The Black Kids(45)

“Like, honestly, if they hate us so much, they should go to their own school,” some girl passing by us says to her friend.

“This is their own school, dipshit,” Heather says to her.

The girl purses her lips and gives Heather the side-eye.

“Shit! I forgot something in my locker. I’ll catch up with you in a bit,” Heather says to me before jogging away.

Candace stares at me. It’s either a challenge or an invitation. She can’t possibly know that I’m the one who started the rumor, can she? Maybe she’s imploring me to join them. I should join them. Jo would.

Instead, I sheepishly smile and walk past like everybody else.





CHAPTER 11


LANA DOESN’T SMELL like wine coolers after all, just cigarettes. I know because she sits next to me on the front steps while I’m waiting for my friends after school. Her flannel shirt rolls down her arm a bit, revealing a plum-colored circle of hurt.

“What happened to your arm?” I ask her.

She quickly buttons the sleeve so that it won’t roll down again.

“You wanna come over?” Lana says.

I’m supposed to join Kimberly, Courtney, and Heather at Heather’s house. It’s a Friday, so we’ll drink and smoke and float in her pool and watch television and invite the boys over. Courtney’s mom will make us snacks and ignore the alcohol and the weed, because she says, “I’d rather you girls do that in front of me than out there in the world.”

Lucia is always telling me I need to make new friends. A month before the end of high school seems a little late to heed her advice, but I guess better late than never. Also, I don’t really want to go home to Morgan and her judgy eyebrows.

“Sure,” I say.

“Cool,” Lana says. “We have to walk a bit, if you don’t mind. My mom has the car today.”

Courtney, Kimberly, and Heather plop down around me, edging Lana out of the way.

“Hi,” Lana says to them.

“Hey.” Heather drapes an arm over my shoulder. Courtney and Kimberly kinda glance and nod at Lana.

“Let’s go,” Kimberly says.

“Actually, I think I’m going to go to Lana’s tonight,” I say.

“Wait, what?” Kimberly says. “Her?”

“Gee, thanks,” Lana says, but she doesn’t seem particularly bothered.

“It’s the day before prom, Ashley,” Kimberly says in that tone of voice she uses whenever somebody challenges the natural order of things, like when somebody thinks Coke is better than Pepsi.

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Promise.”

Kimberly rolls her eyes so far back that by the time they return, I think they’ve filled their passports.

“Suit yourself,” she says.

“Let’s go,” Lana says.

Lana and I stand and start to walk across the street. While they’re walking away, Courtney turns around, sticks her pointer and middle fingers up into a V, and darts her tongue back and forth between them.



* * *




Lana and I walk deeper into the hills along a tiny sidewalk. Every so often a car will drive by at twice the speed limit and Lana will protectively crowd me into somebody’s hedges. We don’t chat much, but it’s a comfortable quiet.

“We’re here.” Lana stops in front of a carved wooden door amid yellowed hedges.

From the outside, the house itself is very California: mission architecture, big windows, Spanish tiled entrance. The yard is littered with multicolored pots containing various flowers and succulents. A fat orange tabby sprawls across the front steps. Lana scoops it up in her arms.

“This is She-Ra.” She laughs. “Wanna pet her?”

“I’m allergic,” I say.

She puts She-Ra back down, and She-Ra scurries off somewhere into the property.

“Your house is cute,” I say.

“Oh, that’s not my house. That’s the owner’s house,” she says.

“Oh. Oops. I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t know,” she says.

I follow her down a path of flat stones to a backyard. It’s neatly manicured, and mostly empty save for a huge trampoline toward the edge of the yard. Next to the trampoline is a guest house. It’s about a third the size of the front house, with similar architecture. Two Adirondack chairs stand guard at the entrance with a planter full of cigarette butts. One of the two orange trees drops its cargo, and the orange rolls in front of the chairs.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Lana says as we enter.

Usually when the people I know say this, it’s ironically. In Lana’s case, it really is quite humble. Everybody at school thinks Lana is richer than the rest of us, since her parents paid for a whole new library so the school would let her back in. This place makes it look like they blew their life savings on the library. The furniture is mismatched and faded, but all around there are interesting things to look at—carved wooden statues, a hanging tapestry. The wall is painted an uneven bright blue around a crumbling fireplace. I point to one of the statues.

“That’s really pretty.”

“My mother got it when she was in Nepal,” Lana says.

“What does she do?”