One of the Good Ones

by Maika Moulite

  Some poor girl lost her sister, and I have had a front row seat through it all. She had to watch as they stuck her sister’s ashes in a wall much taller than that girl ever was. She had nothing to contribute to the girl’s only remaining sister’s absurd plan to drive around the country as a reminder of what had been lost. Who had been lost. She saw that poor mother fall apart because she couldn’t put her broken heart back together again one last time. She couldn’t blame that mom for not being able to look that coward girl in the eye. So she was alone.

  I am utterly alone.

  Come on. I know what it looks like, to even contemplate going anywhere with a total stranger, albeit a harmless-looking one. I am lonely, not stupid.

  But I am so, so lonely.

  I don’t even expect anyone to identify with me anymore...but when I am surrounded in a pit of strangers, I can lose myself. In the music. In the smoke. In the heat. And because that’s what parties are for—to lose yourself—I don’t feel as alone then.

  I hesitate.

  “If you want to go sulk in your room, that’s okay too,” he says simply.

  “I’ll come.”

  The waiter’s face brightens at my words.

  “Yay! Um. It’s a pool party but...I guess you could wear that...”

  I look down at my church clothes and wince.

  “I didn’t really bring any party clothes... I have my airport outfit. I’ll change into that,” I say. Sweats suggest not caring; my flouncy blouse and slim black pants suggest confusion.

  “Cool, I’ll be closing out. Meet in the lobby in ten?”

  * * *

  I rummage through my purse in search of my room key and find it just as the elevators open to my floor. Once I’m in my room, I step over the piles of business casual clothing strewn about that I had packed for the events we’ve attended in Chicago the past couple of days. Mom’s speech at a Black sorority’s national conference. A tour of a brand-new community center. A stop at an inner-city summer school. A blur of moments when I shut off my brain in order to feel a little bit sane.

  I avoid looking at the unmade bed. Kezi (and makeover shows galore) always said that your bedroom was a visual representation of how you felt internally. I guess the empty Reese’s Cups wrappers and balled-up socks and underwear would say, Anxious insomniac is dead inside and feels guilty for being a jerk to anyone and everyone close to her.

  In the bathroom I pull out the magnifying vanity mirror and examine my face. The foundation from earlier is not as flawless as it was a few hours ago, but it’s holding up well enough. I switched to waterproof eyeliner because I got tired of trying to fix it up after crying. I quickly dab some vitamin E and mint lip balm over my lips to soften them before applying my go-to nude lipstick. Genny might think I obsess over my appearance because I’m boy-crazy or something else equally as wrong and ignorant. The truth is, if I’m going to be forced to live in this world and interact with people, I refuse to give them any ammo. Despite what they’ve read in the papers or seen on the news, they don’t know me, and they don’t need to know about the messy bedroom inside me.

  My black flats slide off and my busted high-top Vans come on, and then I’m headed back to the lobby to meet Jalen, the waiter, whose name I made sure to ask for before splitting up to get ready. I let the door click shut behind me and do a cursory jiggle of the knob to make sure it’s locked.

  “Where are you going?”

  Genny is walking down the hall in full head scarf and footie pajamas. She’s carrying a mini tube of toothpaste, which I imagine she just got from the front desk downstairs.

  “Out.”

  “That’s a real good one you know, Happi,” she says as she reaches my door and crosses her arms.

  “Genny. I get that you’re my older sister, but you don’t have to do all this. I have a mom. And a dad. They’re not checking for me the way you are, so you can just chill. Get a life even.”

  The retort slides smoothly from my mouth, but the hairs on my neck stand up, because I think of that last conversation I had with Kezi. The one I’ve been playing over and over for the past few months. Despite everything, these words still come effortlessly. The look my sister gives me is not one of surprise, but I have clearly stung her, as I knew I would. I want to turn off the autopilot but... It’s easier for me to hurt my family than deal with...everything.

  “Whatever,” she says as she opens her door. “Just be up in time for the picnic tomorrow.”

  I grunt and leave her standing outside.

  * * *

  Nash Park Pool. Not too far. Won’t be gone long.

  I draft a text to Genny as I wait for my Lyft to roll up. It’s a weak peace offering. An olive branch with dried-up leaves and all the olives plucked off, but it’s something.

  I hesitate before pressing Send, contemplating whether I will receive a reply lecturing me about all the terrible choices I’m making in life. Truthfully, I wouldn’t mind if she did respond with that. I always wonder whether the last time I say something slick to my remaining sister will be the last time I say anything to her at all. Whether one day the pain in her eyes will scar over to indifference.

  “Elevating athleisure to another level, I see,” Jalen sings, taking long strides to where I sit in the lobby. His stuffy vest has been replaced with blue-and-white-striped short shorts and an American flag tank.

  “Yep, that’s exactly what I was going for,” I joke.

  “Is the pimpmobile almost here?”

  A quick glance at my phone tells me that our ride is arriving any minute, so we step out to the driveway. My one stipulation to going to this party with him was that I would get the car so I could be sure he wasn’t a kidnapper. Teennapper. I felt slightly comforted that he was going to the same party those boys invited me to earlier. Chicago was big. But it was small too. Like LA.

  A car matching the description of our ride stops in front of us. I tilt my head to check the license plate is the same as what’s in the app and then slide inside. The driver has Toni Braxton’s “He Wasn’t Man Enough” blasting loud enough to suggest that she is working out some emotions in her head and wants no interaction, which is fine by me.

  “This song is exactly what we need right now!” Jalen says, swaying to the deep timbre of Ms. Braxton.

  “And why is that?” I ask.

  “We’re not going to a regular pool party. It’s a nineties soiree. Excuse me, dancery. The DJ isn’t budging past 2002.”

  “You do realize that’s beyond the nineties, right?”

  “Yeah, but you have to account for those songs you think are part of the decade but creeped past it... Ashanti’s ‘Foolish.’ Any of Usher’s 8701 stuff,” he explains.

  “Isn’t that all a little before your time? You’re like, what, nineteen?”

  Jalen gasps.

  “I am a spry eighteen years old! I just like music. Love it so much I’m majoring in it at Loyola, actually.”

  Kezi used to blast her nineties playlist from the speakers in her room with the door open. I’d pretend it bothered me, but I was secretly inhaling all the lyrics, the background vocals, the soul. It was the soundtrack to her life. And mine.

  “I get it. Brandy and TLC get me in my feelings every time,” I offer. “And I knew you were in the arts! The way you kept going at dinner...you looked like there was nothing you hadn’t seen before.”

  “Oh, that’s because it’s true.” He winks. “We’ve all got our drama, right?”

  I smile at this kind stranger gratefully, more at ease with him than I am with my own family.

  “This is it, thanks,” Jalen says to the driver when we arrive.

  I drop a pin of my exact location to Genny.

  In case anything happens. I am always thinking about if something Happens. In the back of your mind, you know that anytime you leave your house, get in a car, stand
outside for some fresh air, think too much...something can Happen. I just never believed that it would happen to me. Or someone as close to me as a sister. Even though Mom isn’t speaking to me at the moment, I can’t let anything Happen. She couldn’t take it.

  We emerge from the car, and Jalen motions for me to follow him. There are a few people milling about at the entrance, but we walk past them to where the real party is. Some guests are playing in the pool. I catch one girl sneakily pulling down her blindfold to orient herself in the direction of her prey before screaming out, “Marco!” Even more people are standing on the sides, eating hot dogs and gulping from red plastic cups.

  “Jalen!” A girl in a neon yellow bikini runs up to my companion and throws her arms around him and squeezes. “You made it!”

  I stand to the side awkwardly.

  “Of course! I wasn’t going to miss my favorite cousin’s first grown birthday party. You only turn eighteen once. Happi, this is my cousin Reagan. Reagan, Happi. We go way back. Like, almost an hour.”

  Her skin is glistening like she just came from the water, but her hair is still impeccable—head and lashes. I gasp.

  “Do you know a guy named...” I shut my eyes trying to remember. “Titus! He’s friends with this guy named Marcus who thinks he’s funnier than he is?”

  “Yes...” She looks at me strangely.

  “He’s in love with you,” I blurt out.

  Jalen gives me a double take before guiding me away from his stunned cousin.

  “I don’t know if I can take you places anymore if you do that again,” he quips.

  I explain my chance meeting with Reagan’s admirer while we grab hot dogs cradled in poppy-seed buns and towering with pickles, tomatoes, relish, onions, mustard, and celery salt then move to wait in line for our drinks. When we get to the front, I head straight for the frozen margaritas.

  * * *

  I feel the music in my marrow. The rhythms leap down my arms and legs, swirl in my hips. I pick up my dancing right where I’d left it, at its peak. I have never been shy about performing. The sensation of eyes on me is rejuvenating when I actually want it there. I control what they see, what I want them to perceive. But tonight, I am not reciting a monologue or executing complicated choreography. I am losing myself. In myself. And I don’t want to be found.

  “Are you Happi to see me?”

  Without looking at his face, I can tell that it’s Marcus. And he’s smirking.

  I turn around, unimpressed.

  “Do you have any idea how often I’ve heard that joke?” I say, hand on my hip.

  “I know it’s the first time you’ve heard it from a fine boy from Chi-Town.”

  I burst out laughing and so does he.

  “So you are happy to see me.”

  “Where’s your boy?”

  “Titus? He’s definitely following Reagan around like a lost puppy. I got really glamorous friends,” he says with a grin.

  “I saw her,” I say. “I get the allure.”

  I take a sip of my drink and chew on the more solid bits of slushie.

  “Ow,” he says, cringing.

  “I like the cold,” I say simply. No need to get into explaining how ice jolts my senses awake and stops me from being numb for a moment. I start to move again, to signal I’m here to dance, not talk.

  * * *

  “I don’t bump with Tevin no more,” Marcus declares. I have finally stopped to take a breath, but my head keeps spinning. Around and around it goes. We’re standing near the entrance, where it isn’t so congested but the music can still be heard.

  “You better take that back!”

  He shakes his head. “You know that song, ‘Can We Talk?’”

  “Of course I do.”

  “He gave a generation of guys the balls to step up to these girls, made it sound real romantic and smooth, and then when you try it yourself, you get shot down.”

  “Dude. You can’t be blaming one random R&B singer for your lack of swag.”

  “Hey, I’m not talking about me! But imagine someone running after a girl asking her for her name over and over again like he does at the end of the song.”

  “Yeah,” I chuckle. Everything seems funnier right now. “That would be harassment. These songs are more like... A fantasy.” I glance at him. “You know, when I saw you earlier today, I thought you and your friend were trying to get at me.”

  Marcus cackles.

  “And I was not here for it!” I say loudly over his laughs.

  “Yelling at pretty girls across the street isn’t exactly my style,” he says, moving toward me. “I walk up to them and speak softly.”

  I wonder if he can feel how warm my face is. I wonder how much of that is from nerves and how much is from the tequila.

  “How does that work out for you usually?” I whisper breathlessly.

  “Well, they have to get close enough to hear me right.”

  Santiago crosses my mind. The weak laces that hold us together, the ones we are both too craven to cut ourselves, are untied in this moment. I lean in to Marcus and place a hand on his bare chest. I sense his heart beneath my palm. It’s beating much faster than the chill expression on his face suggests it would be. I like having an effect on people. Sometimes I forget that at the end of the day we are all just guts and hearts and bones pretending that we’re more than.

  He is so near that I smell the frozen margarita on his tongue. He’s still too innocent to think of getting a Henny and Coke or something “manly” at a party. It makes me smile.

  I feel myself floating up to meet his smooth light brown face. Peer into his deep brown eyes. My lips part of their own volition, and then my stomach lurches as the butterflies it contains bat their wings mercilessly...

  I vomit all over his Boost 350s.

  “My Yeezys!”

  13

  KEZI

  TUESDAY, APRIL 17—

  THE DAY OF THE ARREST

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  Ximena beamed as I settled on the bench across from where she and Derek were seated in the cafeteria, but her grin quickly disappeared once she got a better look at me. My face was still hot from Happi’s verbal assault.

  “What’s wrong, Kezi?” Ximena reached her hand across the blue linoleum table to hold mine. “Are you okay? You shouldn’t be walking around looking so sad on your birthday.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied as I unlaced our fingers. Even in the aftermath of my sisterly showdown, I had to keep up appearances. I kept the tulips that Ximena gave me on our first date pressed in the pages of my diary. But I wouldn’t hold her hand in public. Maybe Happi was right after all.

  “You don’t look fine, birthday girl,” Derek said, eyebrow raised high in question.

  “Ugh. Okay, okay,” I said, caving. “I just got into it with my lovely younger sister. Happi literally hates everything about me. But honestly, what else is new?”

  Derek opened his mouth to speak again, but I interrupted. “And don’t ask me for details either. I’m sure you’ll soon be caught up to speed by one of our many classmates who happened to hear when she very loudly told me off.”

  “Dang. Y’all really don’t like each other,” Ximena said, and popped a french fry into her mouth.

  “It’s nuts,” Derek said. “Remember how close we used to be when we were younger? That seems like light-years ago.”

  Our families had been in each other’s lives for decades now. When our great-granddads met in the Army during World War II, they created the ties that would graft together the roots and buds of our family trees for generations. They made plans for their futures, even though they knew there might come a day when they would be expected to lay down their lives for their country. A country that tried its hardest to prevent them from feeling like they belonged.

  My great-grandpa died overs
eas, but Derek’s great-grandpa Parker remembered the evenings they had spent talking about their big dreams and all they wanted to accomplish after the war. Their friendship had grown over dinners at barbecue joints they’d found in the Green Book they had to use even when making deliveries for the military. When he’d finally been discharged from the army, Parker had found my great-grandpa Antonin’s widow, my great-grandma Evelyn, and convinced her to move to California with him in 1946 to start over, that same Green Book that my father now guarded with his life guiding their way. They’d formed a bond through grief, but had become fast friends, and Evelyn was even best woman at Parker’s wedding when he got married a few years after they settled in LA. Our families have been tight ever since.

  And the bond between Derek and Happi was forged as children in the same Pre-K program. The running joke was that D and Happi’s bond was solidified over a single pair of clown shoes in the dramatic play section of the classroom. (All the other kids were terrified of clowns, like all well-adjusted people should be.) From that point on, you wouldn’t find one without the other far behind, both wearing just one shoe, running after their classmates while honking big red noses. They did everything together: eat, dance, read, wash their hands. There was even one time when they were having a playdate at our house and they snuck out with the car keys. They almost made it down the street in the Camry before Ma yanked open the driver’s door and ended their joyride.

  While Happi did well enough in school, her interests were focused on activities she could do outside of class. Still, she had always made a point of bragging about how smart her best friend was. That was, until those smarts landed him in sixth grade in what was supposed to be their fifth-grade year. She was crushed, even though she’d tried not to let on. Before long, Derek was spending all of his free time attempting to make friends with the kids in his new middle school. He tried everything he could to fit in and seem more mature. But nobody was buying it. Luckily for him, I had taken pity on his little self and pulled him under my wing. I’d thought it would make Happi glad to see that I was helping her BFF get acclimated to his new surroundings, but I quickly learned that I was wrong. Not long after that, Happi wouldn’t even glance Derek’s way when he came over after school to do homework. Although the two of them had been going through it for years now, I just knew they would find their way back to each other. The roots ran too deep.