I wanted to do something. I wanted to do a lot. I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to laugh until tears rolled. I wanted to dance and not feel ashamed that I had too much rhythm, or that my butt flopped to the beat before my mind could catch up to it. I wanted to be the type of student the teachers talked to after school and looked at when they were asking questions. I wanted to make the honor roll and not have to apologize for it, to Patty-Cake or nobody else. I wanted to cut my four inches of broken-off hair and be proud of the knotty curls underneath—like Jewel had been once when she showed up in Chicago “with a head as bald and smooth as a new baby’s behind,” as my grandma put it with scrunched-up lips. I wanted to join some kind of club that would keep me busy after school and in charge of something. I wanted to do something. I just needed somebody to tell me what.

“I mean, I want to do something too. But girl, maybe it’s not this.”

“Well, what else is it gonna be?” Nakesha dared me, her eyes suddenly slit like an enemy’s.

“I’m just saying, maybe it ain’t worth all this …”

“Girl, quit acting like you the first person ever walked up in here! What, you ashamed? Ain’t nobody gonna see us.”

“Fuck what people think!” I screamed, like she really was the enemy this time. I was hurt that she seemed to be turning on me. I cut her a little slack. A little attitude now was no different from how she had always been; it wouldn’t make me cut her off as a friend. I knew about Nakesha’s mother and father working all the time, leaving her with sassy younger siblings, a key on her neck, and something thawed-out in the fridge. She was braiding hair for a while, but her ma was always borrowing money for bills (without paying back), so she stopped. Boy after boy ran through her house after school, slipping out before either of her parents got home, and when each one tired of whatever it was she was giving, he simply stopped talking to her and she moved on to the next. Most of the boys she seduced at the bottom of the bunk bed she shared with a sister were already tight-lipped and moody by the time they were walking out her front door.

I watched her big ass jiggle away. We had both cut school to go to her house and take scorching hot baths. We knew some doctor was going to be feeling around our privates, and I knew White people thought we all stink. I was here, smelling nice, ready for them to stick their fingers up there. Might as well get it over with.