The Kayla Chronicles

by Sherri Winston

  And Emma, a longtime SPEAK member, had just helped the group reach another milestone—an official, professional-looking Web page.

  The graphics were gyroscopic wow—that means filled with color, movement and lots of “BAM!” power. One minute the screen was blank. Next, tiny black letters, all lowercase, spelled “speak” horizontally on the page.

  “Honey, that’s awesome!” Dr. X said. Emma’s face turned pinker than usual. Her green eyes were locked on the screen. Then the screen was like—

  Bam!

  And the S flipped over.

  Bam! Then the P.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! E-A-K.

  SPEAK appeared vertical once the letters rearranged themselves. At the bottom of the page, the smaller type read:

  girls have something to say.

  I got a little choked up. First, I got to do a victory dance in my kitchen as my father counted out my five hundred dollars; now I was witnessing a real growth in the club I’d started.

  I thought maybe SPEAK should have a chant or a theme song or something. But we didn’t, so I just said, “This looks so cool.” Inadequate, but heartfelt. I was totally trippin’ off of how put-together and . . . real the Web page made SPEAK feel.

  Emma tilted her head, and her two Twizzler-like braids fell away from her face. She said, “When the meeting is over today, if we have information about the upcoming ‘Kick the Crown’ event, we can post it right on the site.’

  She clicked an icon of a pair of old combat boots, remarkably like the pair Rosalie was wearing, swinging happily back and forth, kicking a crown. Above and just right of the monitor, Rosalie’s face glowed, and ever so slightly her head grew bigger and bigger and . . .

  At lunch, Dr. X served turkey sandwiches. Rosalie did her thing.

  Her “thing” was to give assignments. My assignment was to double-check with the park about the pavilion. “Will do!” I said earnestly. That was the best way to handle Rosalie when she was in her mode.

  Then she went on. “Brewer, I want you to check with your aunt at the radio station. . . .”

  “Cousin,” said Brewer.

  Brewer didn’t understand about flow. “Huh?” Rosalie said, frowning.

  “I don’t have an aunt at the radio station. She’s my cousin. Well, actually she is married to my cousin. Lourdes Morales on—”

  “All right, your cousin,” Rosalie said, exasperated, tapping her icon-like combat boots against the hardwood floor like a gavel. “Your cousin.” She emphasized cousin. “Make sure she is still going to give ‘Kick the Crown’ a mention on the air.”

  Then Tisha threw another monkey-wrench into Rosalie’s flow:

  “I’m surprised you’d want ‘Kick the Crown’ promoted on a hip-hop station, considering how misogynistic most of the lyrics of the songs are that they play,” Tisha said. Tisha, I’m afraid, has no personality. Day by day, what I see is a girl morphing into Rosalie’s mini-me. More and more she’s not so much Tisha as Rosalisha.

  Scary. I felt like if I wasn’t careful, that could happen to me, too.

  Tisha’s attack on hip-hop led to about a twenty-minute digression on the state of popular music and the fall of modern society.

  Finally, the mini-caucus on music ended, and we got back to the main topic—“Kick the Crown.”

  With Emma on the keyboard, here’s what we added to the site:

  GIRLS DO NOT HAVE TO BE PRINCESSES TO BE SPECIAL

  ARE YOU TIRED OF THE FAIRY-TALE HYPE?

  READY TO KICK THE FAIRY-TALE AWAY

  TO NEVER-NEVER-AGAIN LAND?

  JOIN SPEAK for another women-empowering, awe-inspiring event Tuesday, August 2 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Ocean Side Park in Fort Lauderdale, Pavilion Six.

  “Kick the Crown” will feature girls from summer camps all over Broward County. SPEAK will provide guest speakers, give away free stuff, and discuss books, academics, and extracurricular activities that help strengthen girls.

  Our goal: To help you find your voice and show that even if you don’t look like a disproportionately drawn cartoon character wearing a silly crown you are still worthy, still valued, still capable of being heard.

  I got goose pimples when I read it. So what if I had been the one to write it.

  “’Kay. Looks good,” Rosalie whispered. I nodded.

  She squeezed my hand, still whispering. “Just wait. First ‘Kick the Crown.’ Then your tell-all story about those she-devil Lady Lions. SPEAK will rule the campus in no time.”

  . . . and bigger and bigger . . . little by little, her head continued to grow.

  FLIPPED OUT

  Kayla’s confidence takes a tumble.

  Rosalie and Brewer met me at the gym where I’ve taken gymnastics since I was four.

  I needed to practice for tryouts, Round 2. As usual, Rosalie was having a conniption.

  “They are evil troll dolls, that’s all. They are wicked!” Rosalie snarled as she held the talc I needed to powder my hands.

  I was trying to explain that waiting to tell us about our routines didn’t necessarily make them “evil.”

  “They have narrowed the field to thirty-two girls. Only six of us are going to make it. They’re breaking us into groups, and each group has to remember a different dance combination. They just want the competition fair for all of us.”

  “Us?” Rosalie said. “Us, chica? I know you’re not really thinking that those skanks would actually let you on their precious squad.”

  Ouch! Direct hit!

  I tried ignoring Rosalie and focusing on the atmosphere in the gym. On practice days, like today, the gym was loud. Electric. I felt it. Back when I competed, coming to the gym meant letting loose all the feelings I kept bottled up because I was too shy or terrified to speak my mind. Here I could run wild. Run hard. Sweat. Grunt.

  Here I was free.

  “Excuse me! Hello? Kayla, are you in there?”

  Until today.

  “Yeah, I mean . . . I hear you,” I said.

  Then she got all neck-swivelly with her hand on her hip. Ugh! “Listen to me, chica. Remember this tryout was my idea. You’re doing this because I said so, OKAY?”

  I was blinking rapidly like a gecko in the sun. She had some nerve!

  She rolled on:

  “Look, you did a good job, chica. No doubt. But let’s not get it twisted. The Lady Lions are the enemy.”

  Before I could stop myself, I blurted, “Why, Rosalie? Why are they all of a sudden the enemy?”

  Just saying it, confronting her like that, brought an instant stab of something . . . pain/regret/fear/relief . . . something.

  As usual, at the first sign of confrontation, I felt my knees wobble, and my internal panic button blared, Run! Run! Run! Not Rosalie. Confrontation was like vitamins for Rosalie.

  “Oh, no, you did not just ask me WHY the Lady Lions are the enemy. I mean, you didn’t, right? Not even you could be so naïve.”

  “Rosalie!” My voice sounded more like a whine than the warning tone I was shooting for.

  “Uh, uh, uh! Shh! Just because they smile in your face and pay you a few tired little compliments; just because they had the good sense not to cut you after one day lest they make it too easy to show their bias; just because of that, you think you have a real chance? You are unbelievable.”

  What I should have done, right then and there, was to tell her to TALK TO THE HAND sister-girl! I felt like such a fraud. A phony. I wrote all that great stuff about “Kick the Crown.” All that stuff about girls speaking out and being heard.

  But I was unable to speak up for myself!

  Rosalie gave me this look like she could tell what I was thinking. She was like that. I always used to think it was because we were so close we could read each other’s minds.

  She said, “Kayla, look. You are a great athlete. A great dancer, even. But we’re not like them.” She squeezed my upper arm when she said “we.”

  “But, Rosalie, all I’m saying is when it comes to dancing, I really love it. .
. .”

  The hand again. She gave me the hand! Again!

  “Don’t go there, chica. Please. I enjoy dancing, too. But you wouldn’t ever catch me in some short skirt in front of hundreds of people wriggling my hips in folks’ faces. Can you imagine Dr. X at a halftime show with me out there looking like a hoochie mama?”

  “I know, but—”

  “You are trying out to prove a point. Let’s not lose sight of that.”

  I was silent. Experience had taught me to wait. She was reloading. Readying her kill shot. I braced myself. A smarter girl might run for cover, but I just stood there. A lame duck with a big butt.

  “Let’s face it, Kayla. You’re a cute girl, but you don’t have the kind of obvious beauty those Lion girls go for.” I gulped and self-consciously pressed my hands down my backside, as if I could smooth it out like misshaped clay. She went on, “You don’t even know how to wear makeup.”

  Then she went for the jugular:

  “And look at your hair.”

  Warning! Warning! Ego down!

  My fingers shot up to my hair and a sick, burning feeling bubbled in my stomach. I never really thought that Rosalie—-ROSALIE—of all people would be judging me based on my appearance. Rosalie in her old faded T-shirts, granny skirts, and combat boots. Well, I guess we can’t all be thrift-store goddesses like her!

  Having crushed me under her heel like a palmetto bug on the sidewalk, yet totally unfazed or unaware, she reached out and hugged me. I was ego road-kill and she’d just splattered me on the pavement in her tank. Then here she comes, hugging me, patting me on the back.

  “K, just keep thinking about ‘Kick the Crown.’ We have a really important planning session. . . .”

  She went on about the planning session. How important it was to make this the best “Kick the Crown” event ever. Like they’d been going on since the early nineteen-hundreds.

  Like always, I was too beaten down to put up a fight. I have that in common with many of history’s best lackeys.

  Deflatamonium.

  De-flay-ta-mo-ne-um—when you start out feeling way too good, when you dare to have hope, when your heart is all pumped up, then along comes someone who deflates you at such a rate that the very act of your deflation becomes an event.

  Deflatamonium. In spades.

  PHOTO FINISH

  Kayla races to win distinguished honor of “Life’s Most Embarrassing Moment!”

  Humilaration.

  Deflatamonium is an episode; humilaration is a disaster!

  Hu-mil-a-ray-shun: the combination of extreme humiliation and frustration. Used in a sentence: Kayla managed to turn a simple day at home “alone” into an all-time humilaration event.

  Even I can’t believe how low I sank today. . . .

  I take that back. Sadly, yes, I can believe how low I sank today.

  I stayed home to practice my dance routine. Mom and Amira had to take Demolition Diva to do last-minute shopping for her cruise.

  My father (since the whole five-hundred-dollar thing, I’ve tried really hard to refrain from calling him “the Great Oppressor”) had some business to take care of in Miami. That left me. Home. Alone. House to myself.

  The deal was this:

  A gardener from my father’s landscaping business was coming over to do some work so I had to be around to let him into the wild yard behind the tree house—otherwise, the place was mine.

  I was still burning up from that whole scene at the gym with Rosalie yesterday. So I’d been practicing hard. I must have done the dance combinations at least a hundred times. No way I didn’t have it down pat.

  The temperature had to be a hundred and fifty-seven degrees. About a hundred and ten degrees in the shade. And I was steaming. Not because of the heat, though.

  Rosalie!

  Okay, so at first I wasn’t that into being involved with SPEAK or “Kick the Crown” once we got to high school. No more.

  Now I wanted SPEAK and “Kick the Crown” to be huge. So I’d come up with my own evil-genius plan, only I hoped my plan would come together as one of sisterhood and fellowship rather than a bloodsport that would pit me and Rosalie against one another like ancient Romans in a pit.

  What if I did make the dance team? And then, what if I got the Lady Lions involved with SPEAK? Rather than taking them down, we could work with them to make both groups stronger? Girl power could flourish and my first-person exposé could be about bringing two very different groups together for the common cause of female bonding. How cool would that be?

  Maybe the intense, furnace-blast heat had gotten to me. I was thirsty and panting like a shaggy dog. But that was one thing about dancing. Even in my own backyard, all sticky and wet and gross from so much sweat, I felt GREAT.

  Dance created a Rosalie-safe force field around me. It was like the one thing I had, my superpower, that she couldn’t penetrate.

  Even so, Rosalie’s voice crawled in my head. “Blah, blah, blah . . . they’ll never pick you . . . blah, blah, blah . . . you don’t have the obvious beauty they’re looking for. . . .”

  And every time, my heart hammered.

  All the feelings, all the words that wouldn’t come out of my mouth, well, their meaning, their intensity, came out of my moves. My feet slapped rapidly against the ground. I made quick twists, turns, dips, kicks, shimmies. Hip-hop dance was the Lady Lions’ specialty, but I liked mixing the modern moves with ballet and jazz moves, too. My heart rate had to be about three hundred!

  I’d thought about it before, the fact that I used my body to let out feelings I didn’t express with words.

  No wonder, then, that I was stomping, stabbing the air with pointed arm movements, doing deep-waist, bent-knee hip swivels when the idea hit me.

  One of the biggest—and most controversial, according to Rosalie—dance performances of the year for the Lady Lions is the holiday show when they dance, high-step, kick, and even do splits while wearing high-heel shoes.

  Oh, yes, it is something to see.

  Red high heels, short red satin skirts. Movements as smooth and tight as a new clock.

  And ever since the first time I saw them do that, I’ve wanted to dance like that in hot shoes. Shoes with heels.

  Okay, here’s the deal. You know how much I love shoes, right? Way back one time when everybody came home for the holidays, Mom had a pair of pumps that I absolutely loved. So I stole them. And whenever I got the chance, I’d prance around in them, dance in them, do flips, whatever.

  All right, now we’re getting to the heart of the humilaration. Close your eyes and picture it:

  I was out in the backyard.

  Music blasting.

  My floppy, floofy ’fro was pulled back with a headband.

  My black stretchy shorts had ridden up my butt, forming a wedgie that quite possibly might require surgical extraction, and my oversized top flopped down, almost covering all of my shorts.

  And I was wearing three-inch, hot pink leather pumps with licorice-black piping and a skinny black bow.

  And I was dancing, rolling my hips, shaking my butt—-“. . . Front, back, now turn, now turn. . . .” I was jamming.

  Then came the big finale.

  The big finish.

  I took off. All I could hear was my heart beating to the throbbing bass of the early nineties dance party music. (I’d downloaded it from the Internet.)

  Running for all it was worth, I sprang into the air.

  One cartwheel.

  Two cartwheels.

  Then a roundoff. That’s a cartwheel where you bring your feet together in the air and nail a flat-footed landing.

  And I topped it all off with a split!

  Yes!

  Kayla Earns Olympic Gold in Hip-Hop Dance

  Not Since Wilma Rudolph Has an Athlete Delivered Such a Ground-Breaking Performance;

  Women Applaud Worldwide

  I’d nailed it. That was the routine I wanted to do. The Lady Lions would freak. And without saying a word, this would
be my way of telling Rosalie to talk to the hand, Okaaaaaay?

  I pumped my fist. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so good, not even when I’d won medals at the spring meets.

  This was my routine.

  This time it was me, not Rosalie, who was the Warrior Princess.

  At least, that was how I felt up until the music stopped.

  That’s when I heard the sound of two hands clapping.

  He was standing there, half leaning against the gate, inside our backyard. His arms were folded across his chest all casual and relaxed.

  And, much as I didn’t want to notice—on account of me being dressed like a stripper, dripping with sweat, and sporting the kind of kinky, floppy, unkempt-looking hair often associated with homeless women—I couldn’t help noticing that HE was gorgeous.

  More gorgeous than Roger Lee Brown.

  Just so you know, Roger Lee Brown is the standard, the measuring stick, but this guy . . . blind-sexy. Blind-sexy is somebody who looks so good even a blind girl would go, “Mmm, mmm, mmm!”

  “Outstanding.” That’s what he said to me.

  For a full two seconds, I just sat there, still in my split. Then it was like somebody poured hot ants all over my body. Every part of my skin started to tingle and burn. A literal rash of shame broke out. I snatched myself off the ground as though being yanked by the jaws of life.

  Before the second downbeat of the next song could shake the air, I stabbed the STOP button on the CD player.

  He was still leaning all casual/cool against the fence. Slowly he let his eyes travel from the top of my head to the pointed tips of my mother’s pumps. Tiny chill bumps sprang up along my sweaty arms, bare thighs, and grass-encrusted legs. It was like everywhere his eyes touched, my skin got warm, then hot and—not itchy . . . tingly. Had the rash of shame mutated? Gone viral?