“Eucalyptus isn’t everything,” Blessing pointed out. “What about the rest of Lucille?”
Bitter shrugged. “It’s all on fire. What’s left out there?”
“Oh, come on. You can’t throw away a whole city just because it’s broken.”
They were in Blessing’s room, the television playing muted cartoons on the wall as the girls shared a bag of sour gummi worms. Bitter glanced out of the window and shook her head.
“It’s more than broken, Blessing. Actually,” she corrected herself, “it’s not even broken. It’s doing what it was meant to do: protecting those rich motherfuckers and killing everyone else. Allyuh acting like you could change that.”
“We can change it!” Blessing’s eyes were bright with something Bitter couldn’t find in herself. “What do you think Assata is out there fighting for? What do you think the old-timers fought for? We can make the mayor and the council listen to us.”
Bitter laughed, and the sound echoed her name. “This is Lucille. The mayor and the council eh matter. You and me both know who matters here.”
A flash of anger passed over Blessing’s face, but it wasn’t directed at Bitter. “Yeah,” she said. “Dian Theron and his fucking money.”
Bitter didn’t blame her friend for the snaking hatred that hissed through her voice. Dian Theron was a billionaire who owned everything that mattered in Lucille, and everyone knew that the mayor and the council answered to him. That was the power money had: it mattered over people; it could put a bullet into the head of anyone who was too loud, who found out too much. Theron was always in the papers, making headlines with the obscene amounts of wealth he was hoarding. His face was burned into Bitter’s memory: the pasty skin and thin blond hair, the hawk nose, the unnaturally white teeth. When she thought of greed, she thought of Theron.
And yes, Bitter just wanted to make her art and mind her own business, but she could agree with Assata and Blessing that Theron was evil. It was impossible to be a billionaire and be good. You couldn’t make that kind of money without hurting people, without stealing from them, exploiting them, making them suffer while you accumulated wealth that was impossible to spend in this lifetime. Just sitting on it for nothing, while others were struggling to stay alive. He could have used that money to do so much for the people of Lucille, used his influence to make the administration change how they treated their citizens, but Theron didn’t care. It worked better for his profit margins the way it was. The whole thing was selfish and cruel, and it made Bitter more angry than she had space for, because she knew what selfish and cruel felt like on the receiving end, she had years she couldn’t remember because of it. She had suffering knitted into her bones, and on her worst days, she tried not to think about how much she had in common with her mother.
“Theron isn’t above the law,” Blessing said, and it shot irritation through Bitter. Why did people insist on being this naive? Did it just make them feel better to think that they could control what was happening, as if they had any power? As if the world was just slightly off course, and with enough sweat and will they could push it back on track?
“Theron is the law,” she snapped. “Or you forgetting how money does work in Lucille?”
Blessing gave her a patient look. “There are some things that matter more than money,” she said.
Bitter kissed her teeth. “Tell that to the mayor dem.” She shoved the bag of gummi worms back at Blessing and fought the urge to get up and leave, go back to her room, draw something that made more sense than this world. Her skin was crawling.
“Okay, okay. Let’s change the subject.” Blessing could always tell when Bitter had reached her breaking point. “Can we talk about the new boy?”
A flush wrapped around Bitter’s neck. “Aloe? What about him?”
“Girl, I see how you two were looking at each other! You feeling him, huh?”
Bitter rolled her eyes. “He real cute, sure. Maybe we hook up once or twice, but that’s it.”
Blessing shook her head. “I don’t think he’s that type, Bitter.”
“He’s a guy. There’s no other type.”
“Nah, I think he’s different. You know what his skill is?”
“I didn’t ask.” She’d been too shaken to think of it last night, but Bitter was curious. It was the first question Eucalyptus kids usually asked each other: What’s your skill? Do you paint, draw, sculpt, sing? Do you work with clay, metal, tech, fabric? She tried to imagine what the new boy’s medium was. Maybe he took photos or wrote stories.
Blessing grinned. “He’s a sound artist.”
Bitter raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yup. He’s looking into the healing properties of sound, the ways it can affect our brains and shit. You should ask him for a sound bath.”
“I not asking him for shit.”
Blessing leered at her friend. “Ask him for a kiss. You know you want to.”
Bitter snatched the bag of gummi worms back. “You eating too much damn sugar. I cutting you off.”
“That’s how I got Alex, you know. You just gotta say what you want.”
“It’s different with girls,” Bitter replied, biting into a blue worm. “Guys doh like it when you act like you want it.”
“Then you don’t need to be fucking with guys like that. We’re people too—we got needs and whatnot.”
Bitter cast a sidelong glance at Blessing. “How things going with Alex?”
As expected, Blessing’s face softened into a silly sweetness. “Man, she’s perfect. I never thought I’d meet someone like her, you know? Like, she really sees me and she cares about people and she makes amazing art. It’s an incredible combination. She was at a protest the other day, and when she came back in, I swear she was buzzing—you could feel it on her skin. Like, she’s got all this energy in her.”
“She was at a protest? With the Assata kids?”
Blessing came back down to earth. “Don’t start, Bitter.”
“I eh say nothing!”
“You didn’t have to say anything, that’s how loud your thoughts are.”
“I just want to know if she going to start dragging you with her to those things. I want you to stay safe, that’s all.”
“She wouldn’t be dragging me—I can choose to walk there on my own, you know?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Blessing swung her legs off her bed and stood up. “You gotta stop being so scared of Assata. They’re not the dangerous ones in Lucille.” She held out a hand to Bitter. “Come on, let’s go down to lunch.”
Bitter wanted to remind her that this was Lucille, everything and everyone was dangerous, but she swallowed the words and took Blessing’s hand. Sometimes it was easier to just let things go. After all, at the end of the day, Bitter would still be able to go back to her room, lock the door, and draw something that was more real than anything they’d talked about. That was what mattered.
*
It took the new boy about a week to ask Bitter out. He came up to her in the cafeteria during breakfast, while she was waiting at the omelet station, watching the onions and peppers sweat into the cook’s pan.