Meet Cute

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  I browse around the store like I’ve done so many times before. I can’t remember the last or first time I wore a dress. So the prom was not an event I wanted to go experimenting with my look for. My own mother lives in her work uniform, or a bathrobe.

  I spot a stack of flyers and a small pile of business cards near the cash register. The flyer is a photo of a bunch of ladies wearing long, fitted colorful gowns in patterns I’ve never seen before—bold and ethnic. The ladies are in all different shapes and sizes. Above the photo reads Mamadous African Tailoring: One Size Don’t Fit All.

  “What’s African tailoring?” I ask Delores.

  She shrugs while going through her phone. “Some black man and his son dropped those off. They say they fix dresses.”

  “Like at the cleaners?”

  “I guess,” she says.

  “So a new black family moved to Kingsbridge?” I ask.

  “You should know better than me,” she mumbles.

  I stare at the flyer once more before putting it down and returning to the conceited mannequin as it stares out of the store’s front window. Without thinking twice, I step closer to it and smack it upside its head. It tumbles forward, hitting the window.

  “You are not all that,” I say.

  Delores rushes over to prop it up again. She struggles with the mannequin a bit until it’s upright; then she turns and squints her blue-shadowed and mascaraed eyes at me.

  Stacy comes out of the fitting room to see my face about to burst into a laugh. She doesn’t hold hers in. So we both let out a long, hard laugh as Delores shakes her head and goes back to scrolling through her phone at the cash register.

  “Don’t hate her ’cause she’s beautiful,” Stacy says as she walks over to Delores to pay for the slinky black dress.

  It’s the one her followers voted on a few days ago—the one with slits along the sides that almost show off every single part of her body.

  “I don’t hate her,” I say, side-eyeing the now propped-up mannequin. “She hates me because I’m beautiful.”

  I bat my eyelashes and flash a sexy smile at Stacy and she laughs even harder. For a quick moment, I wonder if she’s laughing at the joke or at me.

  — — — —

  I refresh my e-mail over and over again as I sit in Stacy’s passenger seat on the drive home. It’s the only thing I can do in Stacy’s tiny car, where the top of my head brushes against the car’s roof upholstery and my knees are almost curled up to my chest. It’s a health hazard riding in her car ’cause I’m six foot five and her two-door hatchback is made for tiny teenyboppers like her—five foot four and only about a hundred pounds. But I still insist on wearing a seat belt even though I feel like I have to fold myself twice over just to get it around my hips. I don’t complain. Not out loud, anyway. But I’m sure Stacy can hear it in my breathing—my sighs and grunts. She ignores it, thank goodness.

  It’s June and I haven’t heard back from the three colleges that waitlisted me. But I’m keeping hope alive because there is still a week left of high school. I’ve started getting a bunch of e-mails about registering for my fall classes at Shaw County Community College, and Dad has already sent in my deposit. Still, I have a cardboard box pushed to a corner of my room full of the stuff I’ll be taking with me if I get off any of those waitlists. When I get off those waitlists. I’m putting it out there in the universe.

  I desperately need to go away for college. And each of those schools are far from Kingsbridge, New York.

  “Don’t tell me you’re checking for homework?” Stacy says. “And if you are, I’m going to your house to throw that overstuffed, raggedy book bag in the trash. High school is over, Cherish!”

  “No one gives any homework the last week before school ends. And even if they did, why would you throw my bag out anyway?” I ask, knowing good and well that Stacy never follows through on her threats to make me like her, to make me not care, to make me more . . . fun.

  “Because we should be celebrating! I really want you to get out of this funk. Cheer up, Cherish!”

  This has been her favorite thing to say to me—Cheer up, Cherish!—for as long as I can remember. I am cheered up. Just, not like her. I’m Stacy’s sidekick, her road dog, her ride-or-die chick. And we are nothing alike. That’s why we’ve been friends since the third grade. Even as her different cliques and crews came and went, I was still her loyal friend waiting to hear how so-and-so and this-and-that betrayed her and stabbed her in the back. And with me by her side to tell her how dumb she was acting with a guy, or how cute she didn’t look in an outfit, she was leaving Kingsbridge High with a bang—a slammin’ prom dress, a new hairdo, and a plane ticket to Oberlin College. She was headed halfway across the country and still, I was her sidekick, cheering her on.

  “You should be celebrating,” I say. “I’ll be stuck here seeing these same houses and roads and people for the next four years.”

  “Two years, Cherish. It’s community college. You can always transfer after two years.”

  “Two years is a long time in this town. And besides, we all know what happens to most of the people here—Kingsbridge Elementary, Middle School, High School, and Shaw County Community College. Then the mall or the state prison,” I say with a knot forming in my belly because I think I may have just described my whole life in this town—my past, present, and future.

  “Don’t forget the diner,” Stacy adds. “About seven people from our class will be working at Margot’s Diner.”

  I grunt and throw my head back against the seat. “I really should’ve applied to a safe school. But no. It was either leave Kingsbridge or bust. And I’m busting right now, Stacy. I’m about to fucking explode!”

  “No, you’re not. You’ll be fine. And you know, you’ll have more freedom. Go to the city on the weekends, just like we did a few months ago. And not every single person from Kingsbridge will be going to Shaw. I’m not going to Shaw.”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you?”

  She’s quiet as she turns up my street and pulls into my driveway. It’s sunny out but my little house still manages to have a dark cloud over it, and I’m about to step right into the storm.

  “Okay,” Stacy says, turning off her engine. “I’m gonna ask you one last time. Please come to the prom.”

  “No! I’ll be fine. Trust me,” I say, not wanting to have this conversation with her for the umpteenth time.

  “I don’t mind if you’re my date, Cherish,” she says all sweet, slipping her hand into mine.

  “Is that how you want to leave Kingsbridge? Letting everybody think we’re a couple?”

  “That would be kinda badass, you know. All my exes would be so pissed.”

  “I’m not gonna be part of your lesbian revenge fantasy, Stacy,” I say as I open the car door.

  “Aw, come on. Please!” She laughs.

  I close the door as the passenger-side window rolls down. “You already agreed to go with Alex, right? He’s a . . . good guy.” I try not to laugh because Alex is like a brother to us. He and Stacy are going as friends since Stacy couldn’t get any of her good-looking exes to take her to the prom. Except one. And we’re both already clear about why he’s not an option.

  “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. Just know that you’re making him look good. He should pay you.”

  Even I wouldn’t date Alex if he asked me. And he has, back in the sixth grade. By that time, I was already half a foot taller than him. Even though he and Stacy are the same height, Alex still looks like a middle schooler. And with heels on, Stacy will look like Alex’s mama since he hasn’t made it out of puberty yet.

  All this was because she promised me not to go with the guy I hated most in this world. The guy she once loved most in the world—Brian Price.

  Once Stacy pulls out of my driveway, I check the mailbox. Just like every day since waiting on my college admissions letters, I hold the stack of envelopes against my heart and make a wish ou
t into the air that I got into Spelman. The day the letter arrived, and it wasn’t either a yes or a no, was one of the worst days of my life. I was stuck waiting. Again.

  Inside the house, I rush to the computer to find my little brother, Honor, playing Minecraft. I mush his head and tell him to get out of the way. He doesn’t move.

  “Come on, Honor, I need to check my e-mail!”

  “Check it later,” he says, still not moving.

  I start to grab his arm and he calls out for Dad. I quickly let go and cover his mouth.

  I look around our one-story house and there’s no sign of my father on the couch or in the kitchen. So I pinch Honor’s arm.

  “Ow! Why’d you do that for?”

  “Shut up and get off the computer!” I whisper-yell through clenched teeth. “You’ll wake up Dad.”

  I quickly check my e-mail for any news from Spelman, or Hampton, or even Florida A&M. They all waitlisted me. And they are miles and miles away from here—Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. They’re historically black colleges that are nothing like my small, white town where my family is one of fourteen black families, and we stand out like four giant oak trees in a forest of shrubs.

  My parents and I are over six foot five inches tall, and big. And Honor would probably have his growth spurt this summer since he’s going into the seventh grade. The few times we walk downtown together, people either think we’re oversize basketball players or freaks. No matter how long we’ve been living in this town, we never fit in. I never fit in.

  And Brian Price was the person who reminded me of this over and over again.

  So I’d be hiding in plain sight at an HBCU with all those black kids from all over the country in different shapes and sizes. And I was sure there would be other girls like me—too visible and invisible at the same time.

  I check all three of my e-mail accounts. Nothing. Except for a shitload of messages from Shaw County. I ignore them all.

  A loud thud comes from my parents’ bedroom, letting me know that Dad is up and moving about. He swings open his bedroom door and makes his way down the narrow hallway into the living room. The top of his head almost brushes against the ceiling and he has to duck when he reaches the archway leading out of the hall. I search my mind for something to say about the missing groceries before he even asks. But I’ve gone blank. I stand up instead, ready to head out the door.

  “Where you going?” he asks with his usual scraggily voice.

  I stutter for a bit. Then I tell the truth. “I forgot the groceries.”

  He doesn’t say anything, but rushes to the kitchen and searches the fridge and cabinets for something, anything. There’s a quarter-full carton of milk. There are a couple of cans of beans. There’s some leftover roasted chicken, but he’d have to pick at the bones to make a sandwich with the almost-moldy rye bread from last week. I stand in the kitchen and sigh.

  It isn’t about the food or the money. It’s about the time. It’s always about time.

  My parents watch over people serving time. My brother and I wait for the time that each of our parents would be home together, at the same time. We all coordinate our times to use the car for other things besides getting to work and school. And we wait for Dad’s paycheck to clear before we can shop for food—a couple of hundred dollars for groceries before it was time to pay the other bills. So time affected food, affected money, affected me.

  Dad bangs on one of the cabinet doors, making both me and Honor jump. Before he starts yelling about time and money and food, I rush out of the house, just as Mama is pulling into the driveway. I walk past her without saying a word, heading straight for Stacy’s to beg her to take me to Foodtown.

  — — — —

  My heart is pounding out of my chest and my throat is dry and tight. Stacy’s house is about a mile from my house and I shouldn’t have walked it in this June heat. Dad was blowing up my phone and I was ignoring him. I knew he’d want me to come back just so he could yell at me and tell me how irresponsible I am and that I shouldn’t even think about going away to college because I couldn’t remember a simple thing like buying food for the house.

  And that I should stay away from that white girl, Stacy, ’cause she got my head all up in the clouds.

  Anything Dad would say to me right now would be out of hanger—anger and hunger. And Mama would be his amen corner, cosigning everything. I didn’t need any of that right now.

  I spot Stacy’s car as I reach her house, a two-story surrounded by a perfectly manicured lawn and rosebushes. I can imagine what she’s up to right now—messing with her hair, on the Internet talking shit, or trying on different outfits and adding more mirror selfies to her phone’s queue. Her parents’ car isn’t in the driveway, so I exhale. They try too hard around me. They ask too many questions about my parents, my brother, and school. I won’t have to talk to them about college. They will try to fix it for me. They will ask me how can they help. I don’t want to deal with that right now, either.

  At the curb in front of her house is another parked car, though, a small black one. I’ve seen it before at school, but I can’t place the owner.

  I reach the front door, and instead of knocking, I open it. Her house is unlocked during the day. We never do that at our house.

  I don’t call out her name because I’ve done this before, walked into her bedroom unannounced. She’ll squeal and throw a towel at me; then we’ll sink back into our usual shit-talking.

  So when I quickly open the door, she’s there. On her bed. With a boy.

  This isn’t the first time. I don’t gasp or embarrassingly shut the door. I stand there and stare and make sure that the boy she’s with—Brian Price—sees me unmoving and unafraid.

  And that’s a lie because my insides drop down to the floor, sink to the bottom of my feet. Stacy wasn’t supposed to be with him. Not now. Not ever. Not like this.

  — — — —

  Before

  November of senior year was when I wanted to kill Brian Price.

  The meme had been going around for two days before it got to me. I didn’t know then that Stacy had been the first to see it.

  I wasn’t always Stacy’s designated photographer. She would take photos of me and of us and post them, and I wouldn’t care, even if I got comments about how pretty I looked or about my outfit or my hair. None of it fazed me.

  Until a Photoshopped meme reached my phone. And I saw my face on a gorilla’s body—a gorilla wearing a wig and a dress.

  And I didn’t run out of school and hide and cry. I approached every single person sitting around me in that cafeteria and demanded that they tell me who did it. I yanked collars, and pulled arms, and yelled in faces. Until Principal Stewart called me into the office and asked me not to bully the students. I didn’t show him the photo. I cursed him out instead. I was suspended for two days.

  The worst of it all was when my parents found out. They thought I was bullying. I didn’t show them the photo, either.

  And I wasn’t the only one. More and more of these Photoshopped memes kept coming up, and it was easy to trace them back to one fake account. As one of the smallest seniors and one of four black kids in our grade, Alex got it the worst. So when his parents came up to the school and threatened to take it with the authorities, Principal Stewart had to do something.

  Brian Price was suspended for a week.

  Brian Price had been Stacy’s boyfriend since sophomore year. Brian Price was always an asshole.

  Stacy broke up with him because he’d attacked basically all her friends. Me, most importantly.

  Everyone knew, especially me, that she still loved him.

  That didn’t stop him from being an asshole. And she knew that if she stayed with him, she would’ve been an asshole by association.

  — — — —

  Now

  On the last day of high school, no one shows up to Mr. Randal’s Shakespeare class. Well, about ten of us are here and we look like the dumbest kids
graduating from Kingsbridge High. If it was Senior Cut Day, no one told us. If there was some sort of after-school party that everyone left to attend, we weren’t invited.

  I look around at the other familiar faces in the classroom. I know all their names. Some I’ve known since middle school or elementary school. I’ve spoken to only five of them. And that was either for a group project or for some silly small talk over the years. One kid’s got his head down and is straight-up snoring. Another girl is doodling in her notebook. They all have Senioritis, but a much milder case since they’re here sitting in a classroom with me, probably the only senior who is immune to Senioritis.

  Senioritis is a plague when there are only a few days left of high school, the prom and graduation are coming up, and no one wants to do shit. Teachers know about Senioritis, too, of course. And the ones who don’t care about any of it give us quizzes, exams, and homework assignments. Those are my favorite teachers.

  I need a test or a big group project to take my mind off ignoring Stacy, hiding in different parts of the school to avoid her, and not answering her calls or texts.

  I fucked up at home with all my chores and standing in as Honor’s second mom. The only good friend I had is fucked up. And my whole future is fucked up, too, because I’ve done all this work in high school and still ended up at a fucking community college.

  So for the first time in all four years at Kingsbridge, I take a nap. I take a fucking nap and shut out this stupid world.

  My phone buzzes and instead of looking to see who’s calling or texting, I turn to the classroom door, because this has always been how Stacy gets my attention. She’d call or text and stand in the doorway waving. This was also how she’d get me in trouble and have my phone taken away by Mr. Randal.