by Natasha Díaz
I texted Samuel over and over to ask where he was, because he had left hours ago, but he didn’t answer.
His phone probably died, or it was stolen and then it died. He probably lost it and then went back to the dorm and couldn’t call me. Or he got into some terrible accident and was at the hospital. The worst-case scenarios kept blossoming out of each other until I went out for some fresh air.
My feet got lost in the nighttime and the hum of my classmates’ bad decisions, seeping out of the dorm windows all over campus. I liked walking; it made me feel closer to New York, which I knew was drenched in the tears of mothers too afraid to put their babies to sleep, fearful that something else unimaginable might happen. After an hour of wandering, I found myself in front of Samuel’s dorm. Before I could ask God for a miracle, the front door burst open and a group of freshmen ran out, wildly underdressed and singing an off-key mashup of Destiny’s Child lyrics.
I crept into the building, which reeked of warm beer. His door opened with just a push. After losing his key three times last year, he taped the latch down, so it never locks. Before even turning the lights on, I knew he wasn’t there. The place felt cold and empty. I tried calling his cell again. Nothing.
It was late, so I lay on his bed. “Fifteen minutes,” I told myself. I’d wait fifteen minutes, no more. Then…
“Corinne?” Samuel stood above me. The clock read 4:30 a.m.
I pulled him down to me and searched his face and eyes and neck. He smelled like he had showered recently, but even the perfumed body wash he used didn’t hide the smell of cigarettes on his fingertips.
“Are you okay? I tried calling you all night. Why did you leave me? I didn’t know what to do without you.”
He yawned somewhat dramatically.
“I was upset, but I should have stayed. I actually tried to get back into your building, but no one would let me in and my phone died, so I walked around to clear my head, and on the way back I stopped at this lame house party and sort of fell asleep on the couch after drinking too much.”
Something about his face seemed wrong.
“You’re lying.”
He sucked in his breath, pained and guilty.
“I can smell the cigarettes on you. I hate when you smoke.”
“I know, baby. It’s just something I do when I’m stressed. I’ll stop, I promise.”
The sight of him clean-shaven and recently washed made me weak, and I stood to unbutton my shirt. Samuel watched me with hunger and maybe a little ambivalence before he took my hands in his and kissed them.
“Not like this. We can wait. We should wait,” he said before he wrapped his arms and legs around me and passed out almost instantly.
Samuel always says I’m all he needs to fall asleep. But nighttime has always been difficult for me. My mind races, and I get stuck dissecting details that usually mean nothing. The exhaustion from the night overpowered my thoughts, so I drifted off as I tried to ignore the smell of tobacco and convince myself he was telling me the truth.
Chapter 25
Abby sits in the seat farther from the door, the one she usually makes me walk around her to get to, and nods at me with nervous eyes when I slide into the chair. Up front, Mr. Bowels, who looks healthier and less terrified than usual, takes advantage of the unprecedented calm among his students. He begins to walk through the room, handing out vials filled with cloudy liquid. Abby’s leg shakes so hard that my chair feels like it’s giving me a butt massage.
“Are you okay?” I whisper, unable to ignore the anxiety emanating from her.
“I’m fine…Heaven,” she jeers.
Abby and the Bomb Squad have begun to use my stage name to taunt me ever since my performance went viral.
Bang.
The door crashes open, sending Mr. Bowels, who has apparently not gotten his groove back, shrieking behind a desk. The uncovered vials of grayish goop fly all over the class. Our table is only sprayed lightly, but Maud, the token musical-theater-head in our class who sits to our left, gets drenched. She grasps at her hair, now hardening under the liquid, and lets out a string of incredibly creative curses. We all watch her run to the open door only to be blocked by models who have materialized out of thin air.
A shirtless blond man in tuxedo pants, suspenders, and a bow tie who might as well have walked straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad flips an imaginary switch and begins to dance to music that blasts out of a device close to his crotch. The rest of the group comes to life, and the women in couture gowns catwalk down the center of the room, carrying martini glasses on trays toward the front. One woman scoops Abby up from her seat on the way and places a tiara and sash over her head, depositing her on a stool up front, while the male models remain by the door with no apparent purpose other than to guard the entrance and flex. Up front, the female models begin calling out names, and one by one, students walk up to collect their prize.
“It’s your lucky day. Won’t you join Abby for her sweet sixteen soiree? How sway!”
They speak in an accent that makes them sound like a cross between a valley girl and Iggy Azalea, and after each name is called, they bestow a martini glass filled with jelly beans and an invitation upon the lucky invitee. I watch as my classmates saunter up and take a selfie with the birthday queen, until the last martini glass has been given away and I’m the only student left empty-handed. The models walk back to where they first appeared, and the human Ken doll blows a kiss to the room before he ushers the models out and closes the door behind him.
The moment the door shuts, the class explodes. Jelly beans begin to fly across the room. Chatter about arrangements for stretch Hummers and speculation about who the Jacksons hired to perform as the musical act fill the air. In the classroom next door, the same techno music begins to play, indicating that our stream was not the only one lucky enough to receive the over-the-top presentation. Mrs. Lackey peers into our class. I am sure this ridiculous disruption is making her blood boil, but there won’t be any sort of consequence for breaking the rules. The Jacksons practically fund this school, so Abby can do anything she wants and get away with it.
The commotion is so loud that I barely hear the bell ring, but it does, and I leave, grateful to be released from this hell.
By lunchtime, the entire school is enraptured with the prospect of Abby’s sweet sixteen party, and rumors have begun to spread that the whole invitation stunt was secretly filmed for some MTV reality special coming out next fall. In the cafeteria, I weave through the animated conversations and the martini glasses that everyone clutches. The line for fresh food wraps around the room, and after five minutes I can barely stand to listen to the obtuse blather, so I grab a to-go spicy tuna rice bowl and march directly to my preferred winter lunch spot, the woodshop, where I find Stevie halfway through a burrito.
We make eye contact. He too is martini-glass-less. I take a few steps in and he lets out a roar and we both fall to the ground, crying so hard from the wood dust in the air and laughter that we’ll need to find eye drops before our next class to convince our teachers we aren’t high.
“Those invitations were so lame. I would rather sit through a two-day marathon of Seinfeld than go to that party,” he says, before falling victim to another uproarious fit.
“I would rather eat dry, unseasoned chicken breast for the rest of my days!” I tell him.
“I would rather use tinfoil as a condom.”
“I would rather lick the inside of Abe’s belly button.”
We go back and forth, distracting ourselves from the far-too-familiar humiliation and social degradation until it withers to a few hiccups and snorts. The uncomfortable silence that has existed between us for weeks takes over, and we sit in it, unsure what to do.
“Stevie…”
“It’s fine.”
“No. It isn’t. I can’t make it in this place without yo
u.”
“It seems like you’re doing just fine, Heaven,” he says with some side-eye.
“Oh my god, Stevie, are you actually so dense as to buy into this shit? You are the one who keeps ditching me!”
“I didn’t ditch you when you decided to come out as Def Poetry Jam’s newest superstar. Heaven Levitz, let me show you my struggle!” he says, and stands to do a dramatic impersonation of me.
“Oh, I see! You think it’s okay to come up with a whole scheme to seduce my cousin and don’t even bother to give me a heads-up? I have always supported you. You just can’t stand to give up a tiny bit of the spotlight, can you? I’m sorry that I’m finally feeling comfortable in my own skin. We aren’t all so lucky, Stevie.”
“Oh my god, do you hear me complaining that my cousins in Hong Kong all make fun of me because I’m American and can’t speak their language, or that my dad has never once acknowledged the fact that I’m mixed because ignoring it means he doesn’t have to deal with it? Or that every day some stranger thinks it’s funny to address me by saying ‘Ni hao’ or screaming into my ear slowly because they assume I can’t speak English? Newsflash: you aren’t the only biracial person on planet Earth, Nevaeh.”
My heart stops. Stevie has never told me any of this. How could I have been so wrapped up in my own turmoil that I didn’t recognize that my best friend deals with the same exact things I do, every day?
“It’s a good thing you’ve found your calling, though, because I’m one step closer to getting the hell out of here!”
He kicks the linoleum floor, sending wood shavings into the air like fireflies.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that I made it to the final round of the Zahira dance fellowship.”
His sarcasm is overpowered by devastation from the bomb that falls out of his mouth.
This is his dream, what he has wished for his entire life. I am only now beginning to understand what makes me happy, but he has always known what he wants.
“Well, maybe I’m not,” I say.
Stevie looks shocked and stung that I would be so evil as to admit this unspoken truth.
“But I’m not surprised,” I say softly. “You killed it, even though I wished the whole time that you would trip and break your ankle.”
“Ya know, you’re turning into a real bitch,” he says as a mischievous, somewhat apprehensive grin spreads across his face. “But at least you aren’t afraid to say how you feel anymore.”
He’s right. What I didn’t know was that there was a version of myself that until now, neither of us had met. The slow emergence of this new persona has been too much for me to parse and adequately acquaint myself with, let alone properly introduce to anyone else. In so many ways, nothing has changed. I live in the body I always have, but a layer has been removed, exposing my new self to the old one. The rest of the world continues to see me as I was, but not Stevie. He sees me as I am. He always has.
Stevie gets up and throws the remainder of his burrito in the trash.
“See you after school?” he asks.
I look up, surprised.
“What? You thought you were going to walk away from this without sitting through at least one rehearsal?”
I get up and follow him out into the hallway.
Neither of us says another word. We don’t need to, because we’re back to reading each other’s minds, the way we always do. The way it’s supposed to be.
Chapter 26
When I walk in, Jerry is lying across the bottom step of the staircase, but he springs up with incredible agility.
“SHE’S HERE. SHE’S BACK!”
A hoard of footsteps gallop toward me with such haste that I can barely make out who or what is headed in my direction.
“Girl, where have you been?” Jordan asks, hastily removing an apron covered in a red liquid that smells like rancid onions and overripe tomatoes.
I take the apron with my fingertips and hold it as far away from my person as possible. Anita, Jordan, Janae, Jerry, and Zeke stand waiting, as if they need me to tell them what their problem is.
Anita pulls me toward the kitchen and we clamp our hands over our nose and mouth to protect our nostrils from the thick cloud of rank funk permeating the kitchen. My eyes grow wide as I see my mother bustling about.
“She’s been like this since the morning,” Anita yells before pushing me farther into the kitchen and closing the door tightly behind me.
The kitchen looks like the set of Chopped after the first round, every drawer and cabinet ajar, along with the fridge door and the windows. My mom maneuvers around the unsteady towers of dirty mixing bowls and cutting boards that lie haphazardly on any free counter space.
Corinne Paire Levitz has never been a good cook. She did her best when I was little, locking down elementary skills to complete a handful of recipes (mostly large roasted meats that, no matter how hard she tried, always ended up underseasoned and overcooked). The unfortunate deficit was not for lack of trying. There have been multiple culinary disasters in my lifetime, all of which started out like this.
“Nevaeh!” She runs over and kisses my face. “I’m making curry for dinner! Hand me that rice. I need to add some more.”
She gestures at the bag of rice with a pile of uncooked grains spilling out of it and snatches it from me to pour an unmeasured amount into an already bubbling pot of half-cooked rice.
“All right, I think it’s almost ready. Go tell everyone!” she commands, and shoos me from the kitchen.
The windows in the living room have been opened, and the summer fans have been unearthed to air the place out. My family sits huddled together in their winter coats. Jerry, more distressed than he was when I first got home, has upgraded his complaints to an original soliloquy from the perspective of his own ghost, lamenting his death from lack of sustenance.
Anita perks up at my reemergence, eager for insight into what we should do, but I’ve got nothing to offer, so I join them on the couch in predinner purgatory.
The front door eventually opens and sends a welcome gust of freezing air into the house as Pa walks in wearing a checkered hat that only a cute old man could pull off. He hangs it on the hook by the door.
“WOO! That’s a dead rat. I know that smell anywhere.”
Miss Clarisse’s voice slashes through the already unusual evening like a streak of lightning as she hustles in after Pa. Anita sits up as if an electric jolt shot straight up her spinal cord. She glares at Miss Clarisse, who saunters into the living room in a slinky black top that dips low in the back and barely covers her midriff above her skin-tight jeggings and thigh-high pleather boots.
“Good evening,” Pa says with caution. He drapes his arm around Miss Clarisse’s shivering shoulders, a move so suave and chivalrous I see a flash of him as a strapping young man. Miss Clarisse nestles her face in the warm nook between his chin and his trap muscle and lets out a little purr.
“Nuh-uh. You can buy yourself a few hours over at the Royal Orleans Hotel for all that!” Anita says, enraged by the flagrant display of public affection between her father and a woman who is not her mother.
She stands and points behind her, toward the by-the-hour motel on the corner that sports aluminum foil for window dressings and a collage of condoms on the front steps. The light purple eyesore has been on this block since the 1980s, but with the rich white people migrating past 96th Street, developers have been pushing to buy it and convert it into a luxury condo building.
“All right, let’s not let this meal get cold!” my mom calls from the dining room, setting down a giant pot of bubbling orange liquid.
The congealed sludge sits like cement in our mouths and leaves a film of grease that even gulps of water won’t wash down. Jerry sits ruminating in disgust over the simultaneously over- and undercooked rice th
at crunches between his teeth. All of us are unmoving as my mom chatters on, failing to notice the epic gust of shade that sweeps the room every time Anita rolls her eyes.
“I gave this place a thorough cleaning, from top to bottom. Even went up to the attic,” my mom says, pointing directly at me. “I started going through some things up there, and do you know what I found?”
My stomach jumps up to my throat when she mentions the attic. Her journal is wrapped in a sweater in the far corner of the room.
“I found Mummy’s sewing machine. Can you believe she made all our clothes until we got to middle school, Anita?”
My mom sits in a daze, floating through a different time in her life, swaying in her seat to the memories. In the midst of it all, she jabs at a clump of unidentified protein on her plate—what the rest of us have pushed to the side—and sticks it in her mouth.
“Oh!” She gags and spits it directly back onto her plate, grabbing a napkin to rigorously scrape her tongue after several healthy dunks into the water glass in front of her.
My mother slowly puts her fork and knife down, quiet for the first time this evening. I scoop my head low, so I can see her in a better light, worried that if I don’t watch her closely, she might slip away again right before my eyes.
“It wasn’t that bad!” Anita jumps up and grabs my mom’s plate from in front of her. “You just haven’t eaten right in months. Your taste buds are tired and need to get used to food again.”
Anita loves to give the types of explanations that adults give to children when they ask an awkward or unknowingly inappropriate question. We all know what she’s saying is ridiculous, but the strength of her conviction is comforting and solves the issue, at least temporarily.
My mom takes a deep breath that sounds like part of the yoga routine she used to do in the living room when she had to tuck her arms and legs around her body in ways that did not seem remotely relaxing or meditative. Then she lets out a laugh so loud I can’t tell if it’s the breeze from the open window or the “whoop” that comes out of her that blows my hair back.
