though, was others . . . like Michael . . . thinking I couldn’t. What he thought of me mattered.
I hooked my iPod to the speakers, setting “All I Ask” on repeat. I loved the opening. There’s no warm-up—it jumps out the gate with a rumble. The harsh start helped my pacing. More familiar. But nothing about my dance screamed the elegancy it needed to. Instead of moving like water, I moved like a heavy rock.
“You have to smile.” Her voice carried over the music and I spun to a stop. Megan leaned against the door frame, dressed in leggings and an oversized off-the-shoulder sweater, her gym bag slung on her arm.
“That’s why you look so stiff,” she chuckled. “You have to breathe and smile.”
The moment someone tells me to breathe is the moment I notice the sharp pain in my chest when I’m not.
“And maybe if you relaxed your neck a little, and fell into the turn. Like this!”
She dropped the bag, slipping out of her sneakers, and galloped across the floor.
“Watch me, then you do it.” She faced the mirror, elongating her neck, turning on the brightest smile, before rolling back her shoulders. She glided across the floor, spinning into a series of chaîné turns with her eyes closed, letting her neck surrender to it, the move smooth as silk.
“See? Easy. You try.”
I nodded, shaking the nerves out of my arms and legs.
“Girl, you’re already overthinking it,” Megan laughed. “Loosen up! Ain’t no one in here but us. Smile. Like a beauty queen!”
I grinned—showing all my teeth and fluttering my lashes.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “Just like that.”
We tried the turn ten more times, each time trying to make each other laugh with silly smiles and dramatic movement. The turn became so natural I almost forgot why we were practicing it.
“Shit, what time is it?” Megan said, running over to her bag. “Ah, damn. I have to go!”
With a twinge of disappointment, I watched her slip on her sneakers, realizing I could have spent the whole afternoon laughing with her. I missed laughing.
“Hey, thanks for helping me. This was . . . fun.”
“Fun? Ha! That was nothing,” she said, focused on her laces until her head popped up. “Hey, what you doing tonight?”
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
“I’m having a little sleepover at my house. You want to come?”
“Uh . . . sure. I got to ask my mom first.”
“Cool. Here’s the invite.” She reached into her bag and handed me a folded-up piece of loose-leaf paper torn out of a binder with hearts and stars drawn around her address.
“See you later!” she called over her shoulder before running out the door.
“You’re going to have so much fun,” Ma said for the thousandth time during the car ride over to Megan’s house. “Your first sleepover party!”
The moment I asked Ma about Megan’s sleepover party she flew into a frenzy. She ironed my pajamas, packed my teal overnight bag, even whipped up a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies.
I changed my outfit three times before we left. This wasn’t just some regular sleepover. This was a sleepover with high school girls—girls by default much flyer than me. But Megan invited me, so she must think I’m cool. Right?
“You know, maybe we could have a sleepover party for your birthday,” Ma said, beaming at the thought. “And you can invite your new friends!”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It would be so much fun! A pajama jam!”
I’d never had a real birthday party before. That’s the thing about having one friend: your experiences are limited.
“Well . . . if I have party, can Monday come?”
Ma’s lips
tightened, her eyes widening. “Claudia . . . we’ll talk about that later.”
I snuggled in my seat, unable to hide my smile. It would be the perfect test. Monday wouldn’t dare miss my birthday. She loved birthdays more than Christmas. And if she did miss it, I would never speak to her again.
Ma pulled up to a town house in Northwest, just a few blocks from the convention center, and those first-day-of-school jitters marched their way up my spine like a parade of ants.
“Okay! Here we are! Just try to have a good time, Sweet Pea. Try to just be in the moment . . . and forget about everything else that’s going on. Try to make new friends. Okay?”
What she really wanted to say: Don’t talk about Monday.
I nodded with a weak smile.
“Okay! Don’t forget the cookies!”
My legs stiffened as I made my way up the porch steps. I heard the sounds of muffled music, laughter, and joy.
“Be in the moment. Smile,” I whispered to myself. I took a deep breath and rang the bell. The door swung open. Bass and bright lights slapped my face.
Megan stood grinning. “Hey! You made it!”
“Hey,” I said, my voice cracking. I’d forgotten how different she looked out of her dance gear—hair down, straightened, wearing tight jeans and a white tank top.
“Come on in!”
I turned and waved at Ma. Even in the dark car you could see her glowing grin as she waved back before I stepped inside.
“What’s all this?” Megan chuckled, pointing at the enormous Tupperware bin in my hands, my pillow tucked under my armpit, and my overnight bag weighing down my shoulder.
“My mommy made us cookies,” I said, wincing as soon at the words flew out my mouth. My mommy? What am I, five?
“Aye, cool! Well, pizza just got here. Hope you like Papa John’s.”
She grabbed the Tupperware out of my hand and I followed her into a living room with a huge mocha L-shaped sofa, a big flat-screen TV hanging up above the fireplace, and African oil paintings in gold frames hanging up on cobalt-blue walls.
“Hey, y’all, Claudia’s mom made us some cookies!”
Some familiar faces looked up from their spots on the plush rug.
“Claudia, you know Shannon and Katherine from dance. Outside, we call Katherine Kit Kat.”
“Hey, Claudia!” they said in unison, and giggled, flipping through magazines, stuffing their mouths with pepperoni slices.
“And that’s Paris. She goes to school with us.”
Paris sat on the sofa, playing with an iPod hooked up to a speaker. She had copper-brown hair that complimented her creamy cocoa skin and specks of freckles.
“Hi,” I said, trying to match their enthusiasm. Maybe they were messing around with makeup, like Monday and I used to do, but they looked almost too polished—extra grown-up. While they were all in jeans and T-shirts, I somehow felt underdressed in my light purple sweatpants and matching hoodie.
Megan handed me two slices while Shannon switched to Chris Brown’s album and joined us on the floor.
“Anyways, so like I was saying, that boy just trying to get in them drawers,” Shannon said to Paris.
“And?” Paris snapped with a smirk. “So what? I’m trying to get some too!”
The girls laughed as I picked over my pizza.
“Naw, you see the way he all over her all the time,” Kit Kat said, stuffing her mouth. “That boy love her.”
Megan rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’ve seen him look at a few chicks like that too. All I’m saying, if you gonna do it, you wanna do it with . . . someone special. Someone who makes you feel, I don’t know, safe. Someone who’s good.”
Shannon bumped her with her shoulder. “Like Kam?”
Megan smiled coyly. “Yeah.”
Paris shook her head. “But that’s how I feel with Andre!”
Kit Kat groaned. “Fine! But you could at least play hard to get or something. Dang!”
The girls laughed, and I giggled along with nothing to contribute to the conversation. My experience with boys was limited to my imagination and what Monday had told me. Which wasn’t much.
It didn’t take long for the girls to devour the entire tub of cookies, washing it down with Pepsi. I tried to keep up with the conversations—the boys they liked, the girls they didn’t—but they talked so fast my head began to ache.
“Okay, which one of you bitches want to do my nails?” Shannon asked, pulling a bunch of nail polishes out of her book bag.
“Me!” I yelped.
Shannon’s face tightened. “Uhhh . . . okay.”
I grabbed a magazine sitting on the coffee table and scooted over to make room.
“Um . . . you sure you know what you doing? ’Cause I need my nails to look good for . . . later.”
Shannon and Megan exchanged a weird glance.
I smiled. “I got you. What color you want?”
“Hmm . . . this one,” she said, passing a bottle of mint green.
I started with her right hand, the others observing every stroke of paint.
Kit Kat cleared her throat with a grin. “So, Claudia . . . I heard you were running after April Charles at the game or whatever.”
I swallowed, holding my hand steady. I looked up at Megan for help, but she only blinked. Of course. She must have seen me almost get trampled to death following April.
“Um . . . she’s my best friend’s sister.”
You could hear a pin drop, the way they all froze in shock—as if they couldn’t imagine me having a best friend. Kit Kat glanced at Megan, raising an eyebrow.
“So . . . y’all cool like that or whatever?” Shannon said, blowing one hand dry.
“Not . . . really.” It wasn’t a lie. Like Michael said, we weren’t friends.
“Good. ’Cause she a ’ho.”
Kit Kat snorted.
“Girl, chill,” Megan said, laughing.
“What? I ain’t telling her nothing she didn’t know before. And if she didn’t, it’s better to hear it from us! Right?”
Megan shook her head and sighed. “What she’s trying to say is, well, if you get seen with her . . . people gonna think you just like her. You know, like, birds of a feather flock together.”
“And you don’t want to be nothing like that bird,” Kit Kat mumbled.
Megan shook her head. “Damn, Kat.”
“What? A ’ho is a ’ho is a ’ho. I ain’t gonna sugarcoat shit to make it easier for her to swallow!”
“And we all know you know how to swallow,” Shannon cackled, flicking her tongue at her.
The girls laughed and my stomach clenched, thoughts crashing into one another. Is it okay to hang out with girls who talk trash about my best friend’s sister? Shouldn’t I be defending her? I mean, what would Monday do if she were here?
But she’s not here.
She stepped out of our bubble, straight abandoned me when I needed her most. What if Daddy was right? What if she just didn’t want to be my friend anymore? What would I get out of defending her bullying sister?
So I joined them, letting out a nervous laugh, pretending to be a part of their inside joke, just to belong. I missed belonging to something.
Shannon examined her nails. “Damn, you’re pretty good.”
“You want a design or something on them?” I asked.
“For real? Hell yeah!”
I took out my travel nail kit, packed in the small pocket of my overnight bag. I always did Monday’s nails during sleepovers, so in my head it made sense to bring it. The room fell silent as they watched me add gold dots on every other nail with my paint pen.
“Aight. All done!”
“Wow,” Shannon gasped. “Yo, this is so hot!”
“Who taught you how to do nails like this?” Paris asked, carefully admiring Shannon’s hand while Kit Kat rotated the other. “This is better than the shop.”
“Taught myself. It’s easy once you get used to it.”
“Ooo! Do me next?” Kit Kat jump
ed up.
“Then me!” Megan said.
For the next hour, we talked more about boys, music, and celebrity gossip. We laughed until soda spit out of our noses while I finished everyone’s nails—Megan, red with black dots like a ladybug; Kit Kat, pink with silver stripes like a candy cane; Paris, French manicure with a coffee base and black tips.
Suddenly, quick steps rushed down the stairs. A woman dressed in hospital scrubs with a short jet-black bob—the spitting image of Megan—sped through the living room.
“Ladies, I’m off. I expect my kitchen to be clean in the morning,” the woman said, busy digging through a junky purse.
“Yes, Ms. Forte,” the girls responded in unison.
“And no playing on my—” She finally noticed me and smiled. “Oh! And who is this beautiful lady?”
“This is Claudia, from dance.” Megan beamed, shooting out her hand. “Look! She did my nails!”
“Hi, Claudia from dance. Nice to meet you,” she chuckled, examining Megan’s fingertips. “Very nice.”
“Nice to meet you too, ma’am.”
“Lord, please don’t call me ma’am. Makes me feel old.” She winked at me as she slipped on her coat. “Okay, Meg, I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Ooo, Mom! Could you make us pancakes in the morning?”
“Please?” the girls begged behind me.
She laughed. “If I’m not too tired, I’ll see what I can do. Later, ladies.”
“Where’s your mom going?” I whispered.
“She’s a nurse at Howard Hospital. Night shift,” Megan said, then waved at the door. “Bye, Mom!”
“Bye, Mrs. Forte!” the girls said in unison like a chorus of bells.
“Have fun, girls,” she said, closing the door behind her.
The room went deathly still before everyone leaped up and scattered.
“Okay, y’all, we got fifteen minutes,” Megan ordered, packing up the pizza box, careful not to smudge her nails.
“For what?” I said.
Shannon and Paris stripped off their T-shirts and jeans, standing boldly in their lacy red and turquoise push-up bras.
“I can’t believe I fit in my mom’s bras now,” Shannon said to Paris, cupping her breast. “Crazy, right?”
I turned so I wouldn’t stare. Kit Kat changed into a white crop top. Her belly button was pierced with a silver hoop and a dangling diamond-encrusted star.
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