The Other Black Girl(107)
Her reason for this wasn’t because she had a strong moral code. It was because she’d seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre far too young. She knew what could happen while exploring a place that wasn’t your own: At worst, a big dude in a mask came and dragged you into a back room so he could slaughter you. At best, you were off on a thirty-minute chase, quite literally running for your life.
Nella wasn’t exactly sure what she expected to pop out at her when she pushed open Hazel’s door—not some man with a cleaver, but maybe something just as unsettling, like photos of her taken from a stalker’s distance. She had no reason to believe that Hazel actually gave a shit about her. Maybe everybody else at Wagner had been fooled, but Nella was able to see through the bullshit.
She stepped through the doorway quickly, making sure to turn the knob before she shut it behind her. She didn’t think the sound of metal clicking against metal would be heard above Sade’s “Smooth Operator,” but, again: Hazel had somehow always managed to be one step ahead of her on everything since the day they’d met. What made this any different?
She fumbled around the wall for a minute, her hand finally landing on a light switch. She flicked it, thoughts of chainsaw-wielding psychos still dancing around her brain. The shift from dark to light revealed not a torture chamber, but what seemed to be an ordinary bedroom that belonged to two twentysomethings: a Samsung smart TV was perched at the front of the room, along with a Sonos speaker, a Wii, and a WiFi router. Facing the television in the center of the room was a queen-sized bed with a maroon comforter that Nella recognized from Target—one she’d almost purchased before Owen found a black-and-gray option in the clearance section.
Nella moved toward the bed so she could get a better view of the room. She estimated that she had about five minutes before people started asking questions—maybe fewer if Malaika lost her cool and started in on Hazel’s dreadlocks.
No. She needed to stop thinking about all the things that could go wrong and think instead about where in this room she would hide something. It depended, she supposed, on how much Manny knew. If he knew her name wasn’t Hazel, maybe she wouldn’t need to search too deeply. If he didn’t, well—she hoped she’d have the time to dig deep enough.
Nella threw back the maroon curtain that was set up on the far side of the room. Waiting behind it were rows and rows of clothes, all varying pieces of fabric, all quasi-foreign, obscure patterns that had to have been thought up in another decade. Nella reached out and grabbed the arm of a powder-blue blazer, then the pocket of a burlap Afropunk Festival kind of thing that just kept going and going. Romper or maxi-peasant dress, Nella wasn’t too sure, although the thought of it being the former caused a phantom itchiness to grow between her thighs.
She let it go so she could check the other side of the closet, where she found a pair of forest-green men’s sweatpants, then a kelly-green pair of running shorts, then a Green Bay Packers T-shirt. Your boo thang might have “good” hair and might be a dope AF artist, she thought to herself, shining a light to see whether or not the footwear on the ground was actually just footwear (which it was), but it seems like he has one fashion setting: basic.
Nevertheless, she counted the pairs of Nikes and Adidas before deciding she’d finally seen enough. She pulled back and contemplated other obvious hiding places, looking for some kind of work desk or a haphazardly left laptop. There wasn’t a ton of furniture. And then she realized—for the first time—that there weren’t a hell of a lot of things in Hazel and Manny’s room at all. There weren’t any books scattered around. No photobooth snapshots from so-and-so’s wedding. No overflowing dirty clothes hampers. Just the bare minimum: a bottle of perfume lined up next to a bottle of lotion next to a blue tube of deodorant, some of her unlabeled hair grease, and a small cup of bobby pins. Tidiness devoid of any personality, not unlike her cubicle desk.
Strange.
Stumped, Nella looked to the bed again. It was worth a try. She fell to her knees, the plush burgundy carpeting cool beneath her fingertips as she slid her head beneath the frame. When nothing of note jumped out at her, she used her phone as a flashlight. Still nothing.
Okay, fine, she thought, pushing herself up off the floor. I suppose that would have been too easy.
She felt herself beginning to panic, and then waver. Time was running out. Was any of this worth it? What had she expected to find?
She looked around the room again, hoping for a Hail Mary. Then she noticed the two glass doors beneath the television screen, clocked a few bottles of what looked like hair grease, and—more notably—a manila folder lying next to them.
Boom.
Nella had begun making her way over to the glass doors when her phone began to vibrate. Please be Owen calling. Please let him be asking where I am. Did I tell him where I was? Anybody but Malaika. Anybody but—
Two coming up for bathroom. Code Kente.
Two… at once? Why two? This wasn’t the club. This was a hair party.
Nella sent back a simple K and tried to stay relaxed. She knew that the two girls coming upstairs would return downstairs with the news that she had not been in the bathroom. But she also knew that “Code Kente” meant that nobody suspected anything yet—or, at least, it seemed like no one suspected anything. It simply meant that she might have company.
A bead of sweat trickled out from beneath Nella’s scarf and down her forehead. Then, like a certified prowler, she lunged for the light switch so that whoever it was didn’t tell Hazel that she’d forgotten to turn her bedroom light off—or worse, went to turn it off themselves. I needed to take an impromptu phone call in a private area, she could say, if caught, and if they needed extra convincing: It’s my mother. She’s sick.