Piecing Me Together(22)

“Finally!” Lee Lee opens her arms wide like she’s known Sam forever. They hug. She’s good with anybody who’s good with me and vice versa.

“Nice to meet you,” Sam says.

“What are you two about to do?” Lee Lee asks.

“Nothing. Just going back to my house.”

Lee Lee walks the aisles and gets a candy bar and a soda. After she pays, we walk out together. “You want to go to Andrea’s? Kobe is there,” she says. Lee Lee and Andrea are cousins. They’ve lived together since we were in middle school, but Lee Lee always calls it Andrea’s house. Kobe is their cousin too. He might as well live there. Every time I go over, he’s there or on his way or just leaving.

Sam and I eat the JoJos on the way. Lee Lee gulps her soda. When we get to Andrea’s house, her mom points toward the door at the end of a long hallway. “They in there,” she says. Andrea and Kobe are in her bedroom, listening to music. When they see me, they start screaming like I’m some celebrity or something.

“Jade!” Andrea is the first one to hug me. She is wearing jeans and a shirt, but somehow she still looks stylish. Her makeup is flawless—foundation, eye shadow, mascara, lip gloss. Her weave is long. A mixture of blond and brown wavy hair. Andrea holds on to me, and when she lets go, she asks, “Where have you been?”

“She’s been handling her business!” Kobe says. He kisses me on both cheeks. “How’s my girl?” he asks.

“I’m good, Kobe. How are you?”

“Girl, you know me—I stay fabulous,” he says. “And who do we have here?” He looks Sam up and down.

“This is my friend Sam. She goes to my school.”

Kobe hugs her and then reaches for the plastic grocery bag in my hand. “What you got up in there?”

I take out one of the chicken wings and pass the bag. He takes one, grabs a napkin, and gives the bag to Andrea.

The five of us feast on corner store food.

Sam says, “So do you all go to the same school?”

Andrea, Kobe, and Lee Lee nod. Andrea says, “We go to Northside. I like it there. I mean, it’s not like St. Francis, you know.” She looks at me. “We’re not traveling the world and learning a million languages.”

Kobe laughs. “How many languages do you speak now, Jade?”

“Don’t do that,” I say. “I’m only learning one other language.”

Andrea swallows a handful of chips. “French?” she asks.

Lee Lee jumps in. “You know Jade is all about Spanish. Do you guys remember when we were in elementary school and Jade said she wanted to go to Sesame Street and speak Spanish with Maria and Luis and work in the Fix-It Shop?”

They laugh at me and I laugh too.

“She was like, ‘I’m going to travel the world and be rich and buy my mom a big house.’ Remember that?” Lee Lee asks.

“That’s still the goal,” I tell them.

Lee Lee looks at Sam and says, “But for real, there’s not much to say about Northside. We don’t have all the electives you do at St. Francis. The only club worth mentioning is the after-school poetry club. It’s kind of DIY though.”

Sam says, “DIY?”

“Yeah, it’s not really an official club or anything. My English teacher, Mrs. Baker, lets us use her room after school to write poems. There’s no teacher; we just kind of meet up and write and then share.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Sam says.

Lee Lee reaches for a pillow and props it against her back. “Not as cool as having a garden on your rooftop, and cooking classes.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t know many teachers at St. Francis who would let us stay in their classrooms and write poems. I mean, they’d make it so formal that they’d take the fun out of it. You know? It really would have to become a club or an after-school class with a staff adviser and blah, blah, blah. No freedom to just be, you know?”

“She’s right,” I tell them, just to be sure Lee Lee, Kobe, and Andrea know Sam isn’t trying to make them feel better about Northside. “Lee Lee’s poems are so good, she could probably teach the class,” I tell Sam.

Lee Lee smiles. Big, like she needed to hear that.

Andrea turns the music up a little and says, “This is my song!” and that gets us all singing and listening to music for the rest of the afternoon.

When it’s time for Sam to go home, she takes her cell phone out and calls her grandfather to let him know she’s on her way.

Lee Lee gives me a look and says, “You’re walking her to the bus stop? I’ll go too.”

We say our good-byes to Andrea and Kobe, and leave.

As we walk to the bus stop, Lee Lee says to Sam, “So, did you just move to Portland?”

“Me? Oh, no. I was born at Emanuel Hospital. I’ve lived in Portland my whole life.”

“Oh,” Lee Lee says, her brows scrunched in a fit of confusion. “So why— So where do you live?”

“Northeast Portland. Not too far from Peninsula Park.”

Lee Lee doesn’t ask any more questions. She keeps walking. We make it to the bus stop just as the bus is pulling up.

“See you,” Sam says.

We wave and say good-bye.