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“Really?”
“I don’t get paid to lie,” he declared.
“Come on, J,” Billie called, but I couldn’t see her behind the curtains. “I want everyone in the A to see me in a Phantom. Big time!”
“I guess I’m going to Atlanta,” I said uneasily.
“I guess so,” he said, smiling.
I bent down to get into the car, and Billie was so close to the door that I knew immediately she was sitting in the middle of the row and that someone must be seated beside her.
“Mustafa?” I said, looking in to see him sitting beside Billie.
“Is it okay?” Billie asked. “He wanted to come see Dame.”
I was still standing at the door, and seeing the frown on my face, Billie eased out to talk to me.
“I can’t believe you brought him,” I said.
“I really wanted him to come. He won’t even talk. He’s just going to be with me.”
“That sounds crazy. How is he not going to talk? And we only have two tickets.”
“I already spoke to Mr. Green”—she winked at the driver—“and he said not to worry. He’ll call Benji out to get us. It’ll be fine.”
I gasped and kicked a bit of dirt at my feet.
“I really can’t believe you somehow managed to make this be about you,” I said. “We were specifically going here to—” I ground my eyes into Billie because I couldn’t say what the plan was in front of the driver.
“I know. I know,” she said. “But then I realized that I needed a date if you were going to be alone with—” She said “Dame” with her eyes. “So you can—. And what was Mustafa supposed to do, in my house all night by himself ?”
“Watch Barack Obama on CNN like the rest of the world.”
“Don’t be mean, J. Come on. This’ll be fun.” She grabbed my arm. “We’ll have drinks and hear some music and get you over this—thing with—.” We both looked at the driver.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “But only because I need to—!”
I was back in high school. Memories of riding in the back of cars with Billie and a boy. She giggled and whispered and every five minutes pretended to care about how I was doing. This was how it went the whole way to Atlanta. Mustafa was quiet all right. But that was only because everything he said was whispered into Billie’s ear and most of the time I couldn’t even see his mouth, because it was glued to hers. I wanted so badly to hate her. As I rolled my eyes at their cooing, I was desperate to curse her out. But this was just Billie being Billie. And I realized when we were in sixth grade, she only traded my warm tuna fish sandwich with her honey ham because she knew the tuna would make her sick and she’d have to go home—that it was better to learn to live with who she was than to try to change her. Everybody had flaws. At least I got to benefit from her selfish craziness sometimes. And I always knew she’d be on my side.... But I was still mad.
I know I’m in Atlanta when I see the lights. Like fireworks blazing in the dark night sky, riding into the city, everything goes from being dull and consistently familiar, to big and bright and inconsistently attractive. And not in the same way that it does when I see the lights in downtown Tuscaloosa or Birmingham. It’s like comparing a street lamp to a Vegas sign, and that’s no insult to the street lamp because one is more necessary than the other. Like the signs in Vegas, the lights that seem to encircle and hover over Atlanta are meant to dance to the eye. To fill me with excitement and make me believe this city is the biggest in the world. And while I am like every other person in every car being led to the city like fireflies to a porch light, I know this isn’t true, but I really want to believe that something brilliant and bright could be born in my South.
Mustafa, Billie, and I, all in one row in the back of the Bentley, became quiet and wide-eyed as the driver pulled off the highway exit and chauffeured us into the city. It wasn’t the most spectacular sight that any of us had ever seen, but we all seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
The club where the concert was happening was right off the highway, and when we turned onto the small street that came to a dead end, people were everywhere. In the street. On the sidewalks. Standing on top of cars that checkered both curbs. Just wild and everywhere. Posters of Dame’s album cover were tacked to every pole lining the street and some of the cars even had posters taped to the sides.
As Mr. Green made his way through the tangle, I looked at women yelling and laughing, men macking and some rapping in circles. It was more of a party than I expected from a concert. And looking at the faces through the window, mine seemed old and out of place.
“The club must be at capacity,” Mr. Green said to us. “I know they’ve opened the doors.”
“Is it normally like this?” I looked down at my slacks, and realizing I hadn’t seen one pair in the crowd, I thought of the jeans Kayla had been wearing at Fat Albert’s.
“Yeah. The shows get pretty crazy. Mr. Mitchell doesn’t like performing in the arenas—he actually enjoys these smaller stages—so he has his manager book the Apache when he’s not on tour.” He beeped his horn at someone walking in front of the car. “All of the fans know about the shows, so it gets a little nuts. Sometimes he just comes outside and gets on top of one of the cars.”
“I guess they think he’s in this one,” Mustafa said, pointing to a group of girls who were walking beside our slow-moving car and peering inside. One of them put her phone up to the window and took a picture, thinking Mustafa was Dame.
“Oh, my!” Billie jumped at the flash.
Just then another flash went off on my side and a thump came at the back, shaking the car a bit.
