I want to tell him that people like him, boys with white skin, they never work twice as hard. Boys like him don’t have to carry the weight of generations and generations of hate and discrimination.
But I don’t know how to even begin explaining that. Me getting that scholarship doesn’t mean I didn’t work for it; it means I did, and I need it just to continue working twice as hard as everyone else. And anyway, the scholarship was a curse in disguise; it brought me in, made me think I could dream and actually break the cycle, but then destroyed everything in my life, bit by bit.
It was a poisoned chalice; good at first, but it slowly ate away at me until I was nothing but bits of flesh and marred bone.
“And you did ruin everything. I can’t go back to high school, I can’t graduate, I can’t do anything. You knew, for God knows how long, and you fucking helped them,” I shout. “What did I do to you that was so bad? You were my best friend … I love … I loved you.”
Jack is looking away again, fingers gripping the glass, knuckles turning white.
“You should go,” he says.
I shake my head. “No, you don’t get to do that,” I say, stepping forward as Jack tries to close the door again. I can feel the glass against my shoulder, crushing me. When he realizes I won’t budge, he pushes me back and I stumble slightly, stunned for a few seconds before I push him back, stepping in now.
“Leave,” he says, chest heaving.
I look at him and I think about how we don’t know the people we think we know at all. How people who are meant to love you, leave you—like Jack, my pa … Andre. I can feel my fingers shaking, insides rattling, as I think of how many people leave and keep leaving. Like there is something wrong with me … like I’m not good enough.
Jack knew how much my ma struggled, and he watched, knowing this would all happen.
Before I can calm down and think about the consequences of what I want to do to him, I’m pushing him again, and again, he’s staggering back. Now I’m punching him and he isn’t fighting back; he’s letting me hit him over and over, until my knuckles ache and his face is bleeding. My eyes blur as his face becomes splotches of white, purple, and blue. We’re both crying; Jack is on the floor and I am on top of him.
There’s a knock on his door and I look up.
“Jack, everything good in there?” his uncle says. I quickly stand, shakily moving away from his body. Jack looks up at me, then turns away.
“Yeah,” he croaks. “Everything’s good.”
Without saying anything else to him, I turn around and, for the last time, slide his door open and stumble into the night.
* * *
Thursday
I’m woken up the next day by my phone ringing. It’s bright outside, and my bed is empty, no sign of my brothers anywhere. My hand is sore, knuckles bruised. I’m a little surprised I slept at all.
It’s like all I needed to get a good night’s sleep was to finally confront Jack.
I reach out for my phone. Three missed calls from Chiamaka.
Why the hell is she calling me? What time is it? I glance at the time and I bolt up.
It’s already past two.
How long was I asleep for? Ma usually wakes me up if I look like I’m about to oversleep, especially on a school day. Why didn’t she?
My phone rings again. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and accept the call from Chiamaka.
“Where are you? I’ve been texting you all morning!” she says, her voice only slightly raised.
“I overslept, sorry.”
I expect her to shout at me or dish out an insult, but instead she says, “That’s okay, when will you get here? I’ve started getting ready; the event isn’t for a few hours but it’s best if you get here quickly so I can see if my dad’s suits fit. If they don’t, I’ll have to call in an emergency tailor,” she says.
Someone outside the Niveus bubble might have thought she was being sarcastic, but from dating Scotty, I know things like emergency tailors actually exist. And they are on speed dial after 911.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I say, trying to hold back a yawn. How am I still tired?
“Okay, see you soon, then,” she says.
“See you,” I say before the line goes dead.
I scroll for any messages from my ma, explaining why for the first time in years she’s let me stay home instead of going to school, but there are none. I decide to send her a message anyway.
I love you, Ma. I know she won’t see it until she’s on her break, which should be any time now, but I need to tell her before this suicide mission.
I throw my phone down, shower, and grab my backpack before leaving.
As I leave, I plug my headphones in and classical music fills my ears, one of Chopin’s pieces, and I refresh mine and Ma’s chat. Still nothing. I try not to feel guilty about keeping so much from her. I exit the chat and look for another app to get lost in while I walk to Chiamaka’s. I click on Twitter, scrolling down the timeline slowly. I mostly follow college admissions pages and the odd celebrity, so there’s not much to see until I see my tweet from yesterday.
I don’t know what I was thinking posting it.
I scroll down, but stop short when I see the numbers underneath my tweet. I slow down my pace and click onto the tweet, just to double-check that the figures are right.
24,000 likes.
Holy shit.
There are people in the comments talking about how messed up it is, tagging other people, telling me I’m not alone.
I don’t check my socials often, don’t have my notifications on for them. They usually sit in my phone, taking up storage space, with no other purpose but to occasionally like a tweet from an admissions page.
I have messages from so many people. This is weird. I click on one of the messages.
@neenaK77: This is so fucked up, I hope you report them to someone
@ty_blm: You have my support, it’s not right that this is happening at a time like this. Thought this type of shit only happened in the 1950s
There’s more like these, packing my previously empty inbox.
If people saw this and believed me, maybe tonight they’ll see what we have to say and believe us too.
@DLikesTunes: Thank you, we have, we’re going back there tonight to stop them. I tweet at @neenaK77
Maybe Chiamaka was right.
Maybe we can defeat Niveus after all.
My phone buzzes and a message from my ma pops up.
Love you too, hope you had a good sleep.—Ma
Why didn’t you wake me up? I text back.
I know you haven’t been going to school. We’ll talk later, okay? Love you, Von.
Ma knows I haven’t been going in. Does she know about Niveus, or does she just have her special bullshit-detector turned up to full?
Either way, it means I’m going to have to come clean. If today goes well, it will be a lot easier to explain.
I hope it goes well.
38
CHIAMAKA
Thursday
Devon arrives in a timely manner at three thirty and I drag him inside and up the steps.
“Okay, so, we have five options that I think would fit you from Dad’s closet. Pick the one you like most and I’ll leave you in here to change,” I tell him, when we get into my room.
I have the five suits laid out on my bed in front of him, all different in some way. One is made from velvet, another, laced in gold. I’ve laid out a range of styles for him to choose from, seeing as I don’t know Devon all that well, so I don’t know what kind of suit he’d be into. Especially since his day-to-day fashion sense doesn’t exactly make his tastes extremely obvious to me. He dresses like he’s purposely trying to make some kind of statement about ugly garments. It’s hard to gauge what someone who wears the same dreadful hoodie, pants, and sneakers every day would wear when it comes to formal outfits.
He picks up the first one. It’s the plainest one, with black lapels and a black bow. I should
have seen that one coming.
“That’s really … plain,” I say.
“If you didn’t want me to choose it, why make it an option?” he asks.
“It’s not that I didn’t want you to choose it, I just think it’s a little boring … I mean, we’re going to be on national television, in front of all the people who wronged us, so … thought you would want to dress nice for once.”
He looks at me unblinking for a few moments, before chucking the suit back down and picking up the one next to it. This one is the flashiest.
The blazer is gold, with satin lapels, a black bow, and black pants.
I smile and pat him on the shoulder. “Much better. Going to go change now, will be back in a few,” I say, before walking out of my room and down the hallway, into my dressing room.
I’ve already done my makeup and put curlers in my hair. Usually, when we have big events like this, I get someone else to do my hair and makeup, wanting to be perfect, how everyone expects. But what’s the point anymore? They don’t expect anything from me. Maybe they never did. It was all a delusion.
My dress hangs in the center of my closet. It’s an Elie Saab original, flown in from Milan. I picked it out because it looks like it was made for a queen. Something I never was—just a social experiment, a chess piece in a sick game.
It is one of the prettiest dresses I have ever seen. It’s sleeveless with a plunging sweetheart neckline and A-line silhouette, with golden embroidery raining down from the top and a plain rose-gold mesh at the bottom. I’ve stared at it all day, feeling like I’m a fraud for wanting to wear something so beautiful and perfect to the ball.
I slip out of my robe and wander over to the dress, hesitating before stroking the material.
It’s not like I was ever truly someone worthy of this dress anyway. I’ll just have to fake it like I always do. Only this time, it’s not the students and teachers at Niveus who need to believe the persona. America needs to.
I pull the dress off the hook gently, unzipping the side before stepping into it for the first time since I got it this summer. I slowly zip it up, tugging a little harder in the middle, where it gets stuck. It’s always been a little snug on me—Elie Saab is not something you get tailored to fit you; either you’re perfect or you aren’t. You don’t fix a Saab original, you fix yourself, Ruby once said to me when she was showing off her gown for prom last year, alongside her diet plan. It’s a messed-up philosophy, I get that. I think these fashion labels do it on purpose, though.
When it’s zipped up, I push open a door on the side of the room where I keep my shoes. The walls are filled with my favorite pairs, from McQueen to Saint Laurent, all of them beautiful. But today isn’t about just looking good; I need my battle shoes. The ones I will use to stomp on my enemies.
I bend down, looking for a specific pair: my golden Jimmy Choos. You can never go wrong with Jimmy Choo. When I find them, I sit back on the chair in the middle of the room and slip my feet into them, already feeling stronger than before.
Not that I have a choice. I have to be ready—to show Niveus that it has not defeated me, and never will.
Like Mom always says, By fire, by force. Tonight will be the last night Niveus gets to make people like us feel small and worthless.
* * *
When I get back into my room, Devon is dressed and sitting on my bed, scrolling through his phone.
He looks up when I walk in, and his eyebrows rise a little.
“You look nice,” he says.
I take him in. His hair needs some brushing and other than the suit, he looks a little plain. He’s even wearing those godforsaken Vans he wears to school.
“Thanks … Where are your shoes?” I ask.
He looks down at his feet.
“On my feet,” he says matter-of-factly.
“You can’t wear those.”
“Why not?”
“They clash with your outfit.”
He pauses, like he seems to a lot during our conversations. I always wonder what he’s thinking, why his expression gets all intense. I assume he’s realizing I’m right and thinking of ways to thank me for my wisdom.
“What size are you? I’ll see if my dad has anything that might fit,” I say. He should have some simple loafers or—
“I’m comfortable; I don’t want to change into your dad’s shoes,” he says sharply.
Why is he so difficult?
At least one of us will look the part tonight, that’s what counts.
“Can you at least let me do something to your hair?” I ask.
He nods. “Okay.”
I go into my bathroom, getting out an unused brush, comb, and styling gel from my supply cabinet. In the corner I spot some black eyeliner, and so I grab it too, before going straight over to Richards, on the bed. I start spreading some gel on his hair, combing it out the best I can.
I’m not exactly an expert on hair, but I do mine enough to know how to make it look half decent. He literally looked like he had just rolled out of bed and come here, which wouldn’t surprise me.
When I’m done with his hair, I take out the eyeliner and I go toward his eyelids. He jerks back a little with his hand up, like he’s shielding his face.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks.
“Eyeliner,” I say.
“Why?”
“You have nice eyes … I thought … I thought you’d look really nice with some on. I wouldn’t lie to you,” I say.
He looks really against the idea, and at first I think he is going to say no, but instead he lowers his hand and sits there with a straight face. I take this as my cue to continue, and I press the thick pencil onto his right lid.
“Is Terrell coming?” I ask as I draw a line.
“No, why?” he says quietly.
I shrug. “Thought you’d bring him as your date or something … Guess I was wrong.”
“Why would I bring him as my date?”
I give him a look, with an eyebrow raised. People think they are less obvious than they are. I see the way they look at each other.
“Aren’t you guys dating … or at the very least hooking up?”
He’s silent for a bit and I feel like I’ve crossed some line. Oh well.
“We’re not dating,” he says.
So they are just hooking up then.
“On to the next lid…” I tilt his head to the side slightly. His jaw is so tense, you’d think I was hurting him or something.
“I like Terrell. Wish you’d have brought him … He’s much better company,” I say.
Devon says nothing, so I just finish applying the eyeliner in silence.
“There,” I say once I’m done, stepping back to admire my handiwork. I smile. He actually looks really good. Much better than before. I hand him a mirror and he looks at himself silently.
I can’t really tell what Devon is thinking.
“Do you like it?” I ask.
He shrugs.
Which I take to mean yes.
“Before I forget, I got us masks. I figured it would be weird being the only ones without them,” I say, reaching into one of my drawers and handing him a black mask. The Snowflake Ball has always been a masquerade. Another Niveus tradition.
I sit next to him now, checking the time on my phone. It’s just turned four. The ball starts at six.
The journalist at Central News 1 told us to message her when we are about to leave so that they have time to arrive and set up their equipment. Devon and I will be going through the back entrance, the same one we used to get into Morgan Library on Sunday; no CCTV for anyone checking. We’ll leave the entrance open for the journalist and her crew to come through.
Then we get up onstage and they hit record.
“I’m actually really excited for tonight,” I tell Devon. “I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and not have to look over my shoulder, or feel like I’m losing my mind … I can’t wait to go back to focusing on Yale and med school. I know you don’t think t
his is going to work out, but I do. I really do.”
Devon is silently looking down at his shoes, and then after a few moments, he glances back up again.
“I didn’t believe you at first, or the journalist woman … so I tweeted about Niveus and what they’ve done—”
“You what?”
“I tweet—”
“I heard you. If anyone at Niveus sees that tweet, they might make things even worse for us. What were you thinking? Delete it!” I say, panic rising a little.
He looks at me guiltily.
“What?” I say, because there’s obviously something he’s not telling me.
“I … It went viral. I was going to tell you, but I only just saw when I was coming here. It has over twenty-four thousand likes. A lot of people believe us.”
My eyes widen. Twenty-four thousand? Wow.
“Besides, didn’t you confront that girl who told you about what they’re doing? Don’t you think she might have let Niveus know that we know everything already? Things are already worse for us,” Devon says.
I swallow at the thought of Belle. I hadn’t even considered that. Hadn’t even thought about her, or the fact I’ll be seeing her tonight. My chest squeezes a little.
I need a drink.
I stand quickly. “Do you want a drink?”
“Like, alcohol?” Devon asks.
“Yes, like alcohol,” I say.
He nods.
“Let’s go to the basement,” I say, and he follows me out of my room and down two flights of stairs into the basement. It’s built like an underground bar, with chairs and everything. I open up one of the liquor cabinets and I take out a bottle of Chardonnay, placing it on the island.
I get out two wineglasses and pour some into each, before sliding one over to Devon.
I don’t even really like the taste of it, but I know it will help me relax a little. I only poured half a glass so that we wouldn’t be too relaxed or out of it, just enough to give us some liquid courage. I pick up the glass and raise it toward Devon.
“What should we drink to, Richards?” I ask.
Ace of Spades Page 29
