I didn’t let my thoughts go too far down that road, though, because if Cora suspected I was even thinking about trying to find her stash of money, she would beat me within an inch of my life. Again.
Still, it gave me pause to think that we were both hoarders when it came to money. It made me wonder if we had more in common. Actually, it made me hope that we had more in common. Because if my mama could keep a man—a congressman like Mr. Farrell—coming back every Saturday even after he got elected, then maybe I could get and keep his son.
Mr. Farrell, however, did not show up the next Saturday. I guess the hundred dollars and the champagne had been his way of saying good-bye.
Cora did not seem surprised. She got dressed and went down to the bar like she used to before Congressman Farrell started coming around. That night she brought home a small, fat man who reeked of menthol-flavored smoke, the complete opposite of the congressman.
Cora liked rich and handsome men just as much as the next woman, but she almost seemed relieved to be rid of Mr. Farrell. And for weeks after that, every friend she brought home was the kind that favored jeans, T-shirts, and tennis shoes.
SIX
The months flew by, and though I vigilantly stalked James, it took until March 1992 for him and Tanisha Harris to break up. I overheard in the girls’ bathroom that he broke up with her after she tried to convince him to turn down his early acceptance from Princeton and apply to colleges in Mississippi, so that they could stay close to each other after he graduated.
The very same day I heard that story, I walked myself into the school library during lunch and began researching colleges near Princeton. Overall, my grades were excellent, but with the steady C’s I kept getting in Spanish on account of not talking, I didn’t think I had much chance of getting into Princeton, especially since I’d need a full scholarship. However, Rider University, a nearby and much lower-tiered college in Lawrenceville, New Jersey—that I could probably swing.
By Molly Ringwald Ending rules, it was James’s turn to make a Big Move, so I was forced to wait him out. But I also wanted to prepare myself for our future together, so I spent a lot of time keeping up my non-Spanish grades, and doing all sorts of research. I started taking practice PSATs in order to get into Rider. I watched and rewatched my Molly Ringwald movies so that I’d know what to do and say when James finally came for me. And I stuck to a steady diet of romance novels, about women who thought they were ugly but then it turned out they had been beautiful all along, they just didn’t realize it until they met the man of their dreams.
. . .
In April, the Farrell siblings decided to throw a party. Tra-la-la. Everybody was talking about it. I didn’t know every last detail, but this is what I had gleaned from overheard conversations:
1. The Farrell parents would be out of town, on account of Congressman Farrell having to go to Washington, D.C., to do his job.
2. Everybody who came to the party would have to be invited by James, Tammy, or Veronica. And I heard Veronica tell Elise in algebra, “We’re not having any plus-ones.”
3. The invitations—yes, actual invitations—would be going out on Friday, which meant no one would know that they were invited to the party of the year until the day it was actually going to happen.
I should take a moment here to explain a few things about my school. Maybe you’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned any white kids so far. That’s because, in the entire thousand-plus population of Glass High, there were only two.
See, Glass was a very small county that had been founded by a group of ex-slaves turned sharecroppers. And these founders weren’t proud, black people with whip scars on their backs and tales of what it had been like on the dirt roads going north before they got caught. These were the black people who hadn’t run. The ones who had stood by with stoic faces when their babies were sold off to neighboring plantations.