The Black Kids(73)

Before he can say it was a mistake, or anything at all, I quickly pull away and rush up onto the trampoline, bend my knees, and start to jump. He climbs up after me, and then we’re both jumping.

Sometimes real assholes like to joke and say that in the dark the only thing you can see of a black person is eyes and teeth. It’s meant to be an insult, but at the moment, with LaShawn smiling at me, I can think of no better thing to be distilled into. We’re two smiles in the night, together.

Under the stars, in our fits of flight, we’re astronauts, weightless. Then gravity yanks us by our legs back down, and we have to relaunch ourselves. It’s exhilarating, though, the fight. We bend our knees and reach up our fingertips to get just a little bit more. We mean to fly, and for a time, we do.





AFTER





CHAPTER 20


A FAMILY OF EARLY-RISER lizards scurries across our path, and LaShawn bends down to let one of the babies crawl across his hand. The valet raises his eyebrows at the scratches along Trevor’s dad’s car as I hand him the keys.

Bleary-eyed girls in velvet and bare feet fill the hotel entrance. Their boys cluster in circles, tuxes askance. Everyone’s a little hungover, drunk off alcohol or excitement. A maid in a rumpled white apron, a pretty girl who looks no older than fifteen, cracks a smile at Nicola Anderson with her arms around the planter like she’s hugging a toilet bowl. I would feel bad for her, but Nicola acts like she’s so much worldlier than the rest of us just because her parents are Australian and speak in drunk vowels. Anuj Patel walks by and yells right into Nicola’s ear, all Crocodile Dundee–like, “G’day, mate!”

The thought of going into the hotel suite with Kimberly and Michael makes me feel nauseous, but it could also be the not-too-distant smell of Nicola’s puke. As if he knows what I’m thinking, LaShawn grabs my hand.

Early this morning, we fell asleep on the trampoline looking at the stars, holding hands, and when the sun came up, Lana came outside and said woo-woo, and I told her to shut up.

Before we left the house, LaShawn called his aunt’s number again and finally got through. From the living room, Lana and I could hear him whisper like a little boy, “I’m fine, Mommy… I love you guys.”

“You can hang with us in Brian’s suite until you can catch a ride home,” LaShawn says. “I’ll give Trevor his keys for you and explain everything.”

Before I can respond, Heather bolts toward the two of us. “Ashley, we’ve been looking all over for you!”

She grabs me by the wrist and drags me toward the hotel lobby.

“Can we do this later?” I say.

“Dude, hurry up,” she says.

I see Jose before I see Lucia. I’m so tired after last night and so I’m confused; at first I think maybe he’s taken her to this exact same hotel for their date. He looks nice, but he also looks very tired.

I don’t see Lucia until she’s right in front of me.

“We have to go, mija,” she says. “Now.”

“What’s wrong?”

Then Lucia tells me that my dumbass sister is in jail.

“Where are Mom and Dad? Why aren’t they getting her? Do they know?”

“They went over to your uncle Ronnie’s.”

“To do what?”

“Help him with the store.”

“And Morgan?”

“She’s with them.”

“What did they say?”

“I can’t get ahold of them, mija.”

Until now, to the best of my knowledge, nobody in our family has ever been arrested, unless you count Reggie getting busted at that party in the Palisades. We’re not dealers, or pimps, or criminals, or even speeders. We’re the “good kind” of black people. The best. We smile and pose slightly off to the side in the company photos, in the private-school brochures. We earn awards and own businesses and go to college and donate to our inner-city brethren and do our part to uplift the race. We definitely do not walk into riots with Molotov cocktails and get arrested for arson.

“What are we going to do about her bail?”

“That’s why I came and got you, babygirl,” Lucia says quietly. “I have some, but not all of it. It’s better if we pay in cash. Speeds things up sometimes. Your sister said you’d have the rest.”

I wonder how Lucia knows so much about these things, but then I remember Arturo.

Jo needs my car fund, my Grandma Opal money. Grandma Opal would be pissed at how we’re about to use it. This is definitely not what she meant when she said, “You have to be better.”

Grandma Opal might even haunt me; although, Grandma Opal was the kind of person other people call “a riot!” so I don’t know that I’d mind being haunted by her, much. It’d be nice to see her again.

“Why don’t we wait and let my parents take care of it?” I say, but then I remember what my dad said to me after Reggie’s arrest last year: “If you get arrested trying to keep up with the white kids, I will not bail you out. I will not pull any strings, you hear?”

“Mija, sometimes when somebody goes to jail, they have a funny way of not coming back.”

“It’s not like that here,” I say. But I’m not so sure.