The Black Kids(18)
“Watup, Ash?”
Michael takes the headphones from my ears and puts them to his own.
“You never told me how that dinner with your sister went.”
Michael is the only one I tell anything real to these days. We sit in his car and talk shit and smoke pot and tell each other secrets that we would never tell anybody else. It’s easier to talk to him than to Kimberly, Courtney, and Heather sometimes. When you’ve known somebody too long, it’s like they’re talking to a version of you from years ago, even though you’ve updated all your software. You’re the same program, except also you’re not. It’s a little easier around somebody who doesn’t know you as well, who doesn’t remember that one bad haircut from fourth grade, or the first kid you had a crush on. Somebody who doesn’t feel comfortable calling your parents by their first names. Somebody who doesn’t know your parents’ names at all.
When our friends ditch and we don’t, Michael and I hang out after school on days when Lucia’s running late to pick me up. A few times he’s even taken me home. Once, he asked if he could come inside and pee, but I told him I’d lied to Lucia about hanging out with Courtney, so he’d just have to hold it. I hadn’t, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him in my space. It felt too intimate, I guess. He’d been to my house before, but it’d be different with just the two of us alone. Well, the two of us and Lucia, anyway.
The first secret I told him was about Jo. It was the day after the second time she’d taken me to practice driving, and I could feel her secret hanging from my skin like a weight. On our way home, Jo drove while I rested my head against the passenger window. She sang along softly to this song “The Air That I Breathe” by this old group she likes called The Hollies about how all this dude needs is love and the air in his lungs. My sister sang until her breath ran out.
I had the worst thought as her breath failed her. I looked at Jo and thought, I hate you.
“My sister got married and I’m somehow supposed to not tell my parents. It’s so fucked up, and I hate lying to them,” I said to Michael.
Michael cocked his head to the side and cranked his seat up a bit. “My mother used to get really drunk in the morning, like before she would drive me to school. We crashed into my neighbor’s car once. My mom told them she was distracted. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s why she made me take driving lessons as soon as I turned fifteen—so she could stay in the house and drink and not crash. My dad knows, and he doesn’t do anything about it.”
Sometimes giving somebody the words in your head makes you both feel naked. Maybe that’s why Michael reached for my hand and took it. That’s how it started, anyway.
“Don’t tell Kimberly. Please. I don’t think she’d…”
“I won’t.”
I didn’t. And here we are.
“The dinner was awful. They’re crazy. I can’t wait to go to college and get away from it all.”
“Did you hear back from Stanford?”
Stanford is my dream school. My mother’s sister, Carol, went there and is the current president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Alumni Association. Last year, she took me and my cousin Reggie on a campus tour during the weekend of this thing called the Big Game. We hung out in a tent with a bunch of really successful middle-aged black folks in their Cardinal sweatshirts, and Auntie Carol had a little too much to drink while jamming out to the Spinners, reminiscing about the olden days and screaming “Beat Cal!” into the fog.
Before the end of the day, Reggie and I had also taken to screaming “Beat Cal!” over the sea of people and the tall trees. That kinda thing gets into you and burns in your chest like the whiskey we sipped from her red cup when Auntie Carol wasn’t looking. Reggie got his acceptance letter already. Almost everybody I know has gotten theirs already, except me.
“Not yet,” I say to Michael.
“You’ll get in. You’re smart.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Am I?”
He places his elbows atop my shoulders, and the full weight of him rests on the weight of me.
Our school is nestled into the hills. With its manicured hedges and rose gardens and hummingbirds, it looks more like a college than a high school. The parking lot is lined with European cars, but also a handful of Civics. Those mostly belong to the teachers, though. We have courses in movie production and an award-winning Science Olympiad team. We have the children of celebrities and child celebrities. It’s very peaceful, except every so often, a trio of women stands at the entrance with huge pictures of aborted fetuses. Then, for hours, three grown women yell at passing rich kids about the unborn.
Two more crickets hop past, bringing with them Kimberly, Courtney, and Heather.
“You two look awfully cozy,” Heather says.
“It’s Curtis Mayfield.” We pull apart. Michael turns beet red.
“Didn’t his dad, like, shoot him in the face?”
“You’re thinking of Marvin Gaye.” Heather sighs.
“She’s not thinking at all.” Michael wraps his arm around Kimberly and squeezes her butt. He does this to her sometimes, like he’s trying to put her in her place.
But sometimes, like last night, he does shit like calling in to the radio station, even though he thinks pop is cheesy and lame, and dedicating “Emotions” by Mariah Carey to “um… my girlfriend, Kimberly… I can’t wait to go to prom with you.”