by Natasha Díaz
Today, I hear her all around me, in the older ladies talking and the people cheering and the streamers flapping through the air. I’m sure she’s here, dancing with me, so I close my eyes to soak her in.
In my head,
I tell her that I wish we could stay here forever,
on this stretch of Eastern Parkway,
at this very moment,
where the only way to be happy
is to be ourselves.
I wait for Grandma to respond, but instead, my mom’s bloodcurdling scream rips through my ears. Frantic, I push through the crowd, ignoring the dirty looks hurled at me for my discourteous behavior. Zeke tries to stop me, but I rush forward, straight into a thick cloud of bright purple dust.
The powder is everywhere, drying out my eyes and mouth and nostrils. Unable to call for help, I stop being me and fuse into us, this mass of unstoppable force that helps me breathe without oxygen as we wait for the air to clear. Sustained by perseverance, I know suddenly why my dad never wanted us to come here: he must have realized that the strength we generate together would always act as a barrier between me and him.
And here, in this moment, I don’t hate that he might have been right.
“MOM!” I reach to the back of my head, where I keep the other loud thoughts I never let out. Then I hear her again.
My eyes open to a clearer scene: my mom stands there, her white shirt covered in purple splatters as she faces my aunt, who holds one of the squeeze bottles from the bag that I forgot about until now.
“Give. It. To. Me. Anita,” my mom demands.
I brace myself for something terrible, but as quickly as I’ve ever seen her move, my mom grabs the bottle and squirts it right back at Anita. Another cloud of purple comes out, and for the first time since we’ve been here, the world goes completely silent.
It’s like those scenes in movies right before something big is about to happen and the only way the characters can prepare for it is for everything to move in slow motion. We float through the time gap, waiting for equilibrium to return, and when it does, the sound returns too, and the air is filled with every color imaginable as powder erupts all over, flying like shooting stars. My uncle and cousins catch up to us and my aunt throws us the bag of bottles, which we grab and squeeze, sending rainbows into the sky.
I survey the scene. Jordan is in a flirtatious color war with a guy I’ve seen in the neighborhood, and despite her competitive nature, she seems to be letting him win. Jerry is doing double duty, squirting pink dust with one hand and eating a beef patty with the other—one of the families cooking must have taken pity on him (despite his robust figure, he plays the starving child quite convincingly). Janae is cheering and waving the Jamaican flag from her vantage point on Zeke’s shoulders, where she can keep her eyes on all of us and everyone else.
Jesus appears with his hair colored mustard yellow from the powder. He looks like one of the painted street performers who freeze like statues and then come to life if you drop money into their bucket. We float toward one another with dust-covered feet and hands and noses.
“Lightskin!” he yells above the noise.
Normally, I’d be frozen, insecure about what to say or do, but the energy here is infectious, and before I realize what I’m doing, I boldly grab a squeeze bottle and shoot it right at him as his boys cheer me on. He laughs and I laugh and the parade spins around us, a vortex that draws us closer together. Just when I think he might kiss me with those perfect lips, my mom grabs me playfully and drags me away.
To see her now, covered from head to toe in purple and green, you would never know what a basic outfit she has on. She dances, keeping up with the young people and at times one-upping them on their moves. It’s more than just the colors that have altered her appearance—every time she whips her head around, her hair flies back and I see her smile. Her flawless white teeth are radiant and her smile is contagious, so I take a mental snapshot each time she comes into view, a portrait of our new world, and I join her as we both dance.
Dance.
Dance.
Chapter 10
The alarm on my phone goes off for the third time, and I try to come up with an excuse not to get out of bed. Any excuse.
When we got back to the house after the festival, I was elated. A part of me had been awakened, and I felt like I could take on the world. I just needed to sleep, and then I would sit my mom down and tell her what my dad was trying to force me to do. I would tell her that we could start over, just the two of us, and make a new life.
But the magic waned as soon as we walked through the door when Pa informed us that my father had called while we were out. He did his best to keep my father’s temper at bay, but Pa couldn’t lie to him—dishonesty is just not acceptable in this house. I watched my mom retreat to the third-floor bathroom to call my dad. I listened to her muffled sobs from the hallway until she emerged, fully returned to her depressed phantom form, drifting through the house, leaving a trail of gloom in her wake.
The alarm goes off for a fourth time. It’s really here, the first day of sophomore year of high school.
My backpack is out next to the duffel bag of clothes I have to bring to my father’s. Now that the school year has begun, so has our temporary custody arrangement, and every couple of days, I have to pick up and move.
If things were normal, I’d be sitting on a coach bus next to Stevie, being delivered to campus. But my school, which charges upwards of 40k a year tuition, can’t see the use in a bus stop in Harlem, so I have to take the subway. It takes three attempts to balance my duffel bag and backpack on my person as I hobble out the front door toward morning rush hour on the 2 train.
Halfway down the steps, my duffel falls to my elbow and I throw it into the street in frustration.
“Hey! I could sue you for assault, lady.”
His voice is seven octaves lower than I remember and I haven’t seen him since he left for Hong Kong two months ago, but I can’t stop the smile from taking over my face. Stevie stands on the sidewalk, five foot ten and a hundred and thirty pounds, with my bag at his feet. His presence makes it easier to breathe—it’s that best-friend power that obliterates any negativity or tension in the surrounding area. He’s the only person I can be myself with all the time because he has a way about him that lets you know he’s not afraid of anything. Unlike me, he likes to stand out. Case in point: today he’s wearing fitted acid-wash jeans, an oversized *NSYNC touring T-shirt, and a ’90s color-block baseball hat.
I rush down the steps, give Stevie a hug, collect my duffel bag, and begin to head to the corner.
“Where you goin’, B?” (Stevie always calls me B, although the origin behind and meaning of the nickname remain undisclosed.)
“To the train…or did you forget to mention that you were actually spending the summer at Hogwarts to learn how to apparate?”
“Pshh!” Stevie swats the idea away like a mosquito. “I traveled all the way into the city from Westchester—we’re riding in style. I’m getting us an Uber X.”
* * *
—
Once we get off the highway, it’s like a giant Wite-Out pen came down from the sky and did a once-over on everyone on the street. We head to Riverdale, a neighborhood in the Bronx that is distinctly separate from the rest of the borough, like a secret microcosm where rich suburban families in the tri-state area send their kids to school to get a top-notch education without fear of any “urban” influence.
“This is the year, B,” Stevie says to me with a hunger and determination I’ve rarely heard in his voice. “I’m gonna get it.”
The Lena Zahira Dance Initiative is a twelve-month fellowship for five high school students selected from the three major private schools in Riverdale—Fort Hilten, Fieldston, and our school, Pritchard—to study in London at a super-fancy ballet academy. Stevie has drea
mt of being accepted his entire life. His mom and I were his only cheerleaders. But ever since Stevie’s mom passed away a few years ago from a brain tumor the size of a tangerine that no amount of experimental surgery could remove, I am all he has. His dad is like, 24 percent present in parenthood. He claims that because he was raised in a “blue-collar Irish American household,” he can’t understand why his son wants to spend his time “twirling all over the place.”
Today, Stevie’s excitement hits a nerve, though, sending a wave of discomfort and irritation through my body. The truth is, my support for him has only been half sincere. The idea of an entire year at Pritchard without Stevie is torturous.
“Mmm,” I grunt, giving him all I can at this moment.
I feel his pain. Years ago, we started to communicate telepathically because we had already spent all day telling each other everything there was to say. When you only have one real friend and no siblings, it’s easy to create a language that starts with one of you and ends with the other. It never occurred to us that we might hide anything from each other, because how could we? We can read each other’s minds.
“My dad says Harlem is the new ‘it’ neighborhood. You’re getting in at the right time,” Stevie says, changing the subject.
Mr. McConnell is one of the biggest real estate brokers in Manhattan, and ever since his wife died, he is incapable of talking or thinking about anything other than property trends, which is not much of a departure from his former state of being.
“Oh yeah? Let’s hope the emotional toll from the domestic upheaval will prove itself a worthy investment in the future, then.”
“You’re so dramatic,” he teases.
“Of course I’m dramatic. I’m a writer!”
“A writer who doesn’t show anyone anything she writes. For all I know, you’ve just been making a list of body parts or dog breed mutations that you find offensive.”
“There really is nothing worse than a cockapoo,” I say, not wanting to admit that my life has effectively fallen apart since he left at the end of June. “So how was Hong Kong? What’s the latest in the adventures of Lian Hsu?”
Stevie is biracial too, half Chinese and half white, but he’s never struggled with who he is, at least not to my knowledge; he’s just always been comfortable and confident by nature. He spends the summers with his mom’s mother, Lian, a ninety-three-year-old retiree who refuses to slow down.
“Ya know, she’s as feisty as ever. This year, my uncle told her she had to wear one of those alert button necklaces after falling in the bathroom and she threw a fit. Said she could never wear something so ugly, but he threatened to put her in a home if she didn’t.”
Stevie reenacts his grandmother’s reaction, morphing into an elderly woman.
“But guess who won? After a day at work, my uncle’s voice mail was full of complaints from the alert company’s customer service. Apparently, Lian was clogging their phone lines by continuously pushing the button to request assistance going to the market for fresh scallops, so they cancelled her subscription twenty-four hours later!”
The Uber driver is so engrossed in the story as Stevie tells it that we miss the school and have to circle back.
* * *
—
José hands us our iced coffees and buttered rolls from his metal cart on the corner. It’s been our standing order since the fifth grade, and he always has it ready for us. A steady morning coffee routine is a rite of passage for all New York kids, city or suburban; it makes no difference. The caffeine craving starts early. It’s in our blood.
We join the other students lined up at Pritchard’s front doors. The school incorporated a new system a few years ago to digitize our schedules and improve school functionality. There are four streams per grade, and each stream has all their classes together. You’d think it would make more sense to send us all the information about our classes and streams ahead of the first day, but I think they like to make it more dramatic for the hell of it.
“Headed back to the jungle, Nevaeh?”
Abby Jackson steps forward. Her voice is high-pitched and irritatingly sweet, like one of those talking cartoon animals on Nick Jr. that teach you numbers and letters and the occasional word in Spanish, except Abby’s character would be possessed by the devil. The three of us used to be friends when we were little: Abby, Stevie, and I. There are photos somewhere of us jumping into piles of leaves as young kids, but between fifth and sixth grades, Abby made friends with this new crew who call themselves the Bomb Squad, and she never looked back.
We turn and face her. Abby’s thick dark brown hair and perfectly sculpted eyebrows frame her bright snake-green eyes. Stevie takes the lead, per usual, and drops to his knees right in front of her.
“God, grant me the confidence of the mediocre white woman and the courage to thrive off doing the bare minimum!”
Some classmates around us snicker at his clap back, but not loud enough to invite the attention of the Bomb Squad.
Abby rolls her eyes at him and gestures to my duffel bag.
“Coming home from a trip? No…that’s not it. Hmmm…your laundry machine broke and you need to use the one in the locker room?” She shakes her head, taunting me. “Oh, right! You’re moving some stuff back into your dad’s house since your parents split up.”
She looks at her robotrons and pretends she’s about to whisper but instead practically shouts. “I heard that Nevaeh’s been living at her grandparents’ house somewhere in the Hood,” she boasts. “Her mom caught her dad in their bedroom with some younger woman.”
I tell myself to breathe, that my dad might be acting like a completely irrational psychopath, but he wouldn’t have done that. He might have moved on, but he wouldn’t cheat. Abby is just an evil, miserable, beautiful monster sent here to destroy me and feed off my despair.
Stevie pulls me forward: we’re next in line, and we approach a table where two new and very flustered teachers sit.
“Name?” the man says hurriedly, wiping sweat from his brow.
“McConnell,” Stevie says, ignoring the look of confusion that spreads across the face of the teacher expecting a traditional East Asian surname.
“Steven McConnell. Three. Next!” the teacher calls out, looking past me to the people behind.
“Levitz,” I say, and my voice makes him jump.
“Sorry, didn’t see you there. Levitz, Levitz…Ahh, here, Ney…Neh…Nivia?”
I hear Abby laugh behind me.
“Nuh-vay-ah,” I enunciate.
“Mmmm…,” he says, avoiding mangling my name for the second time. “Levitz, two. Next!”
Dread takes over. Stevie and I aren’t in the same stream.
Abby stands with her back to us as she continues to address her minions, loudly enough for us to hear.
“We were in East Hampton at the Maidenridge Club when I heard my mom telling her friends that everyone on Nevaeh’s block saw it go down. Mr. Levitz and the hot blond girlfriend had to run into the street because Nevaeh’s mom chased them, throwing clothes and cups at them like they were on an episode of Love and Hip Hop.”
I want to scream, but the more I listen to her, the more something inside tells me that this time, Abby might not just be trying to hurt me. She might actually be right.
“Don’t listen to her, B. She’s overcompensating for her lack of personality. Two and three still have lunch together—look!” He holds up the stream schedule.
I fake a smile. I just need to get through the day, which I can do as long as—
“Oh, here we are! Abby Jackson, two!” the nervous teacher declares.
Acid shoots up my throat so quickly that I can’t stop it. I drop my bags and run to the garbage can that Abby now stands directly in front of. I wave my arms, but she doesn’t move, and then it’s too late. I vomit right there in the lobby of the building,
in front of everyone, all over Abby and the poor sweaty new teacher behind her. Mortified, I look around for some way to escape as Principal Lackey’s voice comes on the loudspeaker.
“Welcome back to Pritchard! Two thousand eighteen is going to be a great year for all of us. Seventh graders, please remember as you prepare for your bar and bat mitzvahs to keep party planning within the school doors to a minimum, and don’t forget to ‘hava nice-gila day!’ ” She cackles like an animated witch, and her high-pitched laugh is the last thing that bounces between my ears before everything goes blurry and my head hits the floor.
* * *
—
“Am I dead?”
No one responds, so I hope that at the very least, if I did meet my untimely demise, I ended up in the happy place rather than some terrible purgatory where the only entertainment is an audio recording of Our Town.
I open one eye a slit, but the lights are so bright they hurt. Aside from a massive bump on the back of my head and a nasty taste in my mouth, I think I’m okay.
But then again, the little voice inside me reasons, death might not have been the worst conclusion to today.
The nurse’s office is pale orange, the color of my vomit earlier today, and it makes my stomach turn. From what the clock is telling me, I’ve been out for a few hours, so perhaps it’s not too late to slip into a coma if I close my eyes again and lie completely still.
“Nevaeh, honey, you think you can sit up?” the nurse asks, with tuna salad wedged between her teeth. “You’re probably going to be sore. But if you throw up again or find yourself feeling dizzy, you need to go straight to the hospital, okay? There’s a slim chance you got a concussion. We called your dad and he’s sending a car to pick you up.”
The getaway vehicle is appreciated, but the nurse won’t let me leave unless I’m wheeled out—she mumbles something about insurance under her rancid breath. Luckily, this first week of school is all half days, so everyone has already gone home.