“I got you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
I take his hat off his head and pull it backwards onto mine again. “So much, Kai.”
He pretends to clip my jaw with his knuckles and then pulls his hand away. “Let’s go rescue those people from Dahlia.”
Chapter Twenty-One
So, Scott’s basement isn’t a basement.
It’s a furnished trailer in his backyard. I should have known it would be sus, because this is L.A. and this city wouldn’t know a basement if this were Evil Dead II.
I don’t like this feeling I get when I walk through the side gate behind Kai and into Scott Medina’s backyard.
We come up to the doublewide sitting on its bricks, essentially just waiting for a good stiff wind to dance up and knock it over. But I guess none of that matters—that is, our safety from rusty nails and tetanus—since Kai lets us in through the hanging-on-by-a-thread door.
Inside is a small group of people, but it’s not some circle of day-wasted alcoholic teens like I imagined it would be.
In reality, it’s just Dahlia playing a game of Speed with Scott, two other guys, and one other girl, and they’re … doing homework. The girl is easily the prettiest hippie I’ve ever seen. Her black hair is in two French braids that wrap around her head like a crown, and her cheekbones sit high on her face. Her dark brown skin is infused—I’m convinced—with a serum made of sunflowers and literal gold. She looks up as we enter and the first thing I notice are her dark, spiky giraffe lashes.
“Hey, Kai,” she says. She doesn’t say anything to me. It’s fine.
“Taze, that’s Victory. Victory, this is Tasia.”
I lift my hand, puppet-style, and amend, “Taze. Hey.” It’s awkward, in case that’s not clear.
The two guys are sitting across from each other, a textbook between them. Guy on the left is ginger as hell and stacked, if his shoulders and the width of his back are anything to go by, and dude on the right has a full head of thick, dark hair longer than all of ours put together. When he looks up at us entering, his smile is friendly and open, his eyes a little sharp and a lot knowing, set just so in his light brown face.
He says, “Nice job taking your time, Mr. Math Tutor.” But when it comes out, the emphasis on the N is hard and prolonged. The end of his sentence is full, with more of them, the hard consonants going on for a second or two.
Okay. Tourette’s. He has Tourette’s.
I smile at him because he’s still smiling at me and he gets up to introduce himself, whereas none of the others pay as much mind.
“I’m Sam, that ginger fucker is Cole. You any good with math, Taze?”
I nod but say, “What kind of math?”
“Trig,” Sam says, followed by a series of ticks.
“She’s in our class,” the ginger says. Cole.
Sam shrugs and looks guilty. “I didn’t see you, but that’s probably because I was sleeping through most of it.”
“That’s not gonna help you get any better at math,” I say, tucking my hands in my shallow back pockets.
Kai gives me a faux incredulous look and says, “Good point, T. Very logical. You’d think Sam might understand that and, I don’t know, stop sleeping through classes.”
My phone vibrates in my back pocket. I pull it out and see SLIM across it, but I send it to voicemail.
I can’t talk to her right now. This is the first time I’ve been able to put Mamma and Tristan and the box and yes, even Slim, out of my mind for a while. I want to preserve that a little longer.
“You’d think,” I say. And then I make room for myself next to Sam’s stuff and start explaining Pythagorean identities, while Kai walks over to Dahlia and Scott. Kai exchanges a few words with Scott.
“Moving boxes isn’t that hard,” Kai says.
“It is when you’re alone and it’s hot as hell outside,” Scott counters.
Victory shouts, “The average temperatures this week range from about seventy-eight degrees to eighty-one degrees. It’s not that hot, Scott.”
“Nobody asked you, Vic.”
She mimics him. “Nobody asked you, Vic. Crybaby.”
“I’ll help you,” Kai says. “Let’s do it now.”
“Now?” Scott says.
“Yeah. What else we got going on?”
Scott shrugs. It’s obvious he just doesn’t want to do it.
Kai’s already standing, taking charge, helping just because.
My heart does A Thing.
I’m a mess and it’s all this boy’s fault.
“You’re not even dressed for that,” Scott says. “The boxes are all the way upstairs. They’re heavy. And dusty.”
“So?” Kai says.
So the two of them leave the trailer and walk across the way, and with the door of the trailer wide open, I have a clear view of them lifting heavy box after heavy box and carting them into the garage. For the next thirty minutes, I watch them trek through the grass, disappearing into the house and back into the garage. I can see the sheen of sweat on them both, and it’s a miracle I’m able to focus on lengths and angles of triangles at the same time.
As I’m helping Sam, Cole, and Victory with the Trig homework I already did in class, Kai and Scott walk back into the trailer. Kai doesn’t speak to me. In fact, he goes out of his way to not speak to us at all, really, which I chalk up to his not wanting to disturb us. But I can’t help the fact that I keep looking over at him and Dahlia, trying to gauge how close they are in proximity to each other. How covert their touches get. How they move around each other in this small space, like poetry.
For the most part, it’s pretty innocent. Until Dahlia leans over and bites Kai’s shoulder and he leans over and smiles at her and, I mean, if there’s a way to look at someone that is “intimate” then I’d wager that is his exact look right now, and I make this weird, wounded animal croak as I turn away from them.
Victory catches my eye and announces loudly, “Tasia, can you French braid? One of mine’s coming loose and I need help redoing it.”
“You asking me because I’m Black?”
She’s quiet and then looks at me and deadpans, “No. That’s a stupid stereotype and I asked you because Dahlia doesn’t even have hair to braid and you’re the only other girl here, so if anything, I’m being sexist, not racist. So can you help me or not?”
I don’t say anything about how my mamma has thoughts about Black people and their inability to be racist; they lack the privilege. Mamma made sure Trist and I knew that. Black people can be prejudicial, but a subjugated group can’t be racist.
I honestly don’t think saying any of that will gain me friends, though, so instead I nod and follow her into the trailer’s bathroom. We squeeze inside, and as soon as I start to reach for her hair, she slaps my hand away and whisper-hisses, “My hair’s fine. Listen, whatever little crush you’ve got on Kai? Lock it up, girl.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Shhh!”
“Sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whisper.
“Aha. But listen, you don’t have to confirm or deny, but whatever he’s doing or half doing with Dahlia isn’t a thing you wanna deal with. It’s just drama, girl. Just mind your Ps and Qs.”
I smile a little. “My mamma says that all the time. Ps and Qs.”
She laughs. “Mine too.”
“So Kai and Dahlia?”
She shrugs. “I mean, they used to date last year. Broke up for whatever reason. There’s a rumor that Kai didn’t want to deal with her because she’s never serious about anything and he wanted more with her.”
Makes sense. “So he doesn’t have a girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend? No.”
“And he may or may not be hooking up with Dahlia.”
“Safe bet they’re doing the beast with two backs regularly.”
Great. I feel sick. I want to go home. I hate that I feel th
is way. Jealousy is not my shit. This whole week has thrown me way off-balance, and this thing with Dahlia and Kai is just making it worse.
I wrap my arm over the top of my hair to pull it back off my face.
“I’m not saying I want to be your best friend or anything,” Victory says, “but if you want to leave, I’ll go with you. I got a ride with Sam, but I don’t live far from here if you wanna drop me off?”
“I’ll owe you.”
“Solidarity and shit, you know?”
Yeah. I know.
I miss Slim.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nobody questions us when we say we’re leaving.
I drop Victory off at a one-story house in a quiet neighborhood not far from Scott’s. Her house is yellow, and the paint over the garage is peeling, and the grass is all but dead. But who I presume to be her mom meets her at the door and I watch as she points back at me and smiles. Her mom high-fives her and then waves me over. I put my car in park, take the key out of the ignition, but before I can get out and head up the walkway, Victory meets me at my passenger-side window, stops me, says, “One day, Kai is gonna mess up. He’s going to get caught up the way he always does and he’s going to drop the ball with you. I’ve known Kai since seventh grade and that’s just the way he is. It’s going to happen.”
Fumble, I think. That’s a fumble in football.
She continues, “Because I can already see what’s happening. When he does? Come find me.” She pulls a pad of neon Post-Its out of her bag, writes “Victory” and then jots down ten digits, no dashes or spaces between, shoving it inside my cup holder.
And then we walk inside her house, holding hands with silence. And I don’t question any part of what she just said to me, even though I want to.
“This is Tasia. She’s new at school,” Victory says to her mom.
Her mom is all cheekbones. All long arms and solid Tina Turner muscle and when she hugs me she squeezes me so tight, I can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe, please don’t let go—
She does.
“Tasia is a beautiful name, sugar.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
I don’t know Victory’s last name and her mom doesn’t tell me to call her by her first name, because, honestly, no Black mom is gonna tell you to do that unless she basically raised you.
Her mom invites me inside, and even though I’m still bummed out from this thing with Kai and Dahlia and still want to go home, I accept and cross the threshold. It smells like cinnamon. I don’t see much of the house except for the hallway that leads off to the kitchen, where Vic and I sit at their rickety wooden table.
Above the stove is a metal plaque with “The Du Bois Family” etched into it.
Du Bois. Victory Du Bois. It’s French Creole, like Mamma.
“Tasia plays football,” Victory says.
I preen a little. I am the new doll she’s brought to school to show off to all who don’t also have that same new doll.
“At the school?”
Hopefully.
“Not yet,” Victory says. “But they can’t keep her off the team, right? Is that legal?”
“I don’t know, baby.” Mrs. Du Bois cracks an egg in a pound of ground meat she’s slopped into a bowl.
“Someone told you about that? What happened with the coach?” I clarify.
Victory nod-shrugs. “Kai” is all she says in answer. It’s really all I needed to know.
“So, football, huh?” Mrs. Du Bois says. “That’s a rough sport for a little girl.”
It’s rough for anyone. “I work hard.”
“Good for you, baby. We always tried to get Tory in a sport. I played tennis all through college. I was good in my little tennis skirts, too.”
I think she’s talking about not-tennis.
Thirty minutes at that table and I can tell Victory’s getting tired of me. I’m not trying to brown-nose to her mom, but I can’t help it. I’m halfway between wanting to be best friends with Vic and asking her mom to adopt me. I don’t know which one I want more. I kind of want them both.
But I get it—Black moms, they’re so hypercritical. The second you bring another Black kid home who’s successful in ways you aren’t or don’t care to be, is the second they feel perfectly validated in bringing up your shortcomings.
Mamma does it with me and all my cousins.
Oh, did I tell you your cousin Damita is graduating with honors this year? Be nice if we could see some of that from you, Tasia.
It’s hard not to hate being around your own cousins at that point.
“You didn’t like tennis, Victory? I play a little with my parents. There’s a bunch of courts at the country club my dad belongs to. I could teach you?”
“No.”
Ooookay. “What do you like, then?”
“Tory likes TV.”
“Film,” Victory says. The part I hear but she doesn’t voice is the missing “goddammit.” Film, goddammit.
“Movies,” Mrs. Du Bois says, stirring a pot of something that smells a little like magic.
“Okay, Mom.”
Mrs. Du Bois cuts a look at Vic but doesn’t say anything. I almost laugh because it’s a look that is so my mamma that I don’t know how to handle it. It is a look that says, “Watch your tongue in front of company—I’m still within snatching distance.”
After that, Victory looks at me, chucks her head at the door. Time for you to leave, basically.
I do. I don’t want to. I almost want to ask her why she’s sending me away. What I did, how I can fix it, even though I know what’s done is done.
Mrs. Du Bois walks me to the door and Victory hangs back in the entryway.
Her mom waves. Vic doesn’t. I wave back, smile even though it’s a lie, and then shift my Jeep into drive and head home.
By the time I make it home, it’s five and Merrick is also home. His Bose stereo system is blaring some loud, classical thing, and I have to yell over it in order to get him to turn it down and eventually off.
“Oh, hey, kiddo,” he says.
“This is your idea of a party?” I ask, dropping my book bag on the couch and picking up a nectarine from the fruit bowl on the table. I wash it in the sink and take a paring knife to it.
“This is how I get turned up.”
“Oh my God, stop.”
“What? Oh, you don’t want me to say ‘turned up’? I turn up so loud—”
“Merrick.”
He turns up the volume on his music again to, I don’t know, prove his point maybe, and then he starts to yell over it. “I turned up the volume—”
“Stop!” I rush over to his stereo and try to turn it down, but he beats me there and grabs the tiny remote.
“… so I could turn up my ‘tude, T!”
I’m choking because we’ve reached that point where he’s now waltzing alone around the apartment.
“All these Ts, I’m so turned up! And tuned in!”
Groaning, I fall on the couch and bury my head under one of the throw pillows. Merrick falls next to me after he realizes I’m refusing to play, music lowered now.
“How was school?” he says, and reaches for my nectarine. I bite and then hand it to him and he does the same, handing it back.
“Was good. I saw Kai. Met some of his friends after school.”
He nods. “Oh, that’s good. Make any friends of your own?”
I nod and shrug. Parents do not ask this question. They just don’t. But, again, Merrick’s new here. So I lie and I don’t think he knows it. Mamma and Daddy would have sniffed it out immediately.
Merrick blows out a long, breathy sigh. “Tasia. Kiddo, have you spoken to your m—”
The door bursts open. “What’s for dinner? I’m hungry as hell.”
“Go home, El Khoury,” Merrick deadpans.
Kai pulls the fruit from my hand, bites, and doesn’t give it back. “You tell him about football yet?”
“Tasia, you made the ECR football team, kid? T
hat’s great. Knew you’d do well here.”
“I didn’t.”
“What?”
“She ain’t make the team, Merr. The coach is a sexist prick. I’m not shocked he treated her like shit.”
“That’s bullshit,” Merrick says. I like it when he swears. You can hear a little of the Frenchman in him when he does. It makes me wonder how long he lived in France before coming here.
“You’re not wrong,” Kai says.
I clear my throat. “Yeah, well, I thought maybe if you talked to my dad … I think, if we can get legal involved, the coach will have to let me try out?”
Merrick’s already shaking his head. “Screw that. I’ll handle this, and we’ll do it without legal threats.”
Kai flexes behind Merrick’s back and then points at him and shakes his head, laughing.
I shake my head back at him, listening as Merrick walks into the kitchen and starts chopping veggies for dinner with the phone to his ear.
“Have fun with Vic today?” Kai drops down next to me on the couch.
I reach for the nectarine but he holds it high above his head, daring me to reach for it. I don’t give in and instead say, “Victory’s cool.”
He smiles knowingly. “She is,” he says. “I think Dahl’s a little obsessed with you, though.”
“I think she’s a lot obsessed with you, to be honest.”
“Nah. That’s just D. We been friends a long time.”
“More than friends?”
“No, I told you—”
“But, before. You guys, y’know”—I raise my eyebrows—“with each other?”
He lifts a shoulder. I notice his ugly purple hat is missing. I wonder if Dahlia has it on her head. “Yeah, I guess,” he says.
I guess.
“Dahlia was … she’s like a magnet, you know? She’s just as hard not to be around as she is to be around. If that makes any sense at all.”
Too much sense.
I pick at a hangnail that’s been harassing my thumb for a week. “What did you like about her?”
He laughs with the kind of amusement you give a child you’re humoring. “Dahlia just got stuff done. She wanted it, she went for it. No ifs, ands, or buts. Even if it wasn’t necessarily good for her.”
Home and Away Page 12
