Chris knocks on the window. “Starr, c’mon.” He puts his hands against the window like they’re binoculars and he’s trying to look through the tint. “Can we talk?”
“Oh, now you wanna talk to me?”
“You’re the one who wouldn’t talk to me!” He bows his head, pressing his forehead against the glass. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the witness they’ve been talking about?”
He asks it softly, but it’s hard as a sucker punch in the gut.
He knows.
I unlock the door and scoot over. Chris climbs in next to me.
“How did you find out?” I ask.
“The interview. Watched it with my parents.”
“They didn’t show my face though.”
“I knew your voice, Starr. And then they showed the back of you as you walked with that interview lady, and I’ve watched you walk away enough to know what you look like from the back, and . . . I sound like a pervert, don’t I?”
“So you knew me by my ass?”
“I . . . yeah.” His face goes red. “But that wasn’t all. Everything made sense, like how upset you got about the protest and about Khalil. Not that that wasn’t stuff to get upset about, ’cause it was, but it—” He sighs. “I’m sinking here, Starr. I just knew it was you. And it was, wasn’t it?”
I nod.
“Babe, you should’ve told me. Why would you keep something like that from me?”
I tilt my head. “Wow. I saw someone get murdered, and you’re acting like a brat ’cause I didn’t tell you?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“But you think about that for a second,” I say. “Tonight you could hardly say two words to me because I didn’t tell you about one of the worst experiences of my life. You ever seen somebody die?”
“No.”
“I’ve seen it twice.”
“And I didn’t know that!” he says. “I’m your boyfriend, and I didn’t know any of that.” He looks at me, the same hurt in his eyes like there was when I snatched my hands away weeks ago. “There’s this whole part of your life that you’ve kept from me, Starr. We’ve been together over a year now, and you’ve never mentioned Khalil, who you claim was your best friend, or this other person you saw die. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”
My breath catches. “It’s—it’s not like that.”
“Really?” he says. “Then what is it like? What are we? Just Fresh Prince and fooling around?”
“No.” My lips tremble, and my voice is small. “I . . . I can’t share that part of me here, Chris.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I croak. “People use it against me. Either I’m poor Starr who saw her friend get killed in a drive-by, or Starr the charity case who lives in the ghetto. That’s how the teachers act.”
“Okay, I get not telling people around school,” he says. “But I’m not them. I would never use that against you. You once told me I’m the only person you could be yourself around at Williamson, but the truth is you still didn’t trust me.”
I’m one second away from ugly crying. “You’re right,” I say. “I didn’t trust you. I didn’t want you to just see me as the girl from the ghetto.”
“You didn’t even give me the chance to prove you wrong. I wanna be there for you. You gotta let me in.”
God. Being two different people is so exhausting. I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it. As much as I say I don’t have to choose which Starr I am with Chris, maybe without realizing it, I have to an extent. Part of me feels like I can’t exist around people like him.
I am not gonna cry, I am not gonna cry, I am not gonna cry.
“Please?” he says.
That does it. Everything starts spilling out.
“I was ten. When my other friend died,” I say, staring at the French tips on my nails. “She was ten too.”
“What was her name?” he asks.
“Natasha. It was a drive-by. It’s one of the reasons my parents put me and my brothers in Williamson. It was the closest they could get to protecting us a little more. They bust their butts for us to go to that school.”
Chris doesn’t say anything. I don’t need him to.
I take a shaky breath and look around. “You don’t know how crazy it is that I’m even sitting in this car,” I say. “A Rolls freaking Royce. I used to live in the projects in a one-bedroom apartment. I shared the room with my brothers, and my parents slept on a fold-out couch.”
The details of life back then are suddenly fresh. “The apartment smelled like cigarettes all the damn time,” I say. “Daddy smoked. Our neighbors above us and next to us smoked. I had so many asthma attacks, it ain’t funny. We only kept canned goods in the cabinets ’cause of the rats and roaches. Summers were always too hot, and winters too cold. We had to wear coats inside and outside.
“Sometimes Daddy sold food stamps to buy clothes for us,” I say. “He couldn’t get a job for the longest time, ’cause he’s an ex-con. When he got hired at the grocery store, he took us to Taco Bell, and we ordered whatever we wanted. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Almost better than the day we moved out the projects.”
Chris cracks a small smile. “Taco Bell is pretty awesome.”
“Yeah.” I look at my hands again. “He let Khalil come with us to Taco Bell. We were struggling, but Khalil was like our charity case. Everybody knew his momma was a crackhead.”
I feel the tears coming. Fuck, I’m sick of this. “We were real close back then. He was my first kiss, first crush. Before he died, we weren’t as close anymore. I mean, I hadn’t seen him in months and . . .” I’m ugly crying. “And it’s killing me because he was going through so much shit, and I wasn’t there for him anymore.”
Chris thumbs my tears away. “You can’t blame yourself.”
“But I do,” I say. “I could’ve stopped him from selling drugs. Then people wouldn’t be calling him a thug. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you; I wanted to, but everybody who knows I was in the car acts like I’m made out of glass. You treated me normal. You were my normal.”
I’m an absolute mess right now. Chris takes my hand and pulls me onto his lap so I’m straddling him. I bury my face in his shoulder and cry like a big-ass baby. His tux is wet, my makeup is ruined. Awful.
“I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing my back. “I was an ass tonight.”
“You were. But you’re my ass.”
“I’ve been watching myself walk away?”
I look at him and seriously punch his arm. He laughs and the sound of it makes me laugh. “You know what I mean! You’re my normal. And that’s all that matters.”
“All that matters.” He smiles.
I hold his cheek and let my lips reintroduce themselves to his. Chris’s are soft and perfect. They taste like fruit punch too.
Chris pulls back with a gentle tug to my bottom lip. He presses his forehead against mine and looks at me. “I love you.”
The “I” has appeared. My response is easy. “I love you too.”
Two loud knocks against the window startle us. Seven presses his face against the glass. “Y’all bet’ not be doing nothing!”
The best way to get turned all the way off? Have your brother show up.
“Seven, leave them alone,” Layla whines behind him. “We were about to dance, remember?”
“That can wait. I gotta make sure he’s not getting some from my sister.”
“You won’t get any if you don’t stop acting so ridiculous!” she says.
“I don’t care. Starr, get out this car. I ain’t playing!”
Chris laughs into my bare shoulder. “Did your dad tell him to keep an eye on you?”
Knowing Daddy . . . “Probably so.”
He kisses my shoulder and his lips linger there a few seconds. “Are we good now?”
I peck him back on the lips. “We’re good.”
“Good. Let’s go dance.”
We get out the car, and Seven yells about us sneaking off and threatens to tell Daddy. Layla pulls him back inside as he says, “And if she push out a little Chris in nine months, we gon’ have a problem, partna!”
Ridiculous. Re-damn-diculous.
The music is still bumping inside. I try not to laugh as Chris really does turn the Nae-Nae into a No-No. Maya and Ryan join us on the dance floor, and they give me these “What the hell?” looks at Chris’s moves. I shrug and go with it.
Toward the end of a song, Chris leans down to my ear and says, “I’ll be right back.”
He disappears into the crowd. I don’t think anything of it until about a minute later when his voice comes over the speakers, and he’s next to the DJ in the booth.
“Hey, everybody,” he says. “My girl and I had a fight earlier.”
Oh, Lord. He’s telling all of our business. I look at my Chucks and shield my face.
“And I wanted to do this song, our song, to show you how much I love you and care about you, Fresh Princess.”
A bunch of girls go, “Awww!” His boys whoop and cheer. I’m thinking, please don’t let him sing. Please. But there’s this familiar boomp . . . boomp, boomp, boomp.
“Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down,” Chris raps. “And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air.”
I smile way too hard. Our song. I rap along with him, and mostly everyone joins in. Even the teachers. At the end, I cheer louder than anybody.
Chris comes back down, and we laugh and hug and kiss. Then we dance and take silly selfies, flooding dashboards and timelines around the world. When prom is over, we let Maya, Ryan, Jess, and some of our other friends ride with us to IHOP. Everybody has somebody on their lap. At IHOP, we eat way too many pancakes and dance to songs on the jukebox. I don’t think about Khalil or Natasha.
It’s one of the best nights of my life.
EIGHTEEN
On Sunday, my parents take me and my brothers on a trip.
It seems like a normal visit to Uncle Carlos’s house until we pass his neighborhood. A little over five minutes later, a brick sign surrounded by colorful shrubs welcomes us to Brook Falls.
Single-story brick houses line freshly paved streets. Black kids, white kids, and everything in between play on the sidewalks and in yards. Open garage doors show all of the junk inside, and bikes and scooters lay abandoned in yards. Nobody’s worried about their stuff getting stolen in the middle of the day.
It reminds me of Uncle Carlos’s neighborhood yet it’s different. For one, there’s no gate around it, so they’re not keeping anyone out or in, but obviously people feel safe. The houses are smaller, more homey looking. And straight up? There are more people who look like us compared to Uncle Carlos’s neighborhood.
Daddy pulls into the driveway of a brown-brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Bushes and small trees decorate the yard, and a cobblestone walkway leads up to the front door.
“C’mon, y’all,” Daddy says.
We hop out, stretching and yawning. Those forty-five-minute drives aren’t a joke. A chubby black man waves at us from the driveway next door. We wave back and follow my parents up the walkway. Through the glass of the front door, the house appears empty.
“Whose house is this?” Seven asks.
Daddy unlocks the door. “Hopefully ours.”
When we go inside, we’re standing in the living room. There’s a strong stench of paint and polished hardwood floors. Two halls, one on each side, lead away from the living room. The kitchen is right off from the living room with white cabinets, granite countertops, and stainless-steel appliances.
“We wanted you guys to see it,” Momma says. “Look around.”
I can’t lie, I’m afraid to move. “This is our house?”
“Like I said, we hope so,” Daddy replies. “We’re waiting for the mortgage to be approved.”
“Can we afford it?” Seven asks.
Momma raises an eyebrow. “Yes, we can.”
“But like down payments and stuff—”
“Seven!” I hiss. He’s always in somebody’s business.
“We got everything taken care of,” Daddy says. “We’ll rent the house in the Garden out, so that’s gon’ help with the monthly payments. Plus . . .” He looks at Momma with this sly grin that’s kinda adorable, I gotta admit.
“I got the nurse manager job at Markham,” she says, smiling. “I start in two weeks.”
“For real?” I say, and Seven goes, “Whoa,” while Sekani shouts, “Momma’s rich!”
“Boy, ain’t nobody rich,” Daddy says. “Calm down.”
“But this helps,” says Momma. “A lot.”
“Daddy, you’re okay with us living out here with the fake people?” Sekani asks.
“Where you get that from, Sekani?” Momma says.
“Well, that’s what he always says. That people out here are fake, and that Garden Heights is real.”
“Yeah, he does say that,” says Seven.
I nod. “All. The. Time.”
Momma folds her arms. “Care to explain, Maverick?”
“I don’t say it that much—”
“Yeah, you do,” the rest of us say.
“A’ight, I say it a lot. I may not have been one hundred percent right on all of this—”
Momma coughs, but there’s a “Ha” hidden in it.
Daddy glares at her. “But I realize being real ain’t got anything to do with where you live. The realest thing I can do is protect my family, and that means leaving Garden Heights.”
“What else?” Momma questions, like he’s being grilled in front of the class.
“And that living in the suburbs don’t make you any less black than living in the hood.”
“Thank you,” she says with a satisfied smile.
“Now are y’all gon’ look around or what?” Daddy asks.
Seven hesitates to move, and since he’s hesitant, Sekani is too. But shoot, I want first dibs on a room. “Where are the bedrooms?”
Momma points to the hall on the left. I guess Seven and Sekani realize why I asked. The three of us exchange looks.
We rush for the hall. Sekani gets there first, and it’s not my best moment, but I sling his scrawny butt back.
“Mommy, she threw me!” he whines.
I beat Seven to the first room. It’s bigger than my current room but not as big as I want. Seven reaches the second one, looks around, and I guess he doesn’t like it. That leaves the third room as the biggest one, and it’s at the end of the hall.
Seven and I race for it, and it’s like Harry Potter versus Cedric Diggory trying to get to the Goblet of Fire. I grab Seven’s shirt, stretching it until I have a good enough grip to pull him back and get ahead of him. I beat him to the room and open the door.
And it’s smaller than the first one.
“I call dibs!” Sekani shouts. He shimmies in the doorway of the first room, the biggest of the three.
Seven and I rock, paper, scissor it for the second-biggest room. Seven always goes with rock or paper, so I easily win.
Daddy leaves to get lunch, and Momma shows us the rest of the house. My brothers and I have to share a bathroom again. Sekani’s finally learned aim etiquette and the art of flushing, so it’s fine, I guess. The master suite is on the other hallway. There’s a laundry room, an unfinished basement, and a two-car garage. Momma says we’ll get a basketball hoop on wheels. We can keep it in the garage, roll it in front of the house, and play in the cul-de-sac sometimes. A wooden fence surrounds the backyard, and there’s plenty of space for Daddy’s garden and Brickz.
“Brickz can come out here, right?” I ask.
“Of course. We aren’t gonna leave him.”
Daddy brings burgers and fries, and we eat on the kitchen floor. It’s super quiet out here. Dogs bark sometimes, but wall-rattling
music and gunshots? Not happening.
“So, we’re gonna close in the next few weeks or so,” Momma says, “but since it’s the end of the school year, we’ll wait until you guys are out for summer to move.”
“’Cause moving ain’t no joke,” Daddy adds.
“Hopefully, we can get settled in before you go off to college, Seven,” Momma says. “Plus it gives you a chance to make your room yours, so you can have it for holidays and the summer.”
Sekani slurps his milk shake and says with a mouth full of froth, “Seven said he’s not going to college.”
Daddy says, “What?”
Seven glares at Sekani. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to college. I said I wasn’t going away to college. I’m going to Central Community so I can be around for Kenya and Lyric.”
“Oh, hell no,” Daddy says.
“You can’t be serious,” says Momma.
Central Community is the junior college on the edge of Garden Heights. Some people call it Garden Heights High 2.0 ’cause so many people from Garden High go there and take the same drama and bullshit with them.
“They have engineering classes,” Seven argues.
“But they don’t have the same opportunities as those schools you applied to,” Momma says. “Do you realize what you’re passing up? Scholarships, internships—”
“The chance for me to finally have a Seven-free life,” I add, and slurp my milk shake.
“Who asked you?” Seven says.
“Yo’ momma.”
Low blow, I know, but that response comes naturally. Seven flicks a fry at me. I block it and come this close to flipping him off, but Momma says, “You bet’ not!” and I lower my finger.
“Look, you not responsible for your sisters,” Daddy says, “but I’m responsible for you. And I ain’t letting you pass up opportunities so you can do what two grown-ass people supposed to do.”
“A dollar, Daddy,” Sekani points out.
“I love that you look out for Kenya and Lyric,” Daddy tells Seven, “but there’s only so much you can do. You can choose whatever college you want, and you’ll be successful. But you choose because that’s where you wanna be. Not because you trying to do somebody else’s job. You hear me?”