Meet Cute

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  But no one is standing there. So I check to see that I’ve gotten an e-mail.

  It’s from Florida A&M. So I ask Mr. Randal to be excused.

  I rush out of the classroom and lean against one of the nearby walls and slide down to the floor. I hold the phone close to my heart, shut my eyes, and inhale.

  When I open the e-mail, the first word I see is Congratulations, and I scream.

  My voice echoes in the hallway and kids come out of the classroom, staring at me with my big ol’ smile. I stand up, wanting to do cartwheels through the hall.

  And even as Stacy starts to slowly make her way toward me, not knowing whether to smile or ask me if I’m okay, I yell out, “I got into Florida A&M!”

  I don’t read the details, I don’t check the financial aid information, I don’t know how I’ll get down to Florida, but I’m getting the fuck out of this town!

  — — — —

  Stacy wants to pretend like nothing happened. She wants to pretend that she hasn’t been seeing Brian all this time and she’s been bullshitting me and everybody else. She asks me to come over and celebrate about Florida. She parks outside my house, honking, refusing to come to the door like always. But not this time. This time, I wait for her to come to me.

  This time, she knocks and I open the door and step out.

  She’s never been inside my house.

  “You fucked up,” I say.

  “He’s sorry,” she says.

  “Since when?”

  “Since the moment it happened.”

  “When I saw that picture or when he got caught?”

  “Look, he stopped doing any of it, right?”

  “Wrong. He was dead wrong, and you’re dead wrong!” I open the door to step back inside.

  “Cherish, please,” she says, all sweet and with puppy-dog eyes. “Cheer up!”

  “Fuck you, Stacy!” I say, slamming the door in her face.

  — — — —

  I have until Monday to accept the seat at Florida A&M. I’ll be losing the deposit Dad sent to Shaw County. He’ll have to come up with another deposit, and part of my tuition, and stuff for my dorm room, and my plane ticket.

  Still, I let the thoughts of packing and saying good-bye to Kingsbridge wander around my mind. This is not a dream anymore. It’s as real as breathing. And it’s so close.

  But something weighs heavy on my body. This is a moment I want to share with Stacy. I was there for her when she got her acceptance letter to Oberlin. We were supposed to go out to the mall and movies that night. But she chose to stay home. Now I know. She chose to be with Brian, the asshole.

  I search through her Instagram feed to see all her posts about what shoes she’ll be wearing, her different hairstyles, makeup colors, the works. I wonder who is taking her pictures now.

  Then, a new photo pops up.

  It’s of her and Brian, and the caption: New Prom Bae.

  I immediately text Alex.

  Hey! Are you still going to the prom with Stacy?

  He doesn’t reply right away, so I head to the kitchen to get started on dinner. Mama had to do the groceries and miss a couple of hours of sleep. I’ve been making up for my fuck-up since that day by cooking all the meals, cleaning, and helping Honor with his homework. My parents were more than excited about my getting into Florida A&M, but not too long afterward, Dad started crunching the numbers. Still, I had until Monday to just hold on to this bit of happiness for a moment.

  No. She’s going with Brian.

  Did she cancel on you at the last minute?

  No. I was never going with Stacy. Who told you that?

  Stacy did.

  She said I could ride in her limo.

  You’ll still go even if Brian is there.

  Yeah.

  Why Alex? You don’t remember what he did to you?

  Hey. It’s a free ride in a limo. I don’t have to pay for it.

  Seriously? So who are you taking to prom?

  He doesn’t respond. I wait and wait.

  Nobody.

  I don’t respond. I pull out a package of ground meat and Hamburger Helper. Ten minutes go by before I ask him.

  Do you wanna go with me?

  No because you don’t wanna go with me.

  Sorry. I was just . . .

  Save it.

  Alex knew that he would be a pity date. He was right. The only reason I was rethinking the whole thing was because of my fucked-up ex-friend and her asshole boyfriend.

  I scroll through each of Stacy’s pictures and there are more of her and Brian now, as if she’s announcing to the world that they’re back together, that they’re not hiding their relationship anymore, that she doesn’t give a fuck about what he’s done to her friends because she was leaving Kingsbridge and telling everyone to kiss her ass.

  I slam my phone against the counter. Honor glances at me. I look around the house. It feels small. I want to stretch my arms out and push the walls and make everything stretch far and wide because this place is beginning to feel like a prison.

  — — — —

  The day before the prom, I end up in Geraldine’s because I’m going after all. That was the plan from the beginning. Work my butt off, get accepted into an HBCU, get ready to move out of the state, give myself a complete makeover from head to toe, and party like I’ve lost all my senses.

  This was all supposed to be with Stacy’s help. This was all planned before that thing with Brian, and before this new thing with Brian.

  Since I’m going to be on my own down in Florida, I had to start now. I could pull myself together and be my own damn sidekick, road dog, and ride-or-die chick.

  I’d spent a whole night online looking for dresses and creating a private Pinterest board of women with bodies like mine. Models, even. Some with deep brown skin like mine. Their dresses were short and flirty and in bright colors; or they were long and glamorous with revealing slits. The shimmering fabrics hugged their curves and they held their heads high. Confident, badass, and they didn’t seem to give a fuck.

  I could see it. I could imagine it. I could look just like those women.

  I played around with my hair in the mirror. I pulled down the top of my sweater to show off my bare shoulder, and even pouted my lips.

  I went from prom dresses to Florida A&M’s website, to YouTube videos of current and former students, and I saw myself in each of their faces.

  I could see it. I could imagine it. I was going to be one of those students. And I wouldn’t hide. I would blend in and stand out at the same time.

  I go through five dresses and none of them are like the ones I’d seen on those models online. Dolores takes photo after photo just in case the mirror isn’t telling the whole truth. I do look like somebody’s aunt or a burnt-out teacher.

  “You don’t have anything sexy in my size?” I finally ask.

  “Sexy is a state of mind,” Delores says, still engrossed in her phone.

  I try on another dress that fits just right at the top but hits right at my calves, which isn’t sexy at all, no matter what my state of mind is.

  “Where’s your friend? You should ask her.”

  “She’s not my friend,” I say.

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “Whatever. You’ll get over it.”

  I hold the dress up above my knees, then higher, and higher. I exhale and let it drop down. I could never be that bold. That risqué. I am eighteen now, too.

  Stacy’s voice flashes through my mind and I wonder what she’d say about this dress, about my body in it. She would squeal. She would jump at even the thought of me wearing a dress.

  This is gonna be my revenge. She thinks I’m going to hide in some corner like all the other times she’s fucked up, that I’m going to avoid her until she shows up with some gift and I’ll fall for it and accept her sorry apology. Not this time.

  Dolores comes over to me and hands me a piece of paper. It’s the flyer
about the African tailor.

  “They fix dresses?” I ask, hesitantly taking it from her.

  “They do,” she says. “I’ve seen their handiwork. Some of the girls from your school have had their dresses, um, altered, they said. And I heard they even make dresses from scratch. It’s pretty good.”

  — — — —

  Mamadou’s African Tailoring is a few blocks from my house and I was able to take the bus there, even though I had to wait a while for it to come. The store is in a regular blue-and-white frame house with a sign in the front. The door is wedged open and I walk in to the smell of steamed dresses, just like in Geraldine’s except there’s also a hint of smoked sweetness in the air. Incense, maybe.

  Light music is playing and I can’t place the instrument—something like a harp, but not. The store is a living room, and at the entrance is a mannequin almost like the one in Geraldine’s, except this one doesn’t look down the tip of her nose at me. She smiles as if greeting me. She’s wearing red-and-gold fabric around her stringy hair, and her dress has loud, bold colors and shapes all over it.

  The walls are lined with stacks and stacks of fabric in all different patterns and colors. Three tables holding sewing machines are at the center of the room, and for a moment I wonder if I’ve stepped into a sweatshop. An older woman is behind one of them, picking apart a dress, and she only smiles and nods at me.

  “Alo?” someone calls out, and I jump.

  A man wearing a wide and long robe of some sort comes out to greet me. He has got to be the darkest-skinned man I’ve ever seen in my life. So that explains the African part of the store’s name.

  “You’re from Africa?” I ask. I don’t think about it. I just stare at his smooth, glowing skin.

  “Ah, yes! Senegal!” he says with a deep accent. “You too?”

  “Uh, no,” I say, laughing. “I’m from right here in Kingsbridge, born and raised. What are you doing here?”

  “Eh, my son. He goes to the university. Are you looking for a dress?”

  I pull myself together, remembering that I have a day to get this dress. A half day, really, if I was going to get my hair done. I had two hundred dollars saved for this whole thing and I needed to plan and budget both my money and my time. “I heard you fix dresses.”

  He looks me up and down. I hold my head up high because the walls in this living room store are covered with women who look like me. From Africa, I guess. From Senegal, where they’re tall and dark-skinned and gorgeous.

  “Where is the dress?” he asks, rolling his r’s.

  “Well, I thought you had some here that would fit me.”

  “I don’t have time, miss. You see that over there?” He points to the tall and wide table at the edge of the living room where there’s a pile of colorful, fancy dresses. I recognize some of them from Geraldine’s. “I have to fix by tomorrow. You should come early.”

  “What are you saying? You can’t help me?”

  He shakes his head. “After Friday. You come Saturday and we can make dress.”

  “But I need it for tomorrow.”

  “Too late, miss, too late.”

  His phone rings and he steps away to answer it. “You can look around. Maybe you can find something. But I can’t tailor it until Saturday,” he says. He starts talking in another language.

  We don’t have too many foreigners in our town, and if we do, they’re not usually black. They’re not usually from Africa, and they don’t make or fix dresses. This Mamadou is going to give Geraldine’s a run for her money. There’s a rack of dresses in the most beautiful patterns I’ve ever seen. I’d definitely stand out wearing one of them. But the shapes are all wrong and boxy. I don’t bother trying anything on because the thought of going to the prom is slowly fading.

  Stacy would know what to do. She would see all this fabric and think of some creative way to put an outfit together for me. I don’t have her creative mind.

  I start to walk out of the store when a tall boy steps into the doorway. And it’s one of the very few times I’ve had to look up to see someone’s face. He’s the same smooth, even dark brown like that man. His eyes are warm and friendly. And he has the brightest smile on this side of the Hudson. His teeth are so incredibly white that I can’t stop staring at them—his teeth, of all things.

  “Alo!” he says with the same deep singsongy voice as that man. This must be his son, the one who goes to the university.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He nods, smiles, and brushes past me.

  But I’m not ready to go. “Are you the one who goes to the university?” I ask. “Your father said so.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. His accent is nowhere as thick as his father’s. “He means college. He thinks every school is a university.”

  “College? Where?”

  “Shaw County. We just moved down here from Buffalo so I can go. Since my father has his own business it’s easy to move around.”

  “Shaw County? That’s a community college,” I say.

  He laughs, flashing his gleaming-white teeth. “I know it’s not the best, but . . . I’m learning a lot. I’m Mamadou, by the way.” He extends his hand out to me.

  I take it and it’s cool and dry. “Cherish. So this is your store.”

  “Ah, me and my father are both named Mamadou. Did you find what you were looking for, Cherish?”

  “No. I need a dress by tomorrow,” I say, knowing that this is my cue to leave, but I just can’t. Not yet.

  He studies me. I don’t do anything with my body. I just stand there. Then, he motions for me to come back in.

  He says something to his father in a different language. His father says something in return. Mamadou Junior says another thing, a little bit louder this time. His father agrees or backs off because his voice trails.

  Mamadou Junior removes his book bag and grabs a photo album from a nearby shelf. “Let me know if you see something you like. I can make it for you. By tomorrow.”

  “You make dresses?” I ask.

  He smiles and nods.

  Before I open up the album’s pages to models I’ve never seen before wearing those same bright and colorful dresses as on that flyer, Mamadou comes back over to me with a long yellow measuring tape in hand. I just stare at him.

  “I need to take your measurements for your dress,” he says.

  I don’t move at first. Then I swallow hard and stand up straight in front of him—chest out, chin up, and head held high. He gently touches my arms for me to raise them.

  Slowly, he takes the measuring tape and wraps it around my waist. He looks up at me to make sure it’s okay and smiles. I nod.

  In my head, I’m texting Stacy about this new boy in town who goes to Shaw County and looks like an African superhero. And he makes dresses. Stacy, he makes dresses!

  And she would dare me to ask him to the prom at the last minute.

  In just a couple of minutes, Mamadou has measured my waist, my hips, my chest, the length of my arms, and the length of my legs. Then he asks, “Okay. What would you like?”

  Click

  — — — — — —

  KATHARINE MCGEE

  New York City, 2020

  ALEXA

  “I HEAR IT might snow later,” muttered the taxi driver, with a glance in the rearview mirror.

  Alexa Faraday didn’t answer, just clutched at the tiny data chip she wore on a rubber band around her wrist, as if it were jewelry. She knew she looked ridiculous; but it was comforting, having the chip with her all the time.

  The first snow. That had always been Claire’s favorite day of the year. It’s when the world feels full of magic, when anything seems possible, Claire used to say, with an infectious smile. Then she would drag Alexa outside to twirl in the snow, before coming back in to make cocoa with dollops of whipped cream.

  Alexa reached up a hand to wipe brusquely at her eyes. It was still hard, thinking about Claire.

  I’m going on a date tonight, she though
t, wondering how Claire would have replied. Probably something like, “What shoes are you wearing? Send me a pic!” Alexa glanced down at her sodden gray boots. Definitely not Claire-approved.

  Well, it was a big deal that she was going on a date at all. She was really only here to experience the Click algorithm firsthand.

  Click had launched a few years ago, when Alexa was in high school. Now she was a junior at NYU studying computer science. It had been a normal enough college experience so far, romantically speaking: a few fumbling hookups with guys in the nearby dorms, until her friend Koty asked her out last spring. It had felt so logical—they were in the same classes, liked all the same things—yet when Koty broke it off, Alexa hadn’t even felt sad. Which was how she’d known that they’d never really been more than friends the whole time.

  A month later, Claire died.

  It was a brain aneurysm. She’d had a terrible headache one day and passed out, and then she was gone, just like that. It felt senseless and irrational, and even now, Alexa couldn’t fully process it. She wasn’t exhibiting any symptoms, the doctors assured Alexa and her parents in the ER, there was no way you could have known. As if that knowledge might somehow make them feel better.

  It wasn’t fair. Her expansive, impulsive little sister never got to graduate, to go to college, to actually live.

  After it happened, Alexa had ignored her dean’s offer to take some time off and fled straight back here, to school. Her parents were home in Boston, grieving and alone, and part of her knew she should go be with them. Another, greater part of her needed space. That house was filled with too many memories. It was so much easier in the bustling, comforting anonymity of New York.

  Still, her dean had called her in again just last week, and strongly encouraged her to take a few weeks of personal leave. Guess they’d finally noticed her dramatic drop in grades this quarter. Alexa had shaken her head and insisted that she didn’t need time off. Her classwork was only suffering because she’d been pouring all her energy into something else, something that, in the long run, was much more meaningful than school.