Concrete Rose (The Hate U Give, #0)(85)

Lisa roll her eyes. “What’s your plan, smart aleck?”

“First, I’ll get my GED and my certificate while I work for Mr. Wyatt. Then once I get them, I’ll get a second job at night. I’ll use money from that to get my own place and save up for business courses. My endgame is to be an entrepreneur. I don’t have it completely figured out but—”

“It’s a start,” Lisa says, with a small smile. “However, I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

“Well, hopefully, I’ll show you that you can depend on me.” I grin.

Lisa fight one herself. “We’ll see . . . Stinka Butt.”

“Gah-lee! Not you too!”

She laugh, and that got Seven laughing in my lap. “I won’t ever let you live it down,” she says.

“I’ll remember this.” I pretend to eat Seven’s jaw. He squeal. “I’ll remember this!”

Lisa adjust her Braves cap. “Dang. Tammy needs to do my hair ASAP.”

I look up at her. “Let me do your hair.”

She stare at me, her mouth slightly open. Then she bust out laughing. “You can’t be serious.”

“Yeah, I am. I gotta learn before baby girl get here since I’ll be combing her hair.”

“You will, Mr. Conditioner-Is-for-Girls?”

“Yeah, I will. I’m all in,” I say. “That mean all in. Combing hair, giving baths, clipping toenails, whatever. Everything won’t be on you.”

Lisa slowly nod, as if the idea sinking in. “Okay, Stinka Butt. I guess I can let you practice on my hair tonight. Tam can fix it tomorrow. God help her.”

“Just for that, I’m gon’ have you looking to’e up from the flo’ up.”

I get Seven ready for bed and put him in his crib. He suck his fingers and his forehead wrinkle like he don’t understand why they don’t taste like barbecue.

I kiss right in the middle of that wrinkle. “Sweet dreams, man. Don’t try to solve all the world’s problems tonight, a’ight? Let the rest of us handle that.”

Lisa wait for me on the back porch with a comb, brush, and some hair products she borrowed from Ma. I sit behind her on the steps. This the first warm night we done had in a while. The Garden quiet enough that I hear the cars rumbling on the freeway. The moon glow big in the sky, and stars twinkle all around. Gotta be hundreds of them tonight.

Lisa flip through Ma’s latest copy of Ebony magazine. “No matter what happens, Mav, don’t panic. It can be fixed.”

“Dang, girl. You make it sound so serious.”

She tilt her head back and look up at me. “A Black woman’s hair is always serious.”

“Okay, okay. What you want me to do?”

“I’m gonna teach you how to plait. Take my ponytail down and comb any tangles out.”

I pull the rubber band—wait, this ain’t rubber—the hair-tie thingamajig from around her ponytail. I grab the comb and run it through.

Lisa wince. “Ow!” She turn all the way around. “Don’t be so rough!”

“What is it you always tell me? ‘I wasn’t rough, you just tender-headed,’” I say, in a high-pitched voice.

This girl grab my shirt and twist one of my nipples.

“Ow!”

“Was that rough?” she asks. “Comb my hair like you would comb baby girl’s hair.”

“Okay, okay!” I’m real careful as I run that comb through again. “We can’t call her baby girl forever. We gotta think of a name at some point.”

“Yeah, I know. We could use Dre’s middle name, Amar, and make it Amara. But Amara Carter doesn’t really roll off the tongue. . . . It feels like something else should be there.”

“It could be her middle name,” I point out.

“Then what’s her first name?”

I gently—gently—comb a tangle outta her hair. “My folks named me Maverick ’cause it mean independent thinker. That’s who they wanted me to be. Who do we want her to be?”

“Intelligent. Independent. Outspoken. I doubt there’s a name that means all of that.”

“A’ight. Let’s think ’bout what she already is to us. I gave Seven his name ’cause it mean perfection. He perfect to me. What is she to us?”

Lisa caress her belly. “One of the few good things during all the bad stuff.”

I wrap my arms around her, placing my hands over hers. “She been that for me, too.”

Lisa rest her head against my arm, and it’s like we just created our own world where it don’t matter that we two kids who don’t know what the hell we doing. All that matter is us.

I look up at the night sky. It’s pitch black, and yet that somehow make the stars shine brighter. Hundreds of lights in all that darkness.

Wait a second.

A light in the darkness.

I smile, and I look at Lisa. “I think I got a name.”





Acknowledgments


In a lot of ways this book itself has been a rose, and it took a lot of gardeners to help it grow: My mom, Julia, who is the reason the rose even exists. Thank you for nurturing me and, in turn, it.

My editor, Donna, who saw the potential in all of the concrete that I brought to her and chipped it away so that the flower could bloom.