“Zuri, let go. Please.” Her voice is rough. She pulls away from me and pushes through the fancy people.
I swear on Madrina’s orishas, if Ainsley has hurt her in any way . . . I turn to the Darcy boys and part of me wants to go over there and tell them off to their faces. But that’s exactly what they would expect. I curse under my breath and follow my sister, my heart pounding in my ears.
Pretty Rich Boy
Hey rich boy, how much for that dollar?
I need to buy a dream
I’ve gathered the clouds and stars
to form a cheerleading team
Shouting “Shoot your shot!” from the sidelines
thinking that if I win
They all have a turn at this wheel
to take it for a spin
My mama wants to play too,
but she’s late to this game
A dollar is a dollar, she says,
things are still the same
But if you sell me this dollar,
I’ll owe you three
Work myself to the bone,
none left for family and me
Now, you got my three dollars
with your dreams already paid for
Walking into fancy rooms,
never kicking down a door
But you own that door,
that room, that house, and its land
So I’d have to give you four more dollars
just to pay for where I stand
If you could, you’d charge me for the air I breathe,
the dreams I dream
Even the love I love, make my own beating heart
turn on me like some scheme
Twelve
I BRING SOME of the fancy food from that cocktail party up to the roof in a small container. Janae is already sitting cross-legged on the blue tarp, but she’s facing the other direction, as if trying to avoid the house across the street. I don’t blame her. So we face Hernando’s bodega instead, where we can see some of the guys on the corner doing what they usually do.
It feels good to see them there. I’ve never known Hernando’s to not have men sitting outside, young or old. Some people think they’re up to no good, that they’re wasting their time. But I think they’re really there to look out for the block, for the whole hood, like gatekeepers. They know who’s coming in and out; they know the faces of all the people who pass them.
Even with their big, fancy house on the corner, those Darcy boys couldn’t care less about what’s happening on this block, much less this neighborhood. They bring outsiders to show off their house and talk about how much better they are than the people who are already here.
“I can’t stand them,” I say out loud.
Janae sighs long and deep. “You were right,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Me too,” she says.
A long thread of silence keeps us connected. I know what she’s thinking. She’s replaying all the moments with Ainsley in her mind—what he said to her just now, but also the other times, how he made her feel, how he touched and kissed her. So I have to ask.
“Did you guys—”
“No.” She cuts me off. “Z, he was a complete gentleman. I thought he was genuinely interested in me. We talked about everything. And we laughed a lot. He wasn’t like any of the other guys out here.”
“Huh. Clearly.”
“He was really, really nice to me.”
“Well, nice doesn’t cut it, Nae. I’ll take keepin’ it real over nice any day.”
“He was even nice when he broke it off.”
“Broke it off? How exactly did he break it off?” I unwrap my napkin of tiny meatballs at the ends of toothpicks and hand one to Janae.
“He said, ‘I’m just not ready for something serious right now,’ and he didn’t want to stop me from dating anyone else.”
“He said that?” I ask.
“Yep. As if I’d even want to date anyone else.”
I throw the tiny meatball stick back into the container and grab Janae’s before she pops it into her mouth. I stand and walk close to the edge of the roof with the container in hand.
“Zuri, what are you doing?” Janae asks.
I ignore her and take one tiny meatball at a time and try to fling them across to the Darcys’ roof. They don’t quite land there, but I step back and try to throw the little things with all my might, one by one. “Take back your stupid, useless, tiny meatballs!” I yell.
When I turn to her, I catch Janae wiping her eyes. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she says, and blinks back tears.
I sigh and go over to sit next to her and pull her in. I lay her head on my lap so I can braid the side of her hair. This always relaxes her. “You didn’t know him that well, Nae.”
“It’s not that,” she sobs. Now, she lets it all out as my hands rub her scalp. Janae has always been the sensitive one. If I start to tear up just because Papi’s hard on me, Janae will straight up bawl at any hint of disappointing our father. “He was really different, Z. I mean, I met guys at school, and they were all right. But none of them were really interested. You know how many more girls there are than guys at my school? Lots. I didn’t just wanna hook up with anybody. I wanted a real relationship. Nobody’s trying to have a relationship their freshman year of college. And it felt like that was the direction we were going. And . . .” Her voice trails off.
“Janae, are you serious? Come on! What about your grades, focusing on getting a job right after you graduate? And us? Mama and Papi?” I ask, finishing a braid.
“Just because I like somebody doesn’t mean I forget everything else in my life. People have relationships, Z.”
“Yeah, but it’s such a distraction. And if it doesn’t work out, then it was a waste of time.”
She gets up from my lap and looks at me. “So, you being with Warren is a waste of time?”
“No. We’re just chillin’ like I do with Charlise. Like we are now?”
“You know damn well that it’s not the same.”
“Lie down. I’m not done with your hair yet,” I say, trying to change the subject.
“Zuri!”
“All right!” I sigh. “It’s just that . . . I don’t get you, Janae! Why do you have to fall so hard? And so fast? Ainsley was not right for you and I told you that. I knew this would happen.”
We’re quiet for a long moment before she asks, “How do you know? How do you know if the guy you meet won’t be the one you spend the rest of your life with?”
I sigh again. “I don’t think Mama knew that she’d still be with Papi way after high school. Maybe they took it one day at a time. Like going up a flight of stairs or something. You take each step, and at some point, you land. You don’t have to climb anymore. Or it stops getting so hard.”
“We were still climbing, though.”
“No, you were still climbing. He was on a nice tour of the neighborhood. You were all the way up those stairs, and he was still at the bottom snapping pictures and shit.”
She shakes her head and sighs. “It didn’t feel that way. I swear, even if it was just a couple of weeks, it felt as if we were both climbing while holding hands. He was so excited for me to meet his family, Z. He introduced me to his grandparents. He kissed me right in front of them. And then, out of nowhere, he did an about-face.”
“I know exactly what happened. He met your family.”
She purses her lips and furrows her brows, and I can tell that she’s about to cry again. I let her. I don’t look at her when she wipes her tears from her cheeks. I don’t judge her. I know her too well for that.
But I’m judging Ainsley Darcy.
Janae cries herself to sleep that night, and I can’t stand to hear it. Part of me hopes that she won’t spend the rest of her life crying over boys, or men, who break her heart. One day, she’ll have to toughen up. She’ll have to be the hard candy shell to her own gooey sweetness.