Sweet Secrets

by Rhonda Sheree

  It wasn’t possible for Grayson to love me more than I loved him. And I don’t want to feel that again. It wasn’t so much the love that crushed me. It was losing it. I remember calling his house on a Sunday morning and getting the recording that the number had been disconnected. I felt a wave of cold fear slam into me from the inside. My day was occupied by helping Mom with funeral preparations, but I’d managed to sneak away for a few minutes and rode my bike over to his house. Gone. He and his father were gone. No note. No call. And I sat on that porch and cried. Curled myself into the fetal position in broad daylight and I cried for the loss of my dad, for the loss of Grayson, for the loss of my youth. No one in my life was a certainty anymore. People leave, of their own volition or it’s fate. People leave.

  Dad’s heart attack was unforeseeable. But a boyfriend leaving, why, they do that every day, don’t they? Whenever the spirit hits them. Thank God that I’ll never feel that kind of pain again. I won’t let it.

  I told Grayson goodbye last night. Goodbye for the very last time. And for that, I am truly grateful.

  Okay, I’m done blabbering. I can barely read what I’m writing thanks to my stupid tears. And this mediocre cake! You can’t expect to get a decent piece of chocolate cake from a chain restaurant that sells fish! I’m going downstairs to make my own. It’s gonna be awesome.

  Chapter 7

  The school was easy to spot when I pulled off the highway. There is a sign at the entryway of the campus: Lexis Educational Institute. Beneath it, written in cursive script is the tagline, It’s your time to succeed. Success. Money. Big houses, trendy cars, exotic vacations. That would be nice, I suppose. But I want something deeper than that in my life. What that is and where I find it, I have no idea. Ironic, considering my new job will be to help others on their quest to enrich their lives. I stop at the gate shack, show my driver’s license, and am waved through. There is a sprinkling of cars parked near the administration building; I pull into a slot marked for visitors.

  The campus has only four single-level brick buildings that comprise its school. I consult my watch—quarter till nine. I make a quick check of my face, grab my portfolio, and decide to enjoy the breeze and relax my nerves before I go inside.

  I walk in the opposite direction of the front door to take a look around. The grass is a sea of low-cut emerald flanked by neatly trimmed hedges. The bitter smell of new asphalt stings the air, but the sweet sound of birds communicating in rapid-fire chirps gives me an optimistic view of my day.

  When I was about twelve and Dad asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, Carmen—ten at the time—said she wanted to do hair. Can you imagine? Ten years old and she knew what her life’s work would be. Me? I shrugged off the question and told Dad it would be nice if I could make chocolate for a living. I remember the subtle look of concern as though it were yesterday. I was not, after all, Willy Wonka, and making chocolate was not exactly a career path. I wonder what he’d think about the fact that I carry a bag of E. Guittard chocolate chips in my purse at all times . They are my pack of Kools, my flask of liquor, or, in my sister’s case, my bottle of Purell.

  “Cole?”

  I turn at the sound of my name. “Jonesie?”

  Boyetta Jones hasn’t changed a bit. She is of average height, but she has the kind of aura that can make her the most commanding presence in the room. Her normally short, spiky hair is now curled, which gives her a mildly softer look. When we hug, it feels like I’m wrapping my arms around a mannequin with a heartbeat.

  “Look at you,” I say. “Are you still running?”

  “Four miles a day, every day. What about you?” she asks as she whips out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one. I decline.

  “I’m not running four miles, but I do my thing.” I actually did a fast walk this morning for an hour, the first time I’ve exercised in a week, so it wasn’t a complete lie.

  “Yeah? You look good,” she says in that raspy voice of hers. “Looks like you’ve knocked a few pounds off your butt.”

  “A few,” I say, ignoring her coarseness because I’m used to it. Jones shifts from leg to leg as she smokes, like she has bottled energy that the running hadn’t burned off.

  “You know, you’ve pretty much got the job,” she says to me. “You’ve submitted all the paperwork and met everybody over the videoconference. But you’ve got to meet George in person. This is the first time he’s hired anyone remotely and he wants to make sure he’s getting what he pays for.” She rolls her eyes and hikes up her baggy pants. Jones is wearing a black pantsuit, no jewelry, and soft-soled flats. Her attire is very different from the battle dress uniform I’m accustomed to seeing her in, and she looks painfully uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” I say, starting to feel a weird, nervous edge. “Thanks for hooking me up. I really appreciate it.”

  “Psh,” she says, rolling her eyes again. “Thank me later. After you’ve worked at this dump for a month.”

  Dump? This is not what I’d expect to hear from the person who recommended this job to me.

  “What do you mean? You’re not happy here?”

  “What the hell is happiness? I get up in the morning, I run, I come to work and hustle, I go home, drink a couple of brews, get up, and do it all over again. Same as in the military. It’s a life.”

  No, I think. No, that is not a life.

  I swallow hard. “But the people here are easygoing, right?”

  The birds in the trees grow louder in my ear and I wish they’d fly off and take their happy little chirping with them. The smell of the asphalt begins to burn my eyes.

  “George can be a prick. He told me during my last performance review that I’m a little coarse and I told him to go screw himself because he knew what he was getting when he hired me.” Jones pulls another cigarette from her purse, lights the fresh one with the old one, then tosses it on the smooth gray sidewalk, extinguishing the burning tip with the sole of her leather shoe.

  “Listen,” she says, apparently reading the long slope of dread pulling at my face. “This place is what you make it. Same as anything else.” She narrows her eyes and points the fingers balancing the cigarette toward me. “The money for me can be very, very good since I’m on the sales end of things. All I’ve got to do is keep getting those signatures.”

  “From students enrolling?” I must sound like an idiot to her, but I had never heard of the enrollment process being distilled down to getting signatures. And I definitely didn’t think employees in the admissions department were paid based on commission.

  “Students?” Jones snorts. “Suckers, more like it.” She checks the time, then waves me to follow her as we walk to the front of the building. “This school is accredited nationally, not regionally. Which means the credits aren’t going to transfer to another school within a fifty-mile radius of here.”

  I don’t like where this is going.

  “Wait a minute—I did my research on this school,” I say. “I read comments on blogs, forums…students like it here and they get jobs when they leave.”

  Jones smiles at me and nods. “That was my idea. Which is why George wouldn’t dare fire me.” Confused, I stare at her. “Me, the other recruiters, and now you, we go on different sites and pump up the school.”

  “You mean, you comment as though you’re a student?”

  “Exactly. It helps offset some of the negative stuff.”

  “What negative stuff? I didn’t see any negative stuff.”

  “Did you do a search for ‘LEI scam’?”

  “What? No. I just looked up the school. I didn’t think this place was a scam.”

  “Exactly,” she says again in an exaggerated tone. “And thank God our prospective students don’t, either. Makes the sales pitch that much easier. I’ve got lots to teach you and a few sales books to recommend. Like I said, there’s an opportunity to make serious money here. Get the hang of things in the bursar’s office and after a while I’ll recommend you for student enroll
ment. Like I said, though, this isn’t for me.”

  I need to sit down. My own navy blue pantsuit feels so tight, it’s nearly squeezing the wind out of me. There are no chairs around, so I lean up against the front door.

  “What do you mean it isn’t for you?”

  “I’m going back in.” Jones extinguishes her cigarette on the smooth concrete again, despite the fact that she’s only a step away from the ashcan. “In about two months. It gives me plenty of time to get you off on a good foot, but this civilian thing isn’t gonna cut it for me. These people have no discipline. Lookit: It’s seven to nine and George isn’t even here yet. And he won’t be here for another fifteen minutes, though I’ll be sure to tell him you were prompt for your final interview.”

  She gives me a light punch on my arm.

  “I didn’t know,” I say and look out toward the moving cars on the freeway. What am I going to do?

  “Cole, what’s the matter with you? What we do here isn’t illegal. The teachers do give an education here; people do go off and get jobs. We ain’t Princeton, but who is? We don’t hide the fact that we’re nationally accredited. We’re a very upfront operation. And you can feel good about yourself at the end of the day. You’ve got money in your pocket and some high school dropout is about to get their two-year degree from college. Everyone’s happy.”

  I pull my eyes away from the traffic and look at her. “What do you mean, high school dropout? Students have to have a diploma, right?”

  “What’s a diploma?” Jones asks. “A piece of paper. It doesn’t say anything about a person’s aptitude. We give people a second chance to learn a trade, work in the medical community if they want so they can support their families.”

  I shake my head. I’d heard of these schools before. I didn’t think Lexis was one of them, but I knew how these places worked. When it’s time for a student to transfer to a college where they can get a four-year degree, they learn that none of their credits will transfer. All of the money and time they’d spent on one of these sham colleges goes right down the drain and they have to start over. They could always sue. But the students these schools attract probably don’t have white-shoe attorneys on their payroll.

  “Damn it!” I say and slam my first against the glass door.

  Jones looks at me cautiously, like a person stuck between a wall and a growling pit bull.

  I need a job. I swear I do. The market is tough, especially in a place like Trinity. The sooner I start making money, the sooner I can get my own place. It’s been three days since dinner with Grayson, and I’ve been wary every day that he’ll pop up at the house at any moment under the guise of checking on Mom. But he hasn’t come by, nor has he called. And that small detail has left me in a state of agitation, too. If I can live alone, there will be no expectation that he’ll drop in and no level of disappointment when he doesn’t.

  “Here comes George,” Jones says. Her shoulders relax at the sight of his car pulling in past the empty guard shack, as though he’s a one-man cavalry sent to assist her in the event I go berserk. “What are you going to do?” she asks me.

  What indeed.

  I adjust my suit jacket and pace in tight circles.

  “It’s a good job, Cole. Don’t be stupid.”

  I pause, look at George’s plump rear sticking out from the backseat as he roots around for something. He stands up, his colorful find in his hand, and he wraps it around his lifted collar and begins looping the tie around itself.

  I need to work.

  And yet, even as I think this, my feet begin to move in what I might later consider to be a very wrong direction.

  Chapter 8

  The house is empty when I get home. Mom hadn’t told me she was going out and, considering how excited she had been earlier this morning—making me promise that I’d tell her about my first day at work as though I were a six-year-old going off to school for the first time—I’m surprised by her absence at a quarter to six in the evening.

  All the better for me, I suppose. I heed the growl of my stomach and go straight to the kitchen to forage through the fridge. I decide to be good and heat up a low-cal microwaveable meal and eat it while leaning against the sink in my stockinged feet.

  Boyetta Jones. I stab my fork into the tender slab of meatloaf and slosh the meat in the gravy and chew it without regard to taste. That damned Boyetta Jones. She was only trying to help, I remind myself. Still, I’m pretty ticked off at the idea of working for a company that might have even the slightest reputation of taking advantage of people. And let’s face it—it’s not the affluent that Lexis is preying on either, not that that would make it any better. Their target customers are people who don’t ask the right answers, who don’t have money to attend a more reputable school, and who don’t do their research. People like me, apparently. I take another bite of meat and enjoy the taste of it, making me question my judgment all over again.

  Tonight I need to start looking for another job. There’s no way I can sleep at night knowing what that place is all about. Grayson could help, being a business owner and all…

  “No,” I say aloud, stabbing the cheesy macaroni with the same level of agitation with which I’d stabbed the meatloaf. “Absolutely not.”

  I won’t let him save me. Anyway, I don’t need saving. I’ve got a degree, management skills under my belt, and a good dose of luck. Okay, maybe not luck. Never luck. Besides, look what calling in a favor did for me. No, this time I do it on my own.

  The thought of him, though, takes the edge off my frayed nerves. Part of me is glad that he hasn’t come back around here, stirring up those old feelings again. I need to be alone and allowed to move on with my life. Yet, it would be nice to know that he has an interest. That he wants to see me again…

  And then a memory seeps into my brain like a slowly approaching fog, and despite myself, I welcome it with a smile.

  * * *

  The baked chicken was dry and overcooked. Five of us sat around the table, uncertain if we were gnawing on poultry flesh or bone or a combination of the two. The seasoning was good, though. Mom had a knack for eyeballing it and putting just the right amount of spice in everything she cooked. But then, somewhere between sliding a pan in the oven or putting a pot on to simmer, her mind would drift. Sometimes she’d sit at the table and plan assignments for her students or she’d fuss over the bills before becoming frustrated and leaving the “dirty work for your Daddy to figure out.” Tonight, as we all relied heavily on hearty sips of water to help the chicken travel the meandering journey down our throats, the other—and far larger—elephant in the room was abruptly addressed.

  “Grayson,” Daddy had begun. “What happened to that eye of yours?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Excuse me what?” Daddy asked.

  Grayson hesitated for the briefest of moments; a mop of inky black hair fell over his good eye. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “That’s better,” said Daddy.

  I wanted to pipe up and tell Daddy that he was being rude to our guest. But after several months of these weekly dinners, Grayson was not really a guest anymore but an extended member of our family. Daddy had it in his head to take the misfit and mold him into something decent before he became one of those boys who came to school with piercings in his brow, religious tattoos covering his arms like a branded animal, which is prelude to, in my father’s opinion, coming to school with a sawed-off shotgun hanging beneath a black trench coat. I didn’t say a word. I was too busy holding my breath, silently praying that Grayson wouldn’t reveal the truth about how he got that shiner.

  “There were these boys…” he began.

  Gray, please, no.

  “They had words for me.” He shrugged. “Stuff about me, my dad…”

  “What kind of stuff?” Dad, an unpublished writer who dreamt of seeing his name on bookstore shelves, prided himself for his love of words. He demanded specificity over vagueness, clarity over confusion. Which was kind of weird, considering
so much in English literature is abstract, confounding, and the rules often changed from one decade to another, as my teacher explained in class.

  Beneath the table, my leg had begun to shake. Carmen, sitting beside me, giggled at Grayson’s discomfort. She was ignoring her food and braiding her hair into two fat plaits so that tomorrow in school her long hair would be wavy. That’s my sister; even at fifteen she was always planning ahead.

  “Daddy,” she said. “Grayson’s dad is a plumber.”

  He nodded slowly, trying to come to some conclusion based on this new information. Seeing the confusion on his face, Carmen parted those perfect little lips of hers and sang, “Carl the crap man, come into my crib. Bring your snake so we don’t have to wait. Carl the dookey man, clean it from my floor. Make it so we don’t have to call yo tail no more.”

  Dad’s fist slammed against the table, rattling the dishes along with my teeth. “Shut it!” His voice boomed. “Are you one of those people who sing that vileness?”

  “No, Daddy.” Carmen slipped her hands beneath her bony thighs. “That’s what the kids sing.”

  I stole a glance at Grayson. I felt the smoothness of his sock stroke the top of mine, as if to say, it’s okay, I’ll be fine.

  Would he?

  Would he turn out fine after being teased mercilessly at school for having a white father in a small suburban city who was a plumber and an alcoholic? For having a black mother who abandoned the two of them when Grayson was still a little boy? For looking so distractingly different than any other kid at school and voluntarily alienating himself, which only compounded the problem?

  Grayson was cute, in a dark, foreboding kind of way. And he carried himself with no regard for attracting the opposite sex. In fact, he comported himself as though trying to repel them. He was never seen wearing anything other than black; T-shirt, jeans, boots were his uniform on any given day. His hair was kept in a ponytail with wisps covering his face like a dove’s broken wings. And then there were those golden eyes. They set him apart.