AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After that, Kali starts showing up more often, and she and Dee go all Project Runway, and Dee always switches into that voice. I write it off as just a fashion thing. But then a few days after that, as we’re leaving, Kendra walks in, and I introduce them. Kendra sizes Dee up, like she does with people, and puts on her flight-attendant smile and asks Dee where he’s from.
“New York,” he says. I make a note of that. I’ve known him for almost three weeks, and I’m just now finding out the basics.
“Where in New York?”
“The city.”
“Where?”
“The Bronx.”
The flight attendant smile is gone, replaced by a tight line that looks penciled on.
“Oh, like the South Bronx? Well. You must be so glad to be living here.”
Now it’s Dee who gives Kendra the once-over. They’re eyeing each other like dogs, and I wonder if it’s because they’re both black. Then, he switches to a different voice from the one he talks to Kali or me in. “You from the South Bronx?”
Kendra recoils a little. “No! I’m from Washington.”
“Like where they got all the rain and shit?”
Rain and shit?
“No, not state. DC.”
“Oh. I got some cousins in DC. Down in Anacostia. Shit, those are some nasty-ass projects. Even worse than where I came up. There’s a shooting at their school every damn week.”
Kendra looks horrified. “I’ve never even been to Anacostia. I live in Georgetown. And I went to Sidwell Friends, where the Obama girls go.”
“I went to South Bronx High. Most wack school in America. Ever heard of it?”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.” She gives me a quick look. “Well, I have to go. I’m meeting Jeb soon.” Jeb is her new boyfriend.
“Catch you later, homegirl,” Dee calls as Kendra disappears into her room. As Dee picks up his backpack to leave, he is quaking with laughter.
I decide to walk him to the dining hall, maybe eat there for a change. Eating alone sucks, but there are only so many microwave burritos a girl can stomach. When we get downstairs, I ask him if he really went to South Bronx High School.
When he speaks again, he sounds like Dee. Or the Dee I know. “They closed South Bronx High School a year ago, not that I ever went there. I went to a charter school. Then I got snagged in Prep for Prep—scholarship thing—by a private school that’s even more expensive than Sidwell Friends. Take that, Miss Thang.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her where you went?”
He looks at me and then, reverting to the voice he’d used with Kendra, says, “If homegirls wanna see me as ghetto trash”—he stops and switches to his lispy, sassy voice—“or big-ass queer”—now he switches to his deepest Shakespeare voice—“I shall not take it upon myself to disabuse them.”
When we reach the dining hall, I feel like I should say something to him. But I’m not sure what. In the end, I just ask him if he wants chocolate chip or butter cookies next time. Grandma sent me both.
“I’ll supply cookies. My mama sent up some homemade molasses spice ones.”
“That’s nice.”
“Nothin’ nice about it. She’s throwing down. She wasn’t about to be outdone by somebody’s grandma.”
I laugh. It’s a strange sound, like an old car being started after a long time in the garage. “We won’t tell my grandma that. If she accepts the challenge and bakes her own cookies, we might get food poisoning. She’s the worst cook in the world.”
It becomes a routine then. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday: cookies, tea, alarm clock, Shakespeare, study. We still don’t talk much about ourselves, but little things slip through the cracks. His mother works at a hospital. He has no siblings, but five zillion cousins. He’s on a full scholarship. He has a rather huge crush on Professor Glenny. He is double-majoring in history and literature, and maybe a minor in political science. He hums when he’s bored, and when he’s really into his reading, he twists his hair around his index finger so tight, it turns pink. And just as I suspected from that first day in class, he’s smart. That he doesn’t tell me, but it’s obvious. He’s the only one in the entire class to get an A on Glenny’s first assignment, a paper on Henry V; Professor Glenny announces it to the class and reads snippets of Dee’s paper to the class as an example of what the rest of us should strive for. Dee looks mortified, and I feel sort of bad, but the Glenny groupies regard Dee with such looks of naked envy that it’s almost worth it. I, meanwhile, get a very solid B on my paper about Perdita and themes of lost and found.
I tell Dee little things about me too, but half the time, I find myself censoring what I want to say. I like him. I do. But I’m trying to make good on my tabula-rasa promise. Still, I sort of wish I could ask Dee’s opinion about Melanie. I sent her the very first piece I made from ceramics class, along with a note about how I’d completely upended my schedule. I sent it Priority Mail, and then a week went by, and I didn’t hear anything. So I’d called her up to make sure she’d gotten it—it was just a crappy, handmade bowl, but it had a beautiful crackly turquoise glaze—and she apologized for not responding, saying she was busy.
>“Just so happens my dance card is none too full at the moment.”
