The Black Kids(22)

Mrs. Lesdoux looks confused, but even she begins to laugh.

After the song finishes, the bell rings, and everybody walks through the dying crickets back to class.

Michael pulls up next to me as I head toward AP econ. “What were you and LaShawn talking about earlier?”

“Why do you care?”

“Don’t be like that.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. I pull away.

“I’d, um, like to dedicate this song to my girlfriend, Kimberly.… I can’t wait to go to prom with you,” I mock.

“Whatever.” He walks down the hallway and gets swept up with the crowd.

A month ago, he kidnapped me. He tied a kerchief around my eyes while I was standing at my locker and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He carried me through the parking lot like that. It’s a good thing he wasn’t a stranger, because nobody did anything to stop him.

Most of the other kids have BMWs or Jags or Mercedes, but Michael has a shit-green Nova that smells like pot and cigarettes. It’s so old it has an eight-track player. The only music to listen to is some shitty Bruce Springsteen that the previous owner left, which Michael loves. His car drives like you’re touching the ground with your very hands themselves, every bump and pothole a shock through the body. Blindfolded, it was like being on Space Mountain.

As soon as we got to our destination, I knew where we were because of the salt and waves, the faint smell of sewage, and the bright lights shining like spotlights all around. I could tell that much even through the handkerchief around my eyes.

“Wanna smoke?”

“Okay, I guess,” I said.

“You have to keep the handkerchief on,” he said.

He reached across me and grabbed a joint from his glove compartment. As he did so, his arm brushed against my chest. I could smell his funky-ass wrestling clothes in the back seat of his car, feel the slight tear in the leather under my fingertips, hear him breathing deeper and deeper still, until for a second, he stopped.

“Are you trying to get frisky with me?”

He put the joint in my mouth. “Inhale.”

I couldn’t see anything, but I knew where we were by heart. As we walked the boardwalk, I could feel its rot underfoot. I think, to throw me off, he took me through the arcade. The arcade is full of painted wood in primary colors and the beeps and boops of mirth. It’s sensory overload, even while blindfolded. If I reached out my hands, I would touch small children riding small horses in a small circle. Arcades are like nightmares or dreams, depending on what kind of trip you’re on. Skee-Ball is my favorite, because in my hands the wooden balls feel like planets.

He led me by my waist toward the Ferris wheel. A ditzy-sounding operator took his money and helped me into the car. It bucked in the wind, and I braced myself against his body.

“Why are we here?” I asked.

He took the handkerchief from my eyes. “Stop asking questions. It’s a surprise.”

Across from us, a tourist family in a yellow car took a picture. The father’s hat went flying into the waves, and they all started to laugh.

On our second rotation back down to earth, there stood Trevor and Kimberly, struggling against the wind like sailors with a banner that read, ASHLEY, WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME?

Trevor held a bouquet of yellow roses. I knew Kimberly had picked them out because she randomly thinks red roses are tacky, just like she randomly thinks weed is tacky but coke’s okay.

“Wait, what? Are you asking me to prom?”

“No. Trevor is. Shit. I told that dumbass I should hold the sign and he should come up with you.”

Michael pressed his thigh against me and curled his pinkie around mine.

“He thinks you’re cool,” he whispered. “Say yes.”

So I’m going to prom with Trevor.



* * *




After school, I sit and wait for Lucia by the front steps, where the freshmen wait to be picked up. I know how to drive, but after Jo totaled two cars in high school, I guess my parents have decided not to let me have a car yet, though everyone else I know has one. Even if I did have a car, my Wednesdays belong to Lucia, though my friends give me shit for it. Every Wednesday after school, we go to Western Union and then get ice cream at the Thrifty’s across the street. I’d rather do that than go with Kimberly to get her muff waxed, anyway.

I feel a presence behind me and think, Michael! But it’s not. Lana Haskins is skinny and tall with fragile limbs like the branches on a freshly planted tree. She got kicked out of school a few months ago for drinking vodka out of a water bottle, but then her parents caused a ruckus and contributed to the new library upgrade, and the school quietly let her back in. Lana always looks hungry, like she could devour the world and it wouldn’t be enough.

“They acquitted the officers in the Rodney King thing.” She sits down on the steps next to Monica Thompson, whose whole being is like a smudged charcoal drawing. She’s wearing all black everything, with dark hair that looks dipped in ink. Her roots are Benedict Arnold, though—a downright treasonous light brown.

“Whoa, that’s crazy,” Monica says to Lana. I can’t tell if she’s stoned or just doesn’t have anything else to say. Monica’s half-Asian, and as her tiny mother pulls up, she honks several times at her from behind the wheel of their huge car.