Watch Us Rise(30)

“Thanks,” James says, suddenly serious. “Nobody ever calls me smart. Fast, good at sports, hot obviously.” He smiles. “But not smart. I like that.”

“You’re definitely smart. Way too smart to be hanging out with Meg,” I say, surprising myself. James doesn’t reply. “No, I get it. And just to be clear. I didn’t blow up at Meg—she pushed me, and I responded. Calmly.”

“Chelsea Spencer is always calm,” Isaac says, walking over to our lockers. I smile at him. I know he’s messing with me, and he knows how amped up I can get, but I could care less. I appreciate him being here again.

“Hey, those poems you posted are FIRE,” Isaac says.

“Oh yeah, I read those. You pretty much take down that whole princess industrial complex you were talking about. I showed it to my mom. She said she knew that loving princesses was not great, but that seeing someone so young talk about it kinda shook her,” James finishes. “What I’m saying is, you’ve finally created some buzz.”

“Oh, I already had buzz,” I say.

“No, no, you’re right. I’m gonna stay thinking about Yoga Body Confidence. Smartz. Slickz. Prowess,” he adds. Did James Bradford memorize a line of one of my poems, and is he repeating it out loud, back to me? Whoa.

“Hey, man, you going to the open mic on Thursday at Word Up?” Isaac cuts in, and I turn around to give him the death stare. I can’t believe he asked James about the open mic, which I am definitely going to, especially since I’ve been planning to read my “Beauty Magazine” poem.

“What open mic? I didn’t even know about it,” James starts. “You didn’t tell me about that.” He looks directly at me. I blush. I know it, and I can’t help it. “Are you reading?” he asks.

“Yeah, she is,” Isaac says.

“Did you write a poem for me?” he asks, smiling as wide as his outstretched hand palming the basketball.

“Um, no,” I say, completely lying since I’ve written about fifteen poems for him. “Did you write one for me?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says.

Isaac looks at me and shrugs his shoulders. “You should come then. It’s a cool scene,” he adds, and only Isaac, with his comic book T-shirt that says He Comes from the Future with the Power to Destroy the Present, could convince James to come to an open mic at an anarchist, volunteer-run used bookstore.

“I’d love to hear it . . . if you wrote one,” I add.

“Maybe I’ll stop by. I’d like to hear you read that poem,” he says, and walks away.

Isaac looks at me, takes a bow, and says, “You’re welcome.”





After school Chelsea says, “I need to buy something to wear to the next open mic. Want to come shopping with me?”

Nadine teases, “You need to get something or you just want to wear something new for James?”

I laugh. “Where are you going?”

“I was thinking we could walk 125th,” Chelsea says.

We get on the train and head downtown to Harlem. Walking up the stairs with Nadine and Chelsea gets me winded because Nadine’s legs move like she’s in a speed-walking race. When we get to the top of the stairs, we squeeze our way through the people coming and going. A trail of incense fills the air, and from the distance a man shouts out, “Got your oils right here. Got that tea tree oil, got that coconut oil, right here, right here.”

We haven’t even walked a block before Nadine is stopping at a street vendor’s table to try on earrings. “Can I try these on?” she asks the woman at the table, holding up big wooden earrings that look like single teardrops. I would have never picked those up, but they look good on her. Nadine has an eye for fashion, and after all these years of being her friend, you’d think it would have rubbed off on me, but it hasn’t.

Nadine tries on five pairs of earrings, looking at herself in the handheld mirror from every angle possible, then decides to get two pairs, the wooden earrings and a pair of oversize copper hoops.

We continue down the street until Chelsea says, “Let’s go in here.”

We walk into Rubies and Jeans, a store that just opened about six months ago. It’s got a high-end feel to it, but the prices are reasonable. There’s a mix of casual and dressy clothes, and the atmosphere makes you feel like you are shopping in a classy, trendy boutique even though it’s a chain store. Chelsea goes straight to the escalator. “The clearance racks are downstairs,” she says. Nadine and I follow her, and when we get off the escalator, Chelsea walks over to the rack under the Forty Percent Off sign. She pulls a bunch of tops and jeans off the rack and tosses them over her arm. Nadine is looking through the bins of jewelry, picking out rings and bracelets. “I’m going to try these on. Be right back,” Chelsea says.

“Okay.” I roam around the store looking through the sea of clothes and see a section far back on the right side of the room with a sign that says Plus Sizes. I didn’t even know this store had clothes that would fit me. I walk over to the plus size section, wondering why my sizes have to be in a special section of the store and not mixed in with the other sizes. There is a definite divide, as if a shirt with a 3X tag will contaminate the other clothes. I look through the clothes—there’s not much to choose from. Just two racks compared to a whole store full of options for thinner girls. Just as I pick up a sweater to try on, I see the advertisement on the wall. A model with full cheeks and curvy hips is standing with that half-smile, half-serious look that models give. In a room full of fat people, she’d be considered thin. The caption under her half-smiling, half-serious face says: Rubies and Jeans Plus: Because every girl deserves to look beautiful.