Pride(53)

I stop before I reach the dining room, where another wide chandelier hangs from the ceiling and a long wooden table is pushed aside and covered with snacks, boxes of pizza, and more alcohol.

Someone jumps in front of me—a dark-haired white boy with a huge crooked smile on his face. “Hey, girl! What can I get you?”

“Hey, girl?” I quickly say. “I’m not your girl. My name is Zuri, and I’m good. Thank you.”

The boy smiles even bigger, nods, looks me up and down, and says, “Spicy! I like you. You sure you don’t wanna get white-boy wasted?”

“Nah. Really. I’m good,” I say.

“Careful now,” another guy says as he walks up behind the first boy. “That’s Darius’s girl.”

“Darius! This you?” the boy calls out, just as Darius walks into the house with a line of girls trailing behind him.

Carrie quickly gets up from the couch, goes over to Darius, and hugs him as if he’s her man. She talks and laughs too loud and fixes his jacket. And Darius does nothing—nothing to at least show me that he’s not cool with it, and that he’s here with me.

Someone hands him a red cup, and he takes it. A crowd gathers, and they ask him about Bushwick. Is it safe? Is it loud? Are there gangs? Did he meet any drug dealers? I can tell they’re not all serious questions, but just by asking them, they’re making fun of my hood.

So I walk over to the group and say, “It’s safe, it’s loud, there are crews and dope boys. Anything else you wanna know about Bushwick?”

Darius chuckles and shakes his head. “Yeah, Bushwick is cool,” he says to his friends. “If I throw a party, will you guys come?”

One of the white boys around him yells out, “Hell, yeah!” Then he starts with “Bushwick! Bushwick! Bushwick!”

I roll my eyes hard at this boy, and I wish Darius would say something to shut him up. He’s not focused on me, clearly, even though this was supposed to be a date. I try to make eye contact with the black girl standing by the fireplace. She’s dancing by herself with her eyes closed and all.

I go over to her and tap her on the shoulder. “Hi” is all I say.

“Hi,” she says, still dancing.

“You know all these people?” I ask.

“Yeah. Pretty much.” She sounds like Georgia and Carrie. Her statements sound like questions.

“They all go to Easton?” I ask.

“Easton, Packer, Brooklyn Friends, Poly Prep, Tech, Beacon . . .”

“Oh. Those are private schools?”

“They’re just schools,” she says, and looks me up and down.

“Bushwick High,” I say.

“Cool,” she says with a genuine smile.

Her smile lets me know that she’s not too stuck-up. I can’t blame her for giving me these short answers, because she doesn’t know me like that. But we may know somebody in common. “Darius is really popular, huh?”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding really hard. “That’s an understatement.”

“Really? Like, how?”

“I mean, look at him.”

And I do. He’s not much taller than everyone else, but something about the way he stands and looks around at everybody makes him seem taller. He holds his head up high, nods during a conversation as if that person is saying the most important thing in the world, laughs on cue—throwing his head back and all—and folds his arms and puts his hand back into his pockets at just the right times. He doesn’t dance, even as the other kids around him dance. When another song comes on, he just bops his head to the bass. I don’t know if he sees me. And at this point, I don’t feel like I’m even in the room anymore.

I grab a red plastic cup from a nearby table, pour myself some cranberry juice, and start dancing alone like the girl near the fireplace. I let my body ride the bass, and I mouth the lyrics to myself. I sip and dance, and dance and sip, without a care in the world. But I can’t front for too long because Darius walks over. He starts dancing too. He’s actually dancing, and I have to stop for a minute to watch him raise his arms and sway to the beat just right. He mouths the lyrics too, and holds his head as if the bass has taken over him. Soon he has a crowd around him again, cheering him on. And I’m ignored, like I’m some side chick he brought with him to show off to his friends.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Darius says, off-key.

“Hey, hey, hey!” everyone sings. But it’s all wrong. It’s out of tune and off beat.

Nothing about this whole scenario seems legit. Something about the way Darius is moving, the way people are acting around him, and the way he’s smiling, lets me know that he’s being phony. And that’s not the Darius I want to be around—I want the real him, the one I know.

So I put down my cup and tug at his arm. “Sorry to interrupt the Darius Show, but can I talk to you for a second?” I walk out of the house and back down the front steps onto the sidewalk. He follows me with a tight look on his face, but he won’t come down the steps all the way. He sits on the stoop instead, still with the red cup in his hand, and with his shifting jaw. “What’s this about, Zuri?” he asks.

“No, what was that all about, Darius?” I ask.

He puts his hands up and shrugs. “We’re at a party. I’m partying. And you?”