I sit up and look around.
Then I hear the yelling.
The voices are muffled so I can’t make out the words, but there are definitely two of them. Another thump; what sounds like glass breaking; a shout; another shout; then a door slams so hard, the walls of my apartment shake.
After a few seconds of silence so loud I wanna cover my ears, there’s a knock on my door, and I stop breathing.
Do I answer? Surely Jessica’s at cheer practice or student council or something…could that be her mom? Who does she even live with?
Another knock.
I take a deep breath and go to the door. Look through the peephole…
Pull back. Puzzled.
“Hey,” Jessica says as I open. She’s got her purse on her shoulder and keys in her hand, but her eyes are super red.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She sniffles. “Not really. You, umm…you busy?”
“No.” I peek over my shoulder at our overworn carpet and dingy furniture. “You wanna come in?”
She shakes her head. “I’m gonna go out.”
“Okay…” So why is she here? Which must be written all over my face because the next thing she says is:
“I want you to come with me.”
“You do?”
“Yes, please. Grab your stuff and meet me at my car?”
I look her over—Nike from head to toe beneath her North Face puffy coat. No idea how she affords that stuff when she lives here, but at any rate, I’m wearing a plaid shirt over a black tank and high-waisted ripped Levi’s from like the eighties—all thrifted—with my secondhand Doc Martens, which are looking particularly grungy. “Should I change?”
“What?” She looks dumbfounded. “Are you kidding? You look perfect. Come on.” And she turns to head down the stairs.
After standing in the doorway, staring out into space for a few seconds, I go back in and scribble a quick note so Mama won’t worry: Went out with a friend. I toss on my trench coat, shove my wallet in my pocket, and step out to lock the door.
Then I jab myself in the palm with my key.
It hurts.
So not dreaming then. Okay. Down the stairs and around the bend to the parking lot I go. Jessica is sitting in the red two-seater Honda that’s rarely here (or so it seems). When I get in, she’s wearing a sweatshirt she didn’t have on before, zipped all the way up to her chin.
Odd.
“Cute car.” I fasten my seat belt.
She snorts. “Thing’s a deathtrap.” She pets the dashboard. “Pepper’s my baby, and I’m thankful for him, but one crash in this thing, and I’m a goner.”
“Ah. Comforting.”
She laughs. Hard. “Are you always this funny?”
“Not sure I’m the right person to ask?”
Now she’s smiling at me. Which makes me feel very warm. And also confused.
As I feel the corners of my own mouth lift, I look away.
“I totally see why Macklin’s into you,” she says.
And then we’re off.
I expect the silence in the car to be heavy, but it’s not. There’s something disarming about Jessica Barlow. Which catches me off guard considering she’s the prototypical hyperpopular high school homecoming queen (literally).
And now my wheels are spinning as fast as the ones on her car. Because why am I here? In the car of a girl I clearly know very little about. Going who the hell knows where. Just like Macklin, she didn’t exactly ask me to come with her. She…beckoned. (Though she did say please, at least.) And I went with it. Is it because she’s pretty and popular and rich-looking? Is it because she’s white?
I’ll admit I’m increasingly curious about her the more we interact—and fine: flattered she “wanted” me to join her—but like what am I actually doing here?
I don’t know how to navigate any of this.
She sticks a cord attached to the face of her radio into her phone, then holds the phone up to her face. “Migos, Rihanna, old-school ’NSYNC, or the Hamilton soundtrack?”
“Mmmm…you pick.”
She taps the screen, and we hang a left out of the complex as Justin Timberlake says, Dirty pop! And then my head is bobbing.
“I love this song,” I say.
“God, yes. Timberlake’s old now, but I’d totally have his babies if I weren’t so bent on having Ness’s. Can you grab the wheel for a sec?”
I do, and she reaches into her purse and pulls out…a shower cap?
Once she’s got all her luscious blond hair tucked into it, she rolls her window down and then reaches across me to pull a pack of Marlboro menthol cigarettes—I recognize the box from restocking them at the Gas ’n’ Go—out of the glove compartment. “You smoke?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Mind if I do?”
“No.” It’s her car, isn’t it?
“I don’t do it often because Ness won’t touch me if he can smell it, but after these fights with my mom I like…need the buzz, you know?”
I don’t, but I nod anyway.
This is almost an out-of-body experience.
“You mind rolling your window down? I’ll crank up the heat so we don’t freeze.”
I do as she asks, and she lights up. Takes a deep puff and blows the smoke out her window.
“She just like…God. You ever have moments when you wonder how you could possibly be your mother’s child?”
I shift in my seat. I’ve never talked to anyone about Mama and our issues, but the truth is, “Yeah. I have.”
“I know raising me by herself has been hard, but I’ve done my part, you know?” she goes on. “I’m a National Merit Finalist and on track to be the goddamn salutatorian. And that’s on top of being cheer captain, class prez, and holding down a part-time job since I turned sixteen.”
“Dang…”
“Right? But it’s like…not enough for her.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“She’s gotten into this thing where she’s always asking me for money. Says I have to start paying rent when I turn eighteen next month,” she says. “We got into it today because she found this bag of clothes I bought at work, and she went off about how I waste too much money on unnecessary things. First of all, it’s my money that I work for, and second, she doesn’t seem to get that I have to wear the brand.”