At-Risk (13 page)

“Heather, that's who.”

“I heard she broke up with him.”

“For the coxswain? That's like way over.”

“What happened?”

“He dumped her for a girl from Chapin.”

Two toilets flushed simultaneously. By the time Taylor and Ashley emerged, I'd whipped out my Carmex and pretended to be carefully moisturizing, all thoughts of fixing my skirt gone. They washed their hands and walked out without looking at me.

Once they left, Heather came out of her stall.

Moments like these were common. They happened several times during the day—self-reflective moments where girls met in between classes, gathering in bathrooms and on stairways to consider the grave issues of the times and their place in the world. Usually the person being discussed wasn't present.

Heather was still standing there. Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “It's not true, you know.”

“What?”

“I never went out with that guy. Never even kissed him. He was a total turd.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

She scrutinized me. “You're in my class.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you know about the party on West Ninety-first this Friday?”

“At Trinity?”

“Are you going?”

I pretended to give the question some thought. The parties were hosted by coed private day schools who issued invitations to certain schools, who then issued memberships to certain students. She knew I couldn't go. The memberships were a subtle way of excluding the undesirables. The membership lists went out in sixth grade. The scholarship girls who came in through the enrichment programs started in seventh grade. There was no way ever to be included on the lists, unless someone sponsored me, which no one ever did. I had no plans to go to the party this Friday or any other Friday and she knew it.

“I wasn't planning on it,” I said.

“Oh. Do you know how to do that new dance they're doing?” she asked me. “You know the one that goes like this.” Heather's gyrations resembled nothing I could identify.

“Um no, I can't say that I know that one,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Maybe I'm doing it wrong,” she said.

“Maybe.”

“It's called running something.”

“The running man?”

“That's it!” She touched my arm. “Do you know it?”

“Sure.”

“Can you show me?”

I looked around. “Here? In the bathroom?”

“Yeah.” Heather smiled at me, warm and eager. I really didn't want to. I wasn't a very good dancer and I didn't like to perform. At home, I would sing only in the shower, and I danced at house parties only when the lights were very low. But I danced for her, awkward at first, since there was no music, but she didn't seem to notice or mind. Once I started dancing, her eyes never met mine. They were riveted instead to my legs and feet. I had a feeling she wanted to take notes.

“That looks so hard,” she said.

“It's not,” I huffed. I danced harder, wanting to show off. I was silently repeating the words of a popular song in my head to give myself a beat. I danced harder as I tried to incorporate moves I'd seen on
Video Music Box
, getting ahead of myself and quickly losing the beat. A video diva I had never been, watching videos only on Saturdays when my mother was out. I was losing my rhythm and running out of breath when she finally said, “Wow. You're good. Really, really good.”

I stopped and took a deep breath. I smiled. “Thanks.”

That evening, our phone rang, something it hardly ever did. My mother eyed the phone suspiciously, letting it ring three times before picking up. “Hello?” she answered warily, frowning at the unseen offender who'd interrupted her silence.

“Yes, hold on.” She held the phone out to me. “It's for you?” I ignored the question in her voice and grabbed it.

“Hi, it's me.”

“Hi. It's Heather,” she said, as if I wouldn't know her voice.

“Hey.”

Who is it?
my mother mouthed silently.

Heather
, I mouthed back.
From school
.

It had been my mother's idea to put me in the enrichment program that had given me a scholarship for the all-girl's school, a decision she'd come to regret in the face of my loneliness and unpopularity. Now, she hovered and tried to listen in, filled with hope.

Heather's excitement came through, giddy and loud. “You're coming! You are so coming,” she shrieked into my ear.

“What are you talking about?”

“The party this Friday. Did you forget?”

“No, I remember.”

“Well, I got you in. I sponsored you,” she said. There was a pause in her voice, as if she was waiting for something.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You don't sound excited.”

“I am.”

“You are going to go, right?”

I didn't answer. I was taking my time to think about it. Although she'd sponsored me, there was still the question of clothing. I had nothing suitable to wear. The dance would also end late and I didn't think my mother would want me riding home from Manhattan to Brooklyn that late at night by myself. “Well—”

“Nadira is going,” Heather said, as if it made a difference.

Nadira was the other black girl in our class. She'd been at the school since kindergarten. There were a number of affluent black and Asian girls in my school, and we claimed no kinship with one another. If I closed my eyes and listened to them speak, I wouldn't know they weren't white. Though Nadira and I belonged to the same race, she had more in common with the white girls. She and they lived in the same neighborhoods, had the same friends, values, and ideals. They listened to z100 and sang classical in the choir. Like the white girls, she could not dance. I couldn't either, but no one knew that. They all took it for granted that I could.

“I'd like to, but I don't think my mom will let me because it ends so late.”

“Tell her that's no problem. I wanted you to stay over. I'm having a little get-together at my house after the dance. You know, an after-the-party party. Just a couple of girls. A sleepover. Taylor. Maya. Ashley and maybe some others. Ask your mom if it's okay.”

I held the receiver to my chest. “Mom? Heather wants to know if it's okay if I sleep over at her house this Friday.” Heather lived in a penthouse on Ninety-fifth and Park. Of course it was okay.

Heather invited me to sit with her at lunch the next day. Four girls smiled at me as I sat, and then they continued on with their discussions.

“I have this body suit and I'm going to wear it with my white jeans,” Maya said. The other girls nodded their approval.

“You should wear your hair half up and half down,” Heather told her.

“I don't have anything to wear. I'm going to need something new,” Taylor said.

“Let's go to the Gap after class today and find something,” Ashley suggested.

They were all wearing fleeced pullovers in different colors from L.L. Bean or Patagonia over their collared blouses and they were wearing heather gray leggings beneath their pleated skirts. None of them had on socks. Their feet were bare in their loafers, docksiders, and bluchers.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom. There, I peeled off my socks. Ashley followed behind me. When I stood up, socks in hand, she said, “Um, do you think you could show me the dance you showed Heather?”

The next day, I was back in the bathroom, showing five new girls. For the next two days, Heather brought girls to me and we took them into the bathroom to teach them the steps. For the next two days, I danced and danced on the cold white tiles while white girls
leaned against sinks and stall doors and watched. The dancing, I thought, brought me respect and admiration. Through it, I was redeeming myself in their eyes. I was, after all these years, good for something.

The day before the dance, Heather caught me on my way out to the train station. “I've been meaning to tell you this. About the party on Friday.” Hands jammed into her jacket pockets, she stood on one foot, the other snaked around her calf, rubbing the back of her leg with the toe of her shoe.

My stomach tightened. Now she'd tell me it had all been a joke. They'd been teasing me. Making me feel as though I fit in was a prank some upperclasswoman had put them up to. “What about it?”

“Well, I know I told you there were just going to be girls at the party, but I wanted to make sure you'd come. There are going to be a few guys there, too. Don't worry, they're cool. They're guys I know from St. Bernard's, Allen-Stevenson, Buckley, and Collegiate.”

“But—”

“They're going to sleep in the den. We'll meet them at the party and they'll come back with us. Is that cool?”

“Yeah,” I said, relieved that her groundbreaking news had nothing to do with me.

“Good. Look, the girls and I chipped in on this. We were wondering if you could score us some weed? We want to have some real fun. I hope this is enough,” Heather said, pressing crinkly bills into my hand. She patted my arm and stepped off the curb to hail a cab to take her home. I clutched the money in my hand, walked down Lexington to catch the four train, and rode home.

When I got home that night, I searched in my mother's sewing basket until I found her seam ripper. I removed the deadly thing and
carefully pulled off the stitches surrounding the little horse on the back pocket of my jeans.

I changed into these jeans, a trial run for the real test tomorrow. I was surprised to see myself in regular clothes. I changed shirts and threw on a light jacket. I counted out the money Heather had given me, folded it neatly, and slipped it into my pocket.

“Where are you going?” my mother asked when she saw me at the door.

“Out.”

She didn't ask for any further explanation. Something had changed between us ever since the phone call. My blossoming friendships pleased her. My mother was as happy as if the invitation had been extended to her. Just yesterday, she'd put her hand on my shoulder while I was washing dishes. “I just want you to be happy,” she'd said, her guilt now assuaged.

There was a store two blocks away that I knew was just a front. I'd gone in once to buy snacks and everything they sold me was expired, stale. I pushed through the door and walked in. One teenager hunched over an arcade game and two lounged against the corners of the wall. Twenty-five-cent bags of popcorn, potato chips, and cheese curls, ten-cent lollipops, and five-cent Peanut Chews and pieces of Super Bubble were behind a counter covered in Plexiglas.

I walked up to the counter.

“Can I buy some weed here?”

I could feel everyone look at me. The man behind the counter squinted. He cleared his throat. He took a long time before he spoke. “We got soda and chips. What you see, that's what we got.”

“But I want to buy some weed,” I said. “I have money.”

“We sell candy, soda, and chips,” he said. “You wanna buy some candy?”

I didn't know what else do to. I was frustrated, wanting to argue.
He knew it was a weed spot; I knew it was a weed spot. Was there some magic word I needed to say, some secret code that would let him know I meant business?

I pulled my money out and held it up to the Plexiglas. “Open sesame,” I said.

He shook his head. I walked out.

A minute later, I felt someone behind me. I turned. I recognized him from the store; he'd been playing Pac-Man. “What was you doing in there? You crazy or something?”

I walked faster. “Leave me alone.”

“That was real stupid. What, you not from around here?”

“I live here,” I told him.

He didn't believe me. “Where?”

“Miller and Pitkin.”

“I live on that block and I never seen you.”

“Well, I go to school,” I said.

His lips curled up then. They were full, made brown from smoking. His eyes were large, round, sleepy. He was older. Beautiful. I felt my mistake. “I didn't mean it like that.”

He walked by my side. “So why you wanna buy weed?”

“Just to try it,” I said. “For fun.”

“You ever smoke a blunt before?”

“I didn't want a blunt. I wanted a joint.”

He looked at me like I was stupid. “I was going to buy it for my friends,” I said. “They asked me to get it for a party.”

“So, you still want it?”

“Five dollars for a nickel bag, right?”

“You been watching too much
TV
,” he said.

He refused to give it to me out on the street.

“Let's take a walk.” We walked past my block and past the intermediate school to the park.

He stopped when we got to the swings. He sat down on one and backpedaled with his feet. “Come here.”

I stood between his legs; we were eye to eye.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“You don't need to know.”

He nodded. “So, you like white boys.”

“No,” I said.

“Black guys?”

“Nope.”

“Girls?” he asked, his voice filled with disbelief and excitement.

“I don't like anybody,” I said.

He pulled me toward him and kissed me. The faint sweet scent of smoke clung to his chin and I knew that I would smell of him. I had a feeling as if I were waiting in the subway for my train just before it pulls in and it was rushing down the track, blowing its dirty hot wind underneath my skirt, caressing the bare skin between pleats and socks. I tried to pull away but felt his hands cupping my butt, felt him slip the bag of weed into my back pocket. He turned me away from him, adjusting me so that I sat on his front thighs. Pretending to put his arms around me, he slipped his hands into my front pockets, seeking until he found my folded cash. Slick, I thought. Smooth. To anyone passing by, we looked like two fools making out in the park.