Adequate Yearly Progress

by Roxanna Elden

  He almost sounded as if he meant it.

  SUPPORT ANSWERS WITH SPECIFIC DETAILS

  “YOU DIDN’T TELL me this club was ghetto as hell,” said Breyonna. She maneuvered her Land Rover—her new Land Rover, as she kept reminding them—through the deserted streets that led to the poetry club.

  Regina sat in the passenger seat, eyeing the landscape and occasionally letting out a disdainful “Whaaa?”

  Lena realized she should have been clearer about where the club was located.

  “This is gonna be nothing but women and broke muthafuckas,” said Regina. “I wasted an outfit on this.”

  “There are guys,” said Lena, though, as they pulled into the parking lot, she mostly saw women.

  “Right,” said Breyonna, “driving their mamas’ cars, putting in five dollars of gas, talking about I filled up the tank.”

  Candace, who had managed to sit next to Lena in the back seat without ever speaking to her directly, let out a cackly laugh. “Well, at least we get in for free.”

  The statement increased Lena’s edginess. In her optimism about what time three sorority girls would actually be ready, she had forgotten to mention that ladies only got in free until ten thirty. The clock on Breyonna’s dashboard already said 10:21. The slowness of the thumping cars in front of them now felt almost personal, as if Lena lacked some essential quality that would have forced them to move faster. Women in tight outfits poured out of cars, hurrying to line up before the ladies’-night special evaporated.

  By the time they had reached the edge of the parking lot, and Breyonna had conspicuously turned on her alarm and inspected the area around her tires for broken glass, and the four of them had navigated back across the lot in their heels, it was 10:27.

  The line moved slowly. At the door was the bouncer she remembered from her date with Nex Level, leaning on his stool. He’d told her he’d gone to the Hill, Lena remembered, and she smiled at him. But if he recognized her, he didn’t show it. He waved in the two women just before her, greeting them like old friends. Then he looked at his watch and moved his stool so it blocked the path to the door.

  “Ten thirty, everybody,” he boomed to the line. “Have y’all money ready.”

  “I thought you said this place was free,” said Candace.

  Lena tried to make eye contact, but the bouncer ignored her again, waving in two guys who stepped forward with money in their hands.

  The parking lot had filled almost completely now. There was only one empty spot remaining, and cars circled past it without pulling in. Lena’s eyes combed the spot in spite of her efforts to redirect them, collecting the image and delivering it to some involuntary reception center in her brain.

  A sliver of orange. The edge of a traffic cone.

  Suddenly, getting an acknowledgment from the bouncer seemed like the most urgent thing in the world.

  “Hey.” Lena stood right in front of him. “Don’t you remember me?”

  “Ten thirty. Ten dollars.” His tone suggested nothing bored him more than complaints from ladies who’d missed the ladies’-night cutoff.

  She’d never been dismissed like this, especially not when she was dressed up. Now she said, with a little more attitude, “I was just tryna see if you remembered me. I work at—”

  “Ten dollars, dear. If you ain’t got your money ready, step to the side.” He waved in another group and pulled the rope closed in front of her again.

  “I’m friends with Nex Level,” said Lena, hating herself even as she said it.

  “Wait,” said Candace, “isn’t that that guy you were talking about at happy hour?”

  Lena hoped Candace would fall and hurt herself.

  “Everybody here friends with everybody. Ten dollars.”

  “Fine.” She pulled out her money, ending the conversation before Candace said anything else.

  As they entered the dark club, Lena headed straight to the table in the back, ordered a rum and Coke, and asked the bartender to make it strong. Then she added her name to the open-mic list. Because that was why she was here: to read her poem.

  She’d drained two more drinks by the time she rejoined her companions, who had clustered in the corner to talk about the same subjects they always talked about. Lena smiled until her cheeks hurt as Breyonna described her wedding plans, which mostly consisted of a list of things she would never do at her wedding because they were tacky. Serving chicken at a wedding was tacky. Having the reception in the meeting hall of the church was tacky. And, apparently, it was tacky for the bride and groom to walk into the reception without something about a flock of butterflies and a nonrefundable deposit that Lena could barely hear but laughed at anyway, and she kept laughing while Regina complained about how there were only busted-ass men at this club, and laughed again when Candace, who hadn’t spoken to Lena the whole night and might not have even been speaking to her then, said, Hey, I thought Hernan was coming, and laughed even harder when Breyonna said, Girl, will you stop talking about Hernan? Because it wasn’t like Lena was here to do anything besides read her poem, but if Nex did show up, he would have to see that she was having fun. And why shouldn’t she be? She had every right to be here, enjoying poetry with her friends. Anyway, she dared him to question her about why she had come out to “his” club. She had rehearsed her answers to anything he could say almost as much as she had practiced the poem itself. If he called her afterward, she’d already decided she wouldn’t pick up. He would have to try more than once if he wanted to reach her after all this time. Unless he didn’t try more than once. Maybe she would pick up.

  Lena kept drinking as the possibilities ran through her head. She drank until the poems became a blur of topics she had heard before. Every now and then, she looked over her shoulder, not exactly for Nex—but almost. When the emcee finally called her name, she finished the drink in her hand, passed the cup to Breyonna, and strutted to the platform. At least she thought she was strutting. She was drunker than she’d realized.

  “How y’all feelin’?” she said. She waited for encouraging shouts from the crowd, but heard only a thin murmur. “We got any teachers in here tonight?”

  Club Seven had always been filled with teachers who whooped and shouted in response to this question, but now, as she surveyed the crowd, she saw only Breyonna and Regina clapping. Even Candace was just standing there, checking her phone. Bitch.

  Okay, so teachers didn’t come to this place. So what? She had a good poem, and she was gonna own it. “Well, I work at Brae Hill Valley High School—I mean, the Hill—and you know we got that TCUP test coming up…” Lena felt herself pouring words into the silence as she tried to force the crowd to open and let her in.

  Eyes shifted toward cell phones. Conversations resumed. She started slowly. “Air drains from the room / But that’s not what we need…”

  Here, she sped up. She’d rehearsed every part of the poem, along with the corresponding gestures and facial expressions and pauses, until the performance was as automatic as a part in a play. “You think it’s all cool / till you sit after school / with sixteen-year-old students still learning to read…”

  A few conversations stopped. They were coming back to her. When she knew her lines well, it always felt like there were two of her—one onstage performing, the other circling the room, watching the crowd react.

  “Tapping their feet…”

  The offstage part of her saw the door open.

  “Shifting and creaking the seats…”

  She recognized the side of Nex’s face as he entered, lit by a parking-lot light just outside the door. After so many weeks of existing only in her imagination, he looked somehow strange and familiar at the same time. The crowd parted to let him through—a little too wide, it seemed, until it became clear that they were letting in someone else just behind him. A woman. Somehow, in all her mental rehearsals for this moment, Lena had skipped this possibility.

  “Struggling students with ninety-nine problems apiece…” The part of he
r that was onstage switched to autopilot. The rest of her watched, as if in slow motion, as the vibrations of her voice reached Nex Level. A flicker of recognition crossed his face, turning to something that might have been worry as he looked up and met her eyes for the briefest of moments. Then he looked away, guiding the woman behind him toward the corner farthest from the stage.

  The part of Lena that was performing kept moving, propelling the practiced lines into the crowd until the applause signaled that she had finished. She rushed off the stage. A few people complimented her in what seemed to be a hazy blur. She couldn’t tell whether she answered them or not.

  She wobbled on her heels back to the bar, away from her friends and the corner where she’d last spotted Nex Level. A guy offered to buy her a drink. He was okay-looking, though he had a cold sore that Lena had to try hard not to look at. She accepted the drink, drained it, and laughed hard as he talked. She didn’t even realize she wasn’t listening until he asked, “You waiting for someone?”

  “Huh?” She smiled and touched his arm flirtatiously.

  “You keep looking behind you. You looking for somebody?”

  “No. Not at all!” said Lena, though her eyes combed the room even as she said it.

  And then she caught sight of them. They’d left the corner and were mingling with the crowd. Beyond them, on the far side of the room, she saw Breyonna, Regina, and Candace looking around. It was hard to tell whether they were searching for her or diligently looking away from a guy wearing a dollar-sign medallion who was trying to start a conversation.

  “I mean, yeah—I’m looking for my friends. And I just saw them. Over there.” She stumbled as she turned, but the guy caught her before she fell. She looked into his eyes flirtatiously one last time.

  “So, can I get your number?”

  “Probably later,” she said, and made her way through the crowd.

  She was so drunk that it really was almost an accident when, just as she called out to Breyonna, she stepped backward and bumped right into Nex Level.

  “Sorry,” she said loudly, then looked back at him as if surprised.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, then quickly turned away. Had he not seen her? Or, wait—had he just pretended he didn’t recognize her?

  Too drunk to be subtle now, she turned all the way toward him. “Oh, hey! Look who it is.”

  The woman with Nex looked at him as if expecting an introduction.

  The moment pulsated around them. There had been times in Lena’s life when she’d said things and regretted them later, and an equal number of times when she had regretted not saying more. Now she was desperate for this moment not to fall into either of those categories. She needed this woman, who was giving her a look that might have been pity, to know this was how Nex treated women after months of… months of…

  Months of nothing. The realization flashed into her eyes like a strobe light. There was nothing Nex had done, nothing he had said or promised her, that entitled her to act like she had any claim on him. It was just like Breyonna said: she’d given it up on credit.

  Suddenly, Lena didn’t want a confrontation.

  “Now what is going on here?” said a voice nearby, and she turned to see Regina. Somehow, Breyonna, Candace, and Regina had appeared behind her. An understanding of the situation was just beginning to register on their faces.

  Lena hoped Regina would shut up.

  “Hey, isn’t that the poetry dude you were talking about at happy hour?”

  Lena hoped Candace would catch on fire.

  “Is this somebody I should be meeting?” said the woman at Nex Level’s side.

  Nex leaned close to her, lowering his voice as he answered.

  It was clear that he didn’t want Lena to hear what he was saying, and maybe if she hadn’t been listening so hard, and maybe if the music hadn’t stopped at that exact moment as the next poet took the stage, she wouldn’t have heard it:

  “Nah. Everyone who performs here kinda thinks they know me.”

  And just like that, Lena didn’t want to be a poet anymore. She didn’t want to do anything, ever again, that forced her to be the center of attention or search for the right words. All she wanted was to be far away from Nex Level, out of the club, back in the car, and then back in her bed, maybe forever. But she couldn’t move.

  “Oh. Hell. No.” It was Breyonna now. But she did not sound surprised, like Regina, or gleeful, like Candace. She sounded mad. She moved closer to Nex Level, her eyes narrowing. “Did you just act like you don’t even know my friend, you unemployed piece of shit?”

  Nex turned toward her, eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah.” Breyonna pushed forward even farther, poking a shiny fingernail into his chest. “I’m talking to you, Next Generation, or whatever your name is. I know your type, you broke-ass pretty boy.”

  Nex Level backed away from Breyonna with a gesture that suggested his innocence. “Look, I’m just saying your friend seems a little confused. She just don’t seem like she from around here. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Eyes were turning toward them from every direction. Lena felt like a sheep surrounded by wolves.

  Breyonna looked at Nex Level like he was an insect buzzing around her plate. “Why the fuck would she want to be from around here? She’s an educator. With an educa-shun. My only question is why she would ever waste her time with you.”

  “Let’s go.” Lena grabbed Breyonna’s arm. She hadn’t wanted Nex to know she had ever talked about him, though Candace had already ruined that. But she really didn’t want this to turn into a scene about who was wasting whose time, who had an education, who belonged where.

  “No.” Breyonna shrugged off Lena’s grip. “Fuck this motherfucker! This dude probably drives his mama’s car to get here, putting in five dollars of gas, talking about I filled up the tank.”

  Nex grabbed his companion by the hand, pulling her into the crowd behind him.

  Breyonna looked like she wanted to follow them, but Lena grabbed her arm again, more forcefully this time. “Let’s go. Please!”

  “Yeah!” Breyonna yelled toward Nex’s retreating figure as Lena dragged her toward the door. “That’s what I thought! Now let’s go get back into my new Land Rover and out of this ghetto. Ass. Club.”

  * * *

  When Lena replayed the moment, as she would often in the coming weeks, she had trouble remembering what the woman at Nex Level’s side had actually looked like. There was nothing memorably pretty about her. Yet she was so conspicuously not ugly that Lena couldn’t be sure she was not in some way beautiful. Even this, however, was not what Lena remembered most clearly. Nor was it Nex Level saying, She just don’t seem like she from around here, though this phrase, too, was enough to shut off Lena’s appetite and constrict her intestines.

  What she remembered most of all was this: as Nex Level led the woman away into the darkness of the club, he’d been holding her hand.

  AVOID CARELESS ERRORS

  MAYBELLINE DIALED ROSEMARY’S number again. She’d called over and over for the first half hour of her planning period, but each time, the phone rang through to voice mail. This was how it worked with Rosemary: she wouldn’t pick up until she’d ignored some magic number of calls.

  It had been a bad decision, Maybelline knew, to spill her sister’s secret on the night of the Super Bowl. She could not go quite so far as to feel sorry about it, but that didn’t matter because apologizing wouldn’t have worked anyway. Rosemary never admitted to being angry. The only thing to do was beg, and that only worked sometimes.

  In the meantime, Rosemary had seized an opportunity to place Maybelline at her passive-aggressive mercy. The “national holiday” known as Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day was coming up, and Rosemary was planning to take Gabriella to the mall. That made sense: shopping was about the closest thing Rosemary had to a real job. Except she’d invited Allyson, who was supposed to be grounded for bad grades.

  Maybelline dialed again, so resigne
d to another round of Rosemary’s voice-mail greeting that she was surprised to hear a click, followed by an irritated, “Yes?”

  “Rosemary, we need to talk about next Thursday.”

  “Mmm-hmm. What about it?”

  “I really don’t want Allyson missing school.”

  “Then drive her yourself.” Clearly, Rosemary had been waiting to say this.

  “Look, you know Allyson’s school is too far out of the way for me in the mornings. If I wait for the doors to open, I’ll be late.”

  “Well, next Thursday, school is out of the way for me.”

  “It’s your neighborhood school, Rosemary. I’m the one who has to drop her at your house every morning and then get to work by seven.”

  “Exactly.”

  Maybelline tried to pull back to safe ground. Talking about work with Rosemary was dangerous territory. “And, I mean, I appreciate it. I’m just saying that when I enrolled her under your address, you knew I would need you to drive her in the mornings.”

  “Well, usually I’m pretty nice about covering for you as a parent.” The mention of work had reminded Rosemary this was punishment time. “But I’m not going to be the only one who doesn’t take their kid to work that day. Especially since Gabriella just made honor roll.”

  It was this last sentence that did it. Even as she opened her mouth, Maybelline knew she was making another mistake, but she could not stop herself. “So going to the mall counts as ‘work’?”

  “Yeah. You’re right. It’s not. So I guess you should probably take Allyson with you on Thursday. To your real job.”

  Maybelline was about to respond that Allyson was not coming anywhere near Brae Hill Valley High School when she developed a sense that she was not alone in the room. She turned around. Sure enough, Roger Scamphers was behind her, smiling, one hand squeezing his keys into silence.

  “Listen, Rosemary, my boss just walked in. I have to call you back.” She knew this sounded like a comeback. After all, one needed a job to have a boss. But there was no way to explain.