The Weight of Blood (62)

Maddy took it off the rack, palming the fabric, and dragged a finger along the neckline with a smile. The dress of her dreams was also the dress from one of her favorite movies.

TWITTER @TEXASAM

On Wednesday, following a racist video and photo surfacing on social media, the athletics department at Texas A&M has decided not to allow the prospective student to join their spirit program. She will also not be attending the university this coming fall.

As she walked in the house, rereading the Twitter statement on her phone, Kali smiled at her handiwork. She was the one who’d sent the photo to media outlets. She was also the one who’d posted the photos of Jules from a burner account on Twitter, alerting Texas A&M and BLBP. She’d singlehandedly started the snowball that would eventually ruin Jules’s life.

Payback is sweeter than honey.

She’d never told Kenny how Jules and her friends had treated her. They never did anything egregious or made school a living hell. They did much worse. They made her feel small and insignificant. Like she didn’t matter. Like the Black Student Union was meaningless because their parents had the school board wrapped around their pinkies.

Jules had released a statement through the media in response to Texas A&M’s decision. “For the record, my ill-informed decision to paint my face black had nothing whatsoever to do with racism or discrimination.”

“Heh. Yeah, right,” Kali mumbled, taking the stairs.

Heading to her room, she noticed Kenny lying on his bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, a dreamy look on his face as if he was thinking of something pleasant.

Or someone.

She stood in the doorway and cleared her throat. “Hey.”

Kenny sat up on his elbows. “Hey. What’s up?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Guess I don’t just chill that often. Kind of nice.”

As different as their childhoods had been, Kali could see how their father’s pressure had pushed Kenny to be the very best. How the pressure forced his hand and every move he made. Their father’s expectations were a weight he silently carried. A weight that made him choose survival over culture. And still, she loved him, through all his blind, ignorant transgressions. Could she make that same peace with a girl pretending to be white?

Kali took a deep breath. “Black.”

He frowned. “Huh?”

“Her dress. Maddy. She’s wearing black.”

And with that, Kali closed the door.

Pacing in a circle, Wendy dialed Kenny for a third time. He probably fell asleep, she reasoned to herself. So why couldn’t she shake off the feeling she was being ignored? She put down her phone and opened a document in her drive called Plan D. In it was a list of scholarships she’d been collecting since the seventh grade. She’d given up her full ride to Brown but had secured enough scholarship money to last her at least two years at Alabama. Kenny would help her with the rest. But if he didn’t, she’d have to resort to plan D.

Wendy walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and grabbed a bottle of water. She gulped it down, trying her best to ignore her surroundings.

In the middle of the living room, her parents sat on green plastic lawn chairs, eating microwave popcorn, watching another episode of Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix. They had turned off the cable over six months ago, leaving just the internet, at Wendy’s insistence. Most of their furniture had been sold to neighboring towns, her father transporting it in the dead of night. They kept the curtains and blinds closed, leaving the house in perpetual darkness.

Money and status mattered in a town like Springville, and they no longer could afford to keep up appearances. They planned to put the house on the market the day after Wendy graduated, hoping for a quick sell, and had already placed a security deposit on a one-bedroom apartment down in Florida. A brand-new start, her father had called it. He’d been looking forward to one since he’d been laid off from the power plant. Once the house sold, Wendy would be on her own. She wasn’t too surprised. They weren’t all that concerned about her future. They’d never once asked where she planned to attend in the fall. But . . . something about giving up the house, her one piece of concrete safety, the ground she juggled on and planned from, made anxiety grip her by the throat, strangling her daily.

She could’ve visited and stayed with Jules; she practically lived there on the weekends anyway. But they might never be friends again.

So if everything didn’t go to plan with Kenny, she would never come back to Springville. She’d never see what friends she had left again, and she would have no place to truly call home.

The idea had come to Jules in a dream. An idea so wickedly perfect, she couldn’t stop giggling about it. Every time she remembered that the plans for her future had been squashed like a lightning bug, she’d think of her dream and it’d give her a high.

“Can you see it from the floor?” Brady whispered from the stage rafters.

“No,” Jules whispered, shining her flashlight up. “The stars and banner block it.”

Sneaking into the Barn was easier than either of them had imagined. The back doors were unlocked, and there were no security cameras to worry about. They moved their supplies in quick and got to work.

Since Jules couldn’t go to school and hated being stuck in the house, she occasionally accompanied her father on the golf course, practicing her swing. One day, Jason’s father had joined them, and the men spent eighteen holes reminiscing about all the pranks they’d played on the East Side kids. It kept them in line, reinforcing unspoken rules that went back generations. She brushed off their childish old-school antics, but that very night, the dream came to her.