I asked her if she was saying that having a perm is bad and what that means for the Black women who have perms—are they wrong? She said, “It’s not the perm. It’s the reason why you want it. Be careful, li’l bit. Every day, in a hundred ways, you’re being told you’re not good enough. You’re not pretty enough, light enough, or smart enough. I don’t want you to echo that in your head or in your heart.”

We spent the next few days looking at wigs, trying to figure out which one I should go with. I thought my mama would aim for a natural wig with braids, but she came over to me with long, silky black hair from Brazil. It was more expensive, but she thought it might be what I wanted. I put it on, and there I was: long, shiny, soft hair that could swoosh. I looked pretty, carefree, and new. The new part bothered me. I wasn’t new. I was the latest. The wig—naturally—had no roots. I opted for the lace-front wig with short twists. It felt more like . . . me.

The guy who asked me to the prom a few days later was Matthew Simpson. He’s in all of my Advanced Placement classes. People talk about him because he’s always checking his watch so he can get to where he’s going half an hour early. He always carries a bigger backpack than anyone else. That’s crazy because we have lockers we can put our books in. So, why is he carrying them around? He says it’s because he wants to always be prepared. His obsession with time and being prepared makes people laugh at him.

I think he asked me to the prom because no one else would ask me. The guys I like think that I’m stuck up or that I speak like a white girl. And the girls Matthew likes think he’s too odd to even consider going out with. He asked me and I said yes. It’s not exactly a romantic story, but at least we get to go to prom.

We thought that before the big day we should hang out, just to get to know each other more. So we planned a date to the movies and then to get some food after. When I got there, Matthew was waiting for me, backpack in hand. He told me he’d arrived thirty minutes early.

“Why you always come half an hour early and why you always have a backpack on?” I asked.

“I’m not always half an hour early; sometimes I’m twenty minutes early and other times I’m an hour. It depends.”

“On what?” I asked.

“On how many times I get stopped by the cops.”

I’d never even considered that.