Patricia asked if I wanted to attend a costume party this evening. When I told Mrs. Graham, she smiled and said I could come in later tomorrow if I wanted. I appreciate the kindness from both her and Patricia, but I declined. I can’t get too comfortable. I can’t take the risk.
But if I did… if someone figured it out… sometimes I wonder how bad it would be if I were sent back home. I miss my family, and my friends. And Sanford. Sometimes so bad it physically pains me.
Love, Constance
BEACH NIGHT
THE BEST PART ABOUT THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR IS Beach Night.
It’s always held Friday night of the first week, and the whole middle school is invited. Sixth graders have to go with their parents, but this year we’re allowed to go unsupervised—as long as we get a permission slip signed.
I turned mine in the second day of school, but Edie left hers until the last minute. I waited in the foyer of the B&B as she tore apart the attic, looking for the paper. Then she had to bother Ms. Whitman while she was in the shower. Edie eventually came downstairs with a water-spotted but signed permission slip.
All anyone can talk about today is Beach Night. Every class buzzes with memories of last year, wondering how it will compare to this one. Especially since most of our parents won’t be around.
“Okay, I don’t really understand what it is,” Edie says when we’re sitting at the table we’ve claimed on the patio outside the cafeteria. She’s still avoiding the hot-lunch line like it’s poison, but she’s made a meal out of yogurt, a small bag of pretzels, and a cup of fresh fruit.
“It’s basically a back-to-school carnival, but it’s on the beach,” Laramie responds. With not having any classes together, all the homework, and getting used to Denise being here, I feel like I’ve barely seen her all week.
“They set up rides and games,” adds Fletcher between gigantic bites of his sandwich. Turkey and Swiss this time.
I jump in quickly. I don’t think I can handle seeing him talk with his mouth full for the hundredth time this week. “You can buy carnival tickets to get food at the stands on the beach. And there’s a big raffle at the end.”
Edie looks suspicious. “What kind of raffle?”
“A bunch of businesses and families donate things,” Oliver explains. “Like my dad gives away a free oil change and tune-up at Guzman Auto.”
I look across the table at Laramie. “Should Edie and I meet at your house so we can all go together?”
“Actually…” Laramie clears her throat, and I get a sinking feeling that I’m not going to like what she has to say. She must know it, too. She doesn’t look at me when she reveals the next part. “Nicolette asked if I wanted to hang out. I think we’re going to Gavin’s.”
Beach Night is only for middle schoolers, but the elementary has their own thing, called Welcome Night. Except theirs is at the school, not the beach, and it’s half fun, half parent-teacher meetings. Laramie and I have gone together since she moved here. We went to the beach carnival last year, too, with Dad as our chaperone. I can’t believe she made other plans.
“Gavin Reichardt?” Fletcher makes a face.
“What’s wrong with Gavin?” Laramie says, not looking at him, either.
“What’s not wrong with Gavin Reichardt,” Jamie mumbles.
“He’s kind of a jerk,” Oliver says, shrugging like it’s common knowledge around Ewing Beach.
It is, though. Mr. Reichardt owns a bunch of buildings around here, and Gavin never lets us forget it. They live in the biggest house in town, so far down the coast from Laramie’s that they have their own private part of the beach. Gavin is the kind of person who’ll trip a kid and deny it when they fall over his shoe, or shove a random sixth grader into a locker just because he can.
“Well, he’s nice to me,” Laramie says in a low voice. “He’s in my pre-algebra class, and we talk about comics. And Nicolette needs me there for moral support.”
I frown. “What kind of moral support?”
Laramie’s eyes widen like she’s said something she shouldn’t have. “Never mind.”
Edie dips a pretzel into her yogurt cup. “Does she have a crush on Gavin or something?”
Laramie shakes her head, but I think the red creeping up her neck is the answer to Edie’s question.
“Gavin and Nicolette?” Oliver ponders. “I could see it. I mean, both their families think they’re better than everyone else.”
Jamie snickers.
“They’re my friends,” Laramie blurts. “You don’t have to be rude.”
Edie nods at her. “Okay, so we won’t talk about them. Tell me more about Beach Night.”
But I wish Edie hadn’t said that.
I wish we would talk more about them. Because I don’t understand. Why is my best friend suddenly choosing Nicolette McKee and Gavin Reichardt over me?
Edie brings up Constance on our walk to the beach after dinner.
“Have you been reading the journals?”
“Every night,” I say. “What about you?”
She nods, twirling a thick band of hair around her fingers. “They’re pretty interesting. It doesn’t really feel like homework.”
“I know, right? I’m almost at the end of 1955. She seems pretty bored, working for the Grahams.”
“The same in the ones I have.” Edie nods. “I feel like something bad is going to happen. She keeps talking about having to be so careful.”
I got that same feeling, reading through the journals I have. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath and realized I was holding it the whole time I was turning the pages. “I peeked in the ones from 1956, and she’s living in Santa Barbara.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and she’s only signing her name as C instead of Constance. Through the whole thing, I think. I’ll try to read more this weekend. We can look her up online, too. Now that we know two places she lived and some of the people she was around… maybe we can find out who she was.”
I’ll be tired after Beach Night, but I promise myself I’ll read a few entries when I get home so we have as much information as possible to work with.
“Definitely,” Edie says. “Maybe after dinner tomorrow? Mom says we’re having you over.”
“You are?”
Edie looks at me funny. “You didn’t know?”
I try to think back to the last couple of days. Maybe Dad, Elliott, or Denise mentioned it over breakfast or dinner or before they said good night. But I don’t remember anyone bringing it up. Elliott has been so busy with the new school semester and Dad has been distracted since Denise got here, trying to make sure she’s settling in okay. He’s always fussing over her, asking if she’s comfortable or needs anything.
“I guess I forgot,” I say as the beach comes into view.
The school sectioned off a whole part of the beach for the carnival booths and games, and the food stands have signs up welcoming Ewing Beach Middle School for the evening. A bunch of sixth graders are here, trying to avoid being seen with their parents as they weave between the booths. We’re not the first seventh graders to arrive, and I’m relieved, even though I don’t think Edie cares about that kind of stuff the way Laramie and Nicolette would. If Laramie were even here.
“This almost reminds me of Coney Island,” Edie says, looking around. “Like, a much smaller version, but still.”
I follow her eyes, checking out the booths. There’s a bottle toss and football throw, Skee-Ball and whack-a-mole, a giant tic-tac-toe board and hole-in-one, face-painting, and more.
We slowly walk by each one, just looking instead of playing. My game tickets are burning a hole in my pocket, but I don’t want to seem too excited. I already feel a little babyish being here when Laramie has someplace better to be.
“What’s up, Alberta?”
I turn around to see Rashawn Carlson standing next to me with a redheaded kid named Seth who plays soccer with him.
“Oh, hey, Rashawn.”
We’re not rea
lly friends, but we nod and say hi sometimes in the hallways. Except when he’s around the friends who tease him for talking to a seventh grader… and a girl. Then he lifts his chin and walks all slow and cool, like he doesn’t see me. I think it should probably bother me more than it does.
Rashawn has coppery skin, and he’s wearing a blue Dodgers cap tonight over his close-cropped reddish-brown hair. He looks at Edie before his hazel eyes drift back to me.
“What are y’all up to?”
“Um, just walking around, I guess.”
“Cool.” He looks at Edie again. “Hey, you’re new, huh?”
I give him a look. He knows she’s new, just like everyone else at Ewing Beach Middle School knows. It’s hard to miss a new kid in a town this small, and it’s especially hard to miss a new kid who also happens to be black.
She nods. “Yeah, I’m Edie.”
“I’m Rashawn. This is my boy Seth.”
“Hey,” Edie says to him.
Seth kicks his chin up, then sets his eyes on the booths behind us. He’s not much of a conversationalist.
“You like it here so far?” Rashawn asks her. “In Ewing Beach, I mean.”
Edie shrugs. “It’s all right.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s all right.”
Then it’s quiet for a long time and it’s so awkward until Seth finally says, “I’m starving, man. Want to hit up Shore Burger?”
“Uh, yeah,” Rashawn says, even though I don’t think he wants to go to Shore Burger at all. I’m pretty sure he’d rather keep standing here with his hands shoved in his pockets, staring at Edie. He glances away every few seconds, but he can’t stop looking at her. “You want to go get some burgers with us?”
“I’m not really hungry,” Edie says. She looks at me. “Are you?”
“Not really. I just ate dinner.”
“Okay, well. Cool,” Rashawn says again. He clears his throat. “Maybe we’ll see y’all around.”
He and Seth tromp away in the sand.
“He has never come up to talk to me like that,” I say, watching them.
Edie twists her mouth to the side. “Maybe it’s different now that you’re in seventh grade?”
“I don’t think so.” I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure it’s because he thinks you’re cute.”
“But he barely said anything.”
Just then, Rashawn turns around, his eyes on Edie again. She notices and looks down, hiding behind her curtain of hair. But I can see the way her lips turn up at the corners. And before he turns around, she looks back at him without hiding her smile.
After Rashawn and Seth leave, Oliver and Jamie show up almost immediately to take their places.
“Where’s Fletcher?” I ask, my eyes darting around the carnival. I get the feeling he’s somewhere near the food.
“His grandparents are visiting. His parents wouldn’t let him skip dinner,” Oliver says. He tilts his head toward the direction Rashawn and Seth just walked. “You been hanging out with them?”
Edie looks down the beach, squinting, as if she’s forgotten who we were just talking to. “Oh. They came up to introduce themselves.”
“Eighth graders, man,” Jamie mumbles.
I stare at him. “What about them?”
He rolls his eyes. “You guys are obsessed with hanging out with them.”
“I think you have us confused with Laramie.” I frown. “And what do you care? You wouldn’t even eat lunch with us until this year.”
Jamie looks like he wants to protest, then realizes I’m right and keeps his mouth shut instead.
Oliver shrugs. “We got bored.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, his tan skin deepening a shade. “I think… I mean, you’re really the only girls worth talking to in seventh grade. Who will we have if you start hanging with the eighth graders?”
“Sixth-grade girls?” Edie says with a straight face.
The boys look like they’ve been slapped. Edie and I catch each other’s eye and burst out laughing.
“Come on,” she says. “I want to try some of these games.”
The four of us use all our tickets over the next hour, playing every single one. I have so much fun with them that I almost forget about Laramie not being here. Oliver and Jamie pretend to be too cool to get their faces painted, but Edie chooses a single black heart while I pick a golden sun with sweeping rays. Edie shows me the best technique to play Skee-Ball, and Oliver challenges all of us to a whack-a-mole tournament, which Edie calls “totally savage but hilarious.”
We spend the last of our tickets at the bottle toss, trying to get the rings to land around the necks of the glass bottles. Edie concentrates so hard, the tip of her tongue sticks out of the corner of her mouth, but she loses on her last turn.
“Oh well,” she says, glancing at the wall of prizes before we walk away to let the boys have their turn.
“What did you want to win?” The prizes don’t look like anything she’d want—things like stuffed animals, glow bracelets, glitter pencils, and erasers that smell like fruit.
Edie shrugs. “Nothing. My dad couldn’t leave Coney Island without playing the ring toss. He almost never got a ring around the bottle, but he’d always let me play his last two turns. And I’d almost always win and he’d tell me I saved the day. He was obviously throwing the game just to make me feel good, but he liked it, so I pretended not to notice.”
“How is your dad?”
“Fine, I guess. He’s been so busy with this new album that we can only talk for a few minutes at a time. Craig said he’s practically living in the studio.” She blinks at me. “What?”
“What what?”
“You’re looking at me strange. Like you feel sorry for me.”
“I am not.”
“You are, Alberta.” She shakes her head. “Don’t do that, okay? I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“I know.” Even though the way she says it makes me think it’s not true at all.
Jamie and Oliver finish their games empty-handed. “These things are totally rigged,” Jamie says, scowling.
We walk around the carnival one last time, but we’ve used all our tickets and things are starting to wind down. I keep scanning the crowd. Maybe Laramie will change her mind and show up after all. But I never see her.
November 15, 1955
Yesterday, I did something foolish.
I didn’t mean to, but does anyone ever set out to be foolish? Well… I think I know what Papa’s answer would be.
I don’t often stop at a newsstand, but yesterday, my feet took root right in front of the one I pass each day on my way home. I scanned the rows. There was the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune, the papers in languages I don’t speak… and the Sun-Reporter. I glanced around to see if anyone noticed me, but everyone simply hurried by, eager to return home.
Right there on the front page was a story about how slowly desegregation continues to progress in the South. But this wasn’t the usual article blaming Negroes for all their troubles. This was written by Negroes, for Negroes, and it was published here in San Francisco. Detailing everything that was happening down in Dixie.
“You okay, missy?” the man in charge of the newsstand asked me.
I said I was fine and then I quickly folded the paper in half and brought it to him. “I’d like to buy this, please.”
He unfolded the paper and looked at the front. He stared at me. I wanted to look away, to run away. But I knew I had to look right into his eyes.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing with this? You know it’s a Negro newspaper, missy?”
My fingers trembled. I clasped them behind my back. “It’s for our housekeeper.”
“You runnin’ around buying things for your house gal?”
“It’s part of her wages,” I said, standing tall. Proud. “We like our help to be educated.”
“Don’t see why they need their own paper w
hen all their problems always stinkin’ up ours.” He shook his head and grunted. “That’ll be ten cents.”
I dropped a dime in his hand, took my paper, and walked away with my head held high. But my heart was pounding like a drum, and as soon as I turned the corner, I stuffed the paper under my coat.
I read it after my bath, by the lamp in my room. Page after page of sympathetic stories about the Negroes and their plight. How hard things have been for them. How they have so much further to go to achieve equality.
I wept as I read every single word.
Before I went to sleep, I slid the paper under my mattress so Mrs. Hansen wouldn’t find it.
Love, Constance
LOOK-ALIKES
THE FOYER AND FRONT ROOM OF THE B&B ARE totally transformed when Dad, Elliott, Denise, and I show up for dinner the next evening.
All the clutter and boxes have disappeared. I finally see the floral print of Mrs. Harris’s couch and chairs. Elliott looks approvingly at the oversize art books spread out on the coffee table, and Dad compliments the framed prints hung on the walls.
“It’s a start,” Ms. Whitman says. “I think this is a bigger undertaking than I realized.”
“I know the feeling,” Denise says, rubbing her belly. “Hi, I’m Denise Kaplan. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you.”
Edie’s mother grins. “Calliope Whitman. And likewise, Denise. Welcome to my work in progress.”
“I think it’s lovely.” Denise smiles back at her. “I’ve always dreamed of living in a house like this.”
Over dinner, Ms. Whitman asks Denise what she does.
“Oh, thank you,” Denise says after she’s finished chewing a bite of eggplant parmesan.
Ms. Whitman gives her a puzzled look.
“Since I’ve been pregnant, no one ever asks about me anymore.” She looks at Elliott and Dad with narrowed eyes. “Even you two constantly talk about the baby.”
“We’re excited,” Elliott says with a shrug. “And besides, we know everything about your life.”
Denise makes a face at him before she turns back to Ms. Whitman. “I’m a freelance journalist. I used to work as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle when Tim and I lived up north. I mostly covered crime and local politics.”
The Only Black Girls in Town Page 9
