Kendra Read online

  Finally, he looks up at me and says, “Your cousin been saying some—”

  “She’s my aunt.”

  “Well, whatever she is, she been going around saying you and Nashawn—”

  “It’s all true,” I say, and swallow real hard. “Everything.”

  He shakes his head and it takes awhile for him to say anything, but finally he says, “I don’t get it. I thought you were, like, I don’t know, different from a lot of girls around here.”

  “I guess you were wrong,” I tell him. His eyes look so sad, it’s hard to do this to him. But he needs to know the truth. Even if it hurts. “Sorry.”

  I mumble that last part and push past him and go into my homeroom. I feel bad but, really, it was stupid of me to try to like him that way. Just because he liked me first.

  It wasn’t fair to him.

  I sit at my desk in the empty classroom and try not to feel guilty, but it’s too hard after what just happened.

  When other kids start coming in, I can feel them looking at me. It’s not my imagination, either. And I know it’s not the marks on my face they’re staring at, because I wore some of Renée’s pressed powder to cover them up. It’s all because of what Adonna been saying about me.

  Actually, all morning I feel like people are staring at me and talking about me, in class and in the hall. It’s just so not fair. This is between me and Adonna. Not me, Adonna, and the whole school.

  Even while I’m walking past the theater on my way to Mr. Melendez’s class fourth period, I still feel like I’m exposed or something. Like everybody knows all my secrets. I can’t get away from what I did. And then to make things even worse, Darnell is in this class and I have to deal with looks from him for the next fifty minutes.

  But he don’t show up. He’s cutting class so he won’t have to look at me.

  Great.

  After our class, I sit there in my seat and try to finish the sketch I was making while I wasn’t paying attention. It’s a onefamily brownstone and the whole basement is an office with floor-to-ceiling shelves for Renée’s books. And there are large windows so she’ll have lots of light to read by. I’m working on a circular staircase leading up to the first floor when Mr. Melendez leans over so he can see what I’m working on.

  “Beautiful,” he says. “But remember to keep it functional.”

  “Huh?” I look at what I’m doing, trying to see what’s not functional.

  He points to my staircase. “If you keep going that way, look where the railing will end up, dissecting the arch to the living room.”

  I nod, getting it. The circular staircase won’t work that way. I’ll have to move it. Or change my whole vision.

  “I’ll recommend you for Ms. Myers’s Introduction to Architecture class next year if you’d like. She prefers juniors and seniors, but I think you would do well.”

  I smile. “I don’t know,” I say. “My grandmother’s, um, boyfriend came to the show last week and he said I should think about set design—like, you know, for a job. But I don’t know.”

  I look up at Mr. Melendez’s face to see what he’ll say to that, like does he even think I have enough talent? And his first reaction is to nod. “He’s right,” he says. “It’s a great field, and you know what I think about the job you did on the set for the showcase.” He takes a seat in the chair next to me. “When you applied for the design concentration and I looked at your portfolio, I definitely wanted you in the program. But I did notice that you were mostly drawing homes. So why don’t you keep your options open and take architecture and interior design and figure out what you like? You have a lot of time.”

  “I know, but I wanna…I just wish I knew what I wanted.”

  He laughs all hard and deep, like I just said the funniest thing he ever heard.

  “What?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. But what are you? Fourteen, fifteen?”

  “Fourteen.”

  He laughs again.

  “What?” I ask again, but I laugh, too, because I can tell he thinks I’m too young to know what I want. I’m being crazy.

  He stands up. “I don’t want you to be late for your next class,” he says. “And I have to get to lunch.”

  I have lunch, too, but there’s no way I wanna walk into that cafeteria today. I know Adonna’s gonna be there telling everybody at our table what I did or what kinda person I am. And Mara wasn’t at homeroom or in English, so she’s probably absent today. There’s no way I’m gonna go to lunch and not even have a table to sit at. “Do you still have that book you showed us before, Mr. Melendez? The one with all those famous set designs from Broadway and London?”

  “Yeah, sure. But I don’t like it to leave this room.”

  “Can I stay here next period and look at it? I’ll be careful.”

  “What do you have next period?”

  I tell him lunch, and he looks at me for a while and then says, “Okay.” He reaches into his bottom desk drawer and pulls out the gigantic coffee-table-size book. “Here you go,” he says, handing it to me. “Put it back when you’re done, and if you leave, pull the door closed behind you. It’s locked.”

  I nod. “Okay, I will.” But I think me and him both know I’m not going anywhere. “Thanks, Mr. Melendez.”

  I sit there all through lunch looking at the beautiful pictures and reading about all the famous set designers and how they came up with their ideas. It would be nice flying around the world and working with all those directors and winning awards. Maybe it would be more realistic than building homes for me and Renée.

  The rest of the day isn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be. I get through it without running into Adonna or Nashawn, even though after lunch, I see the two of them walking down the hall together. They don’t see me, though, and that’s a good thing. Only three more days of school to go ’til finals. Then I won’t have to deal with any of this all summer.

  When school’s over, I walk outta the building and down the steps. Just as I hit the last step, I see her, Adonna, standing there. And she’s mad.

  She don’t say anything to me, and everything happens so fast. The next thing I know, she’s grabbing me by my shirt and slamming me, hard, against the fence. I close my eyes as the pain shoots across my back, and when I open my eyes again, I see a whole bunch of kids around us now. And there’s Adonna right in my face, and all I know is, I can’t believe what’s going on. I’m about to get jumped in front of the school, in front of all these people.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  It’s weird, but for a few minutes I can see Adonna screaming at me, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. And I can see her hitting me, but I can’t feel anything. It’s all happening so fast but in slow motion at the same time, and I’m numb and can’t figure anything out. I mean, Adonna. My best friend, my aunt, is attacking me.

  Adonna.

  Then I feel it, a punch, right across the jaw, and, man, it hurts. Like hell.

  I start to hear the crowd, too. I hear “Oooh, shit” and “Damn, girl” and I know they’re cheering. For Adonna.

  I hear Adonna, too. “Fuckin’ backstabbing ho,” she calls me a second before she slams me against the fence again.

  It stings. It hurts. But I’m not about to cry in front of all these kids. And I’m not gonna let her beat me down without fighting back. I mean, I grew up in Bronxwood, too. She’s not the only one.

  That’s when I notice it—Adonna’s weave. She actually went out and got a weave. And I don’t care. I’m going for it.

  She’s just about to punch me again and I move fast for all that fake hair. I grab it and wrap it around my fist and pull as hard as I can. And that weave must have been sewed in real good, because I can feel her hair rip away from her scalp as she screams. I pull again and I’m not gonna stop, either. She screams again and tries to grab my hand to stop me.

  Now the crowd is laughing. At Adonna.

  Two seconds later, a whole bunch of school security guards come outta
the building and break up the fight. One piece of Adonna’s weave is hanging off on the side and she’s trying to hold it in place so nobody can see, even though more than enough kids got camera phones and everything, and they probably got the whole fight on video.

  “You’re such a fucking bitch, Kendra,” she yells as two guards pull her away from me.

  “Keep trying to cover your fucking bald spot!” I yell back.

  She’s trying to get away from them so she can come after me again, but the guards got a good grip on her and they take her up the stairs to the school with hardly any problem.

  I stand there looking at all the kids from my school. They’re starting to walk away, some smiling, some laughing, some looking like they got cheated outta what should have been a better fight. And I can’t believe it. I can’t believe any of this happened.

  Then, before I can even figure out what I’m gonna do, a female security guard grabs me by the arm. “Come on,” she says, pulling me back to the stairs.

  “I didn’t do anything!” I yell at her.

  “The dean will be the judge of that.”

  The dean. This is so unfair. Why do I have to go to the dean when I was minding my own business and got attacked for no reason? It’s not right.

  The security guard manhandles me up the stairs and back into the school. Adonna is up the hall ahead of us, and her weave is really torn off. I can’t help but smile. She’s so sad, running out to get a weave just to try to hold on to Nashawn. I mean, I don’t even know who she’s competing with. She already got him. And what kinda girl attacks her own niece over a boy, anyway?

  Both me and Adonna end up in the dean’s office. Well, she has to go inside and talk to the dean and I’m left on the long wooden bench next to his secretary’s desk. The woman is sitting at her computer typing away at, like, two hundred words a minute or something, and it don’t look like she’s planning on leaving anytime soon. I always thought the people in the office got to leave here five minutes after we do, but I guess they still have work to do.

  She starts printing out something, and when she gets up to go to the printer, Dean Frey comes outta his office looking like he really has better things to deal with besides this. He looks at me like he’s sizing me up and whispers something to the secretary. Then he goes back into his office without even saying anything to me or getting my side of the story.

  The secretary sits back down and says to me, “Sweetheart, Dean Frey wants me to call your parent or guardian to—”

  “What?” I can’t believe this. “Why am I getting in trouble when she’s the one that—?”

  “You’re not in trouble. The dean knows it’s not your fault. We just want someone to know what happened to you. Maybe you should go to the doctor or—”

  “The doctor? For what?”

  The secretary leans closer to me and says, “It’s a legal thing, sweetheart. We don’t want anyone suing the board of education because they weren’t informed about what happened to their kid. What’s the phone number?”

  I sit there for a while thinking who I should call. My first thought is Nana. She got mad last time when she wasn’t the one the school called. But she threw me out, so she don’t get to be mad anymore. I could call Renée, but she’s still at work and I don’t wanna bother her. So I tell the secretary to call my father because at least I know he’s gonna be there.

  Turns out, Adonna had the dean call Kenny, too, because he comes to the school for both of us. “This shit don’t make no kinda sense, Babe,” he says when he sees me. Then he goes straight into the dean’s office, and I can hear him and Adonna arguing in there.

  I sit there on that hard wood, getting more and more mad myself. Adonna didn’t have any right to call Kenny to come and get her. I mean, yeah, he’s her brother, but he’s not her father. She should have called Grandma and left Kenny for me.

  A few minutes later, the door opens up and Kenny, Adonna, and Dean Frey come out into the waiting area. Adonna has her arms folded in front of her and her face is all puffy like she been crying, probably because I messed up her perfect hair.

  “Ms. Williamson,” Mr. Frey says, “are you okay?”

  I nod.

  “The nurse is gone for the day,” he says, like it didn’t matter that I just told him I was okay.

  “I don’t need a nurse,” I say.

  “You know fighting goes against the school’s policy, the one you agreed to abide by when you entered this school in September.”

  I’m pretty sure this man is a robot because I have no idea why he’s telling this to me, unless he’s programmed to say this to every student no matter who did the fighting and who did the defending.

  “I know,” I say. “Tell that to her.”

  Me and Adonna’s eyes lock on each other and she tries to give me her tough-girl look, but I’m not buying it and I’m not gonna be the first to look away, either. For the first time, I’m not backing down.

  “It was after school,” Adonna says, finally looking away, making me feel like I won, even if it’s kinda childish. “I don’t know why I’m being suspended for something I did after school on my own time.”

  “You can’t be that stupid,” I say. Then I think about it and say, “But you are.”

  “Why don’t you go back to spreading your legs, Kendra?”

  “Why don’t you figure out how to keep your man satisfied, Adonna?”

  Kenny clears his throat real loud. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing or hearing,” he says. “Look at the two of you. Please don’t tell me y’all are fighting over some boy.”

  Both me and Adonna suck our teeth and turn away from each other.

  “Say something!” Kenny yells, but I don’t know who he’s talking to, me or her.

  Adonna does one of her bored sighs. “Can we go home already, Kenny?”

  I stand up and turn back around. “I thought you were here to take me home.” I stare at Kenny, who looks from me to Adonna and back to me again, like he really don’t know what he should do. Like I’m not his daughter.

  Kenny shakes his head and says, “I’m not taking you both together and having y’all tear up my truck, that’s what I do know.”

  Adonna rolls her eyes and tells Kenny, “I know you’re gonna choose her over me, so go ahead.”

  “I’m so tired of you being jealous of me and Kenny,” I say. “He’s my father, you know.”

  “Take him, then.”

  “Fine.”

  Kenny grabs Adonna and starts pulling her outta the office. “I’m gonna take this one home first,” he says to Dean Frey and the secretary. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes for that one. And, Babe, don’t you leave this office. I swear. I’m not playing.”

  Sitting there on that bench, when they leave, I’m so pissed off I can’t even think straight. The dean goes back in his office and the secretary takes out a Nora Roberts novel and starts reading, and all I wanna do is get up and leave. I mean, why do I have to wait for him, anyway? Why do I need him to take me home? He made his decision, right? He picked Adonna.

  Then, outta the corner of my eye I see Nashawn in the doorway, trying to get my attention. “Come here,” he mouths.

  I look over to the secretary, who hasn’t looked up from her book. “I can’t,” I mouth back, shaking my head.

  He tries again and holds up a finger. “One minute.”

  I shake my head again. I’m not gonna fall for that. One minute. Yeah, right. I know what he wants. It’s all he ever wants from me. And if I leave this office, I’ll probably end up somewhere with him again and now there’s no excuse, because I know he’s only using me. He wants to be with Adonna, and I was just being stupid all this time.

  But I look over at him again and now he has his hands pressed together, like he’s begging me or something. And part of me wouldn’t mind hooking up with him again, just to feel something except mad. Just to be with him again. That would be nice. And I do have fifteen minutes before Kenny gets back.

 
But no, I can’t. I’m not gonna do it. Yeah, it would be good for a few minutes, but then what will I have? Nothing. And how’s it gonna feel to see him and Adonna together after that?

  I shake my head at Nashawn one last time and then look away so I won’t be tempted by him again. I’m gonna sit here and wait for Kenny, and I’m gonna be strong now. Especially when it comes to Nashawn.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “I can’t believe this,” Kenny says for probably the hundredth time since we got into the truck. “I can’t believe y’all are fighting.”

  And the way he says fighting feels like I’m getting punched all over again, because now he’s disappointed in me for the second time this week and nothing I say is gonna make him understand. I’m probably too far down in his eyes.

  I look outta the window as we cross a bridge, over the Harlem River. I’m almost back home, whatever that means. Kids are walking across the bridge, coming home from school, laughing and having fun with each other, and that only makes me feel even more friendless.

  We stop kinda short at a red light and I hear some cans in the back of the truck start to roll around. Kenny’s not paying attention to the road. He’s too busy not believing what happened between me and Adonna.

  “Y’all was best friends,” he says, like I don’t know that. “And y’all are fighting over a boy. Two beautiful, smart girls fighting over some idiot boy.”

  I stay looking outta the window, but I do feel the need to defend myself. “We weren’t fighting over a boy,” I say. “You’re making me seem like some desperate girl that’s gonna fight somebody for a boy when I’m not even like that. She’s the one that tried to beat me up in front of the whole school just because her boyfriend, or whatever he is to her, just because him and me…” I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. And I don’t have to. He already knows everything.

  He starts driving again. “So you trying to tell me you didn’t do nothing wrong? That this whole thing is Adonna’s fault, right?”

  “Right,” I say, but my voice is quieter because, now that he put it like that, it’s kinda hard to convince him that the whole thing is Adonna’s fault. I mean, the fight was definitely her fault and that was definitely wrong on her part, but everything else? I don’t know. I mean, I know I made some mistakes. I can admit that. But does that give her the right to put her hands on me?