“Tonesha, Pri’s coming!” another person shouts.
“Ay yo, Fab! You all right?” Pri calls out from some other end of the cafeteria.
“Yeah, she’s a’ight!” Tonesha shouts back.
“I wasn’t talking to you!” Pri says.
But before she can step between me and Tonesha, the bell rings and teachers start to make their way to the crowd of kids surrounding us. I relax now, and Pri comes to pull me away.
“Don’t let no bitch get to you,” she whispers into my ear as we leave the cafeteria. “But the next time she tries to pull that shit, I’ma smack that bouzin one time so she won’t step to you like that ever again.”
I laugh because my cousin said something in Creole. I laugh the same way she has laughed at me.
That afternoon, Kasim has his old, ugly car back and it feels like the first day we went out together. I didn’t know he was coming to pick me up after school, so I still have on that ugly weave from Unique Hair Essentials. My lips are chapped and I dig for crust in the corners of my eyes before I get into his car. I want him to wait a little bit in front of the school so Tonesha can see me with him and she can run and tell her cousin.
I glide on some lip gloss before he leans over to kiss me.
“Why you go and do that for?” he asks.
“Because my lips were no good,” I say.
“I want your lips naked, like I want your—” He stops.
“What? Say it. My body?”
“You said it, not me.” He laughs.
I let him kiss me right in front of the school. Then someone bangs on the hood of the car.
“Get a room!” It’s Pri. “No, no, no. I take that back. Keep your hands to yourself, young man.” She points to Kasim and they both laugh.
I watch as Pri and Donna walk down the block. I don’t know where they are going, but I’m glad that they’ve been leaving me alone. I thought they would be babysitting me this whole time, but they have their own lives, and I have mine, thank goodness.
Then I spot that girl named Tonesha walking past the car. “You know her?” I ask.
“Who? Tonesha? Why? She messing with you?”
“She came to my face today.”
He starts the car. It’s noisier now, as if whatever he fixed has gotten worse. “She came to your face? You mean, she was all up in your face?”
“I had to protect you, Kasim,” I say with a smile.
He looks at me as he drives down Vernor Highway, and I don’t even ask where he’s taking me because I’m so glad to be spending time with him. A grin spreads across his face and my insides go warm.
“Damn. Sounds like you held your own, shorty—tellin’ Tonesha ‘he’s my man.’ In fact, you should tell your whole school, the whole west side, east side, all of Detroit that I’m your man.”
“No, you tell Detroit that I’m your girl,” I say.
“A’ight,” he says. He rolls down his window and sticks his head out a little bit. “Ay yo, Detroit! This girl right here, Fabulous, she’s the one! Feel me, Detroit! Fabulous . . .”
“Kasim!” I yell, and try to pull him back in by the sleeve of his coat. “Keep your eyes on the road!” I almost want him to keep yelling it out just so Tonesha and this cousin of hers can hear it.
He laughs. “Wait. I don’t even know your last name and I’m in love with you. You got the same last name as your cousins, right? Fabulous Fran?ois?”
I laugh while still clutching his sleeve. “My name is not even Fabulous. It’s Fabiola. Fabiola Toussaint!” I say, but it’s the words I’m in love with you that linger in my mind. I want him to say it again—to repeat it over and over so that I’m sure I heard him correctly the first time.
“Yeah, but I like Fabulous Fran?ois better. It sounds important and shit. Like you’re some movie star.”
“No. My name is my name and you can’t change it. What about you? Are you Broke Carter? You have Dray’s last name?”
“Oh, how you gonna know Dray’s last name before you know mine? Huh, Fabulous?”
I don’t answer, because I’ve only heard Dray’s last name once and it was from the detective. I slipped. I wasn’t supposed to let him know that. “I heard Donna say it,” I lie.
“Well, no. It’s not Carter. It’s Anderson.”
“Broke Anderson. I like Broke Carter instead. Like this broke car.”
He laughs hard and for a long time and I’m afraid that he’s not watching the road. I laugh, too, but I keep my eyes on Livernois Avenue for him.
Finally, he stops laughing and breathes out, “Damn.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“You got me,” he says.
“I got you what?” I ask.
While still holding the steering wheel and keeping his eyes on the road, he takes his free hand and cups it over his chest. He motions as if he’s grabbing something and then gives it over to me. “Here,” he says. “It’s yours.”
Slowly, I take his invisible heart and hold it close to mine. I hug it. I know he sees me do that out of the corner of his eye.