None of us knew Marcus was cutting class to spend time with Uncle Ty until the truancy notice came in the mail. For an entire semester, they spent most days together. When our uncle skipped town on us after Mama’s arrest, Marcus went around the apartment breaking whatever shit reminded him of Uncle Ty.
After Marcus heard Uncle Ty’s song at the club last year, found out about his fame, he came home drunk and teary and stroked my forehead, telling me about what they spent all that time doing. Besides bringing Marcus to the skate park, Uncle Ty was meeting up with lots of big men with bigger chains, getting high, talking shit, playing them his music. Marcus would sit in the corner, inhaling the smoke and waiting for Uncle Ty to take him back to the skate park. He said sometimes they’d go to these nice houses where rich dudes would offer him cigars and Uncle Ty would tell Marcus to try one out. Marcus would inhale when you really ain’t supposed to breathe in cigar smoke and end up vomiting in the bathroom. Even when Uncle Ty only brought Marcus grief, he loved our uncle more than anything. Worshipped him, really.
Marcus shakes his head. “You on your own.”
“Really? You can’t do this one thing for me?”
Marcus looks at me with that same scared look he gave me when Daddy tried to take my hand at the drum circle. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
I reach for my bike and all I can think about is getting somewhere that’s not so blue.
I’ve made the decision before I’ve even registered it in words, looking at Marcus still shaking his head. “Daddy would be real disappointed in what you’ve become. Feel free to go shoot your shot, Marcus, but I ain’t gonna give you a bed when you come home empty after all that big-boy shit. You wanna be on your own? Go live somewhere else. If you wanna stay with me, you figure your shit out and help me.”
I climb onto my bike, the seat still warm, and I start to pedal, harder, harder, until my legs are a blur of muscle and woman and sweat. I know I’ve sliced into something between us, ripped apart the treaty that was our apartment by saying this right after something so sacred. Maybe the mural will memorialize this day, take us back to before, back to each other.
Oakland’s sun faded to its usual mild hum. Alé hasn’t answered the phone since the skate park and I’m too scared to ask her if she still loves me like she used to. Every day I don’t see her, it feels like we are getting further from recognizable. I bet she has some new tattoos now. Maybe she even smells different.
Marcus is gone. It’s officially been a week since the mural and yesterday he picked up the clothes I washed for him. He must be staying with one of his boys, and I feel like the last survivor in our family, the only one left in this apartment.
I can’t stop thinking about the party Camila invited me to, about a disco. There probably won’t even be no disco, but the flash makes me wanna go, just to see if the shining would make me dizzy or if maybe this is the life for me. Maybe I can hold Camila’s hand every night, make enough money that Trevor never has a worry in his life, give up comfort for something stable and harsh.
I meet Trevor at the bus stop after school most days and we go to the court, got a whole lineup of bets. After we beat bay girl, she told all her middle school friends that somebody best show up this little boy and his grown babysitter. Thought she was talking shit, but turns out they young enough to waste all their cash on bets we already know we’re gonna win. It made us enough to help cover the March rent, along with some money from the cops.
Trevor and I practice late at night sometimes, when Dee comes back and starts wilding out with her laughing. He knocks on the door to my apartment and we take the ball out, do dribbles around the pool. Sometimes I imagine him showing up at my door and knocking when I’m not there, waiting when there’s never gonna be an answer.
It’s getting close to dark and the party starts the second the sun disappears. I get ready, slip on the only dress I own, which is more of a nightgown than anything. It was a gift from one of the cops, and it reminds me how I’ve lived a whole century in the span of these months. Time moves in so many directions.
In the bathroom, I stare straight into the mirror. I am all shades of brown. My hair has remnants of red in it from the one time I tried to dye it auburn, and I paint my face in watered-down mascara and eyeliner I don’t really know how to use. Eventually, I look like a grown version of myself: more angular. I got more sharpness in my face than I used to, and my shoulders make the bareness of the dress more stark with the way my skeleton shines through. I’m not really that skinny, but my shoulders seem to think I am. The rest of me has a soft cushion, keeps my organs insulated, safe.
It’s ten now and I slip on my new heels. These ones are silver and the stiletto is two inches shorter than the old ones that metal man threw into the street. I don’t take a jacket because I know how humid whatever house or shack or warehouse this party is in will be, and the only thing worse than a chill is the sweat from inescapable heat.
When Camila gave me the address, I don’t think it even crossed her mind that I’m on my own out here, don’t got a car, don’t even got a bus pass after the ones Alé and I stole ran out of money. I mapped the directions to the place before I left, but standing on High Street, that two-mile walk feels like a marathon my feet can’t handle.
When there is no choice, the only thing you have left to do is walk. The soles of my feet ache in that familiar way that tells me I’m not only gonna have blisters in the morning, my feet are gonna bruise themselves into a purple that looks closer to my mama’s neck than flesh should.
I think about each step and repeat to myself: heel, toe, heel, toe. Makes it easier. The honks from assholes in cars accompany each step, but I don’t pay no mind until one pulls over. Window down. I tense before I look close enough to realize it’s a woman. She’s got her speakers blasting to Kehlani and her eyelashes are adorned in blue sparkles.
“Need a ride?” she asks.
I nod, then look into the backseat. It’s a full circus in there, only the middle seat in the back row empty. They swing the back door open for me and the girl closest to me slides over. They’re clearly heading to a party, got dresses with barely more fabric than mine.
I close the door.
“Where you going?” the driver asks, turning to look at me.
I tell her the address and the girl next to me leans toward the driver. “Ain’t that Demond’s place?” She tries to whisper but it comes out loud enough for the whole car to hear, even over the boom of the stereo.
The driver nods slightly and then calls back to me, “I’m Sam. You know what kinda house you walking into, yeah?”
“Know all I need to know,” I call back to her. “I’m Kia.”
We spend the rest of the ride in silence except for the music. When they let me out in front of the house, Sam turns around and touches my knee.
“If Demond tries to give you some shit, don’t take it.” Her blue eyelashes flap up and down and then she turns back to the wheel and the door swings open. The girl next to me shoves a little and I tumble out onto the sidewalk, gaining my footing despite how stilettos make me feel like I’m walking on stilts. The house reminds me of the way cartoons animate a house party: the building looks like it’s bouncing up and down, strobe lights shining through the windows, people lingering on the front steps. The rest of the street is dark, all the way up to the cul-de-sac, and if it wasn’t for the rager going on inside, I would’ve thought some kids lived up in the house, picket fence and shit.
I watch the circus car pull away.
“Ay, you one of Demond’s girls?” one of the men smoking a Backwoods on the front steps calls out to me.
“No, just pulling up for Camila,” I call back, walking toward them.