Almost Crimson (16 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

SILENCE

 

 

CECE GOT HOME FROM HER date with Eric after 11 p.m., hours beyond either of their expectations. Changed into her nightshirt, CeCe padded to the kitchen and traded text messages about the date with Pam.

Pam teased about a grocery store wedding and CeCe joked about asparagus bouquets. CeCe poured a glass of juice and leaned against the counter as she sipped. The phone dinged an alert once. Twice. The first text was, indeed, a clever reply from Pam. The second message was from Eric.

“Got the ‘great time' text,” she typed to Pam. “Swooning.”

“Leaving nothing to chance,” Pam typed back. “Smart man. Me like.”

CeCe toggled messages to Pam and Eric. She placed her empty glass in the sink, giggled at a text from Eric, turned off the kitchen lights and moved into the hallway. CeCe liked the way he gently teased about her enormous car, and she had liked the snow-soft kiss on her cheek. She typed and smiled when her mother's voice startled her.

“Nice?”

CeCe still started at her mother's voice sometimes. She was braced for their familiar silence when CeCe moved her mother into Terri's vacated room three years prior. The tradeoff for her mother's rediscovered speech had been the anxious phone calls triggered by spasms of panic over CeCe's whereabouts and well-being. CeCe decided the exchange had been an even one, but the sound of her mother's voice could still catch her off guard.

“Didn't hear you, Mama,” CeCe said into her mother's darkened room.

“Your date,” her mother's voice said. “Was he nice.”

CeCe grinned a little. She had stewed in their early years here, at her mother's deliberate gall to ask about her days, after so much time, to remember a big client event or notice a new pair of earrings. CeCe admonished herself for scowling when her mother's voice would whistle from the dark bedroom.

“Yeah,” CeCe said into the bedroom shadows. “He was really nice.”

CeCe leaned her entire right half toward the doorway's yawning darkness, listening for speech or light snoring.

“Good,” her mother finally said. “That's good.”

“Good night, Mama,” CeCe said, waiting. Her mother did not reply.

CeCe shuffled to the end of the hallway and into her bedroom. Her phone dinged with a new message. CeCe closed the door and switched off the lights. She gripped her phone and slipped into bed. After activating her alarm clock, CeCe felt along the ledge of her headboard shelves to find her charger cord. She plugged in her phone, anchored an elbow into her spare pillow, and smiled down at the small screen.

“Was at a conference,” read the message from Rocky. “Sacramento. Call you tomorrow.”

CeCe's heart lurched. She still had no idea how to make that stop.

TWENTY-NINE

BATS

 

 

ONLY FRESHMEN ATTENDED SCHOOL ON the first day at Maclin High. CeCe appreciated the early chance to navigate the enormous building, practice opening her very first locker, and share her new classmates' nervous energy. In their orientation assembly, their freshman guidance director, Mr. Meadows, introduced the head principal, the nurse and head secretary, cheerleaders, graduating seniors, class presidents, and yearbook editor.

CeCe kept turning to look at the sea of the freshman faces. Six hundred, the size of her entire elementary school and triple the size of her middle school. Her nerves settled a bit more each time she spied a Valmore face. They were blended into a population of academically strong students from throughout the district. Many of their classmates had advanced to private high schools, as expected, but CeCe looked forward to Maclin's honors classes and, of course, adjusting to the expanded social network of high school.

When CeCe spotted Jesse, she froze. She was pulling out her lunch bag and a library book but folded into her locker when she saw him. CeCe made a silent wish not to have any classes with Jesse, and to spend the next four years passing him in the halls as infrequently as possible.

In the cafeteria, CeCe sat down at an empty table with her brown bag and book. She was reading Toni Morrison's
The Bluest Eye
, a title the public librarian had suggested. CeCe thought she might not enjoy the novel, but she was immediately engrossed.

“You like it?” a voice asked.

CeCe looked up to face another brown-skinned girl standing at her lunch table. CeCe recognized her from the assembly. The girl was tall and lean, with wide-set eyes and fleshy, pink lips. She looked, to CeCe, like a grasshopper.

“So far,” CeCe said.

“I couldn't finish it,” the girl said. “It was too depressing.”

CeCe nodded in understanding. She noticed the girl had a book tucked underneath her arm, too. “What are you reading?”

“
Cujo
,” she said, placing her lunch bag on the table, freeing her hands to show CeCe the book cover. CeCe nodded again. Stephen King was one of her favorites. “My name's Laurita.”

“CeCe.”

The girls sat together in a cocooning silence. They munched and sipped and turned pages with the din of their new cafeteria scattering behind them. Mr. Meadows' voice in the PA speakers jerked them from their stories and instructed them to prepare for the bell and their afternoon classes. The girls tossed their trash, but Laurita folded her lunch bag, just like CeCe.

“Which bus do you ride?” Laurita asked. CeCe was relieved that her new friend asked about the city bus. At Valmore, everyone else had a yellow bus, minivan, or Volvo to pick them up.

“Clark, then I change to the Kennedy,” CeCe said, walking with her new friend out of the cafeteria.

“I take the Clark bus, too,” Laurita said. “Then I go the other way, on the Fourth Avenue bus. Want me to meet you after school and we can walk together?”

CeCe nodded, hoping she didn't look as spastically excited as she felt on the inside. At the end of the day, CeCe stacked books into her locker when she saw Laurita at the far end of the hallway. Her new friend came toward CeCe, lanky limbs bending and knocking like a marionette. The two made their way through the ebb of students pouring out to school buses, bike racks, and idling cars and continued walking another block to the Clark Avenue bus stop.

In their short bus ride and while waiting at their shared transfer stop, Laurita managed to tell CeCe about a lethargic cat named Chitlin, her summer in the country backwoods of Alabama, the roller skating rink near her house, her straight As in math, a big brother in college, the time her father had gotten them lost driving to Busch Gardens, and the vacuuming she needed to do before her mother got home from work. As Laurita's Fourth Street bus came into view, she finished a story about Chitlin and paused to smile at her new friend.

“It's me and you,” she said, placing a hand on CeCe's shoulder. “We're freshmen, we're black, we're kinda nerdy, we're small—well, I'm skinny and you're short—and we're not one of the cool kids. But we've got each other, OK?”

CeCe heard herself agreeing with Laurita, sharing a hug as the bus reached their stop and waving as Laurita boarded. CeCe's smile crashed once the bus pulled away.

Not one of the cool kids.

 

The next day was a madhouse. CeCe noticed an electricity in the hallways she hadn't felt the day before. Navigating her small form in between the hundreds of stalklike upperclassmen affirmed to CeCe that she was truly a high school student now. Nudging along to their lockers, CeCe thought of all the high school montages she'd seen on TV: girls walking in pairs, hugging textbooks to their bosoms; letterman's jackets raucously chasing each other through the halls; beautiful people with lip gloss and moussed hair; quirky-looking kids with black clothes and heavy boots; adult voices spiking above the roar of students to direct one to the office, another away from that locker.

CeCe and Laurita stood against the wall beside CeCe's locker before parting for their separate homeroom classes.

“You know where you're going?” Laurita asked.

“I think so,” CeCe said. They did not face each other. They were watching the flow of students, timing their plunge.

“OK, but if you have to pull out your schedule, be sure to go into the bathroom,” Laurita said. “You want to look like you know what we're doing.”

CeCe nodded and the two girls scooted into opposite directions and fell into the stream of students. CeCe waited by Laurita's locker at lunchtime, as agreed. CeCe regarded her friend's burgundy-and-cream ensemble, at how the pants matched the cardigan and the polo matched her hair barrettes.

Hair barrettes.

The lunchroom was alive with chatter and shrieking, a cacophony of shoe soles and slammed books, and so, so many faces. Over sandwiches, CeCe and Laurita talked about the presence of the upperclassmen, the homework they'd already been assigned, and the characters in their classes.

“There's this one guy in my English class named Jesse,” Laurita said, peeling the top from her fruit cup. “He's so ridiculous. He made fun of everyone when the teacher stepped into the hallway, but after class, out in the hall, he acted like a scared rat. He was really mean.”

“I used to go to school with him,” CeCe said. “He tries to be a bully.”

CeCe did not mention her confrontation with Jesse on their last night at Neil Armstrong, because she would have to tell Michelle's secret to tell the story. Besides, CeCe didn't want to think about Jesse. She'd spent two years forgetting him, and figured she could stay out of his path for another four.

She was wrong.

CeCe, Laurita, and another new friend, a Puerto Rican girl named Sophia, were eating lunch at their usual table the next day. Sophia made them all laugh with her retelling of a French horn blare in band class that made the teacher blush for ten minutes. CeCe and Laurita were clutching their stomachs while Sophia acted out the scene. Jesse and two other boys were on their way out of the lunchroom, but swerved to stand at the end of the girls' table.

“What's so funny?” he asked, leaning on the table, looking from one girl to the next. His eyes danced with mean flames. None of the girls answered him.

“What's so funny?” Jesse repeated, straightening to his full, albeit slight height.

“Who wants to know?” Sophia asked, with a snap in her voice.

“Nobody,” he said, glancing at his two sidekicks, seeming to cue their laughter. “Nobody cares what you three bats are talking about.”

The girls replied in staggered sighs and mutterings. Jesse shoved his hands in his pockets and had turned his entire body to face CeCe only. “I just came over to remind
Crimson
that I'm still gonna get her back,” he said. His small green eyes were piercing and cold. His consonants were sloppy along the letter “S,” his mouth still full of metal braces.

“I had to spend the summer cutting grass for two old ladies on my block for free because you narced on me,” Jesse said, sounding venomous.

“I didn't narc on you,” CeCe said, hoping to be indignant instead of nervous. She pinched her sandwich between her fingers.

“She's a liar, too,” Jesse said to the taller boy on his left. He turned his attention to Laurita and Sophia. “Did she tell you how she narced on her own best friend until the whole family had to move?”

“Shut up, Jesse!” CeCe said, her eyes wide. “That's not what happened!”

“So you admit
something
happened,” Jesse said, mischief filling his eyes and grin.

“No—well, yes—but I didn't—” CeCe stopped, her words frustrated. CeCe's protests sounded like she was defending herself, and she didn't want her new friends to think she had anything to hide.

“Shut up!” she hissed at Jesse. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Oh, yes I do,” Jesse said. “You narced on your fat friend, you narced on me, and I bet you'll narc on anybody. I'm gonna hafta warn people about you. You're a menace.”

A lunchroom monitor moved in their direction, but Jesse curled a wicked grin onto his face as he and his new clique of sycophants moved past CeCe's table and out of the lunchroom.

“Keep an eye on her, you bats!” he said in a stage whisper to Laurita and Sophia, his words slippery with spit.

The girls were silent once he left. CeCe felt angry and embarrassed, frustrated and upset. Her temples had begun to pound and her heart thundered in her chest. CeCe buried her face in her hands. Sophia placed a hand on her shoulder first, then Laurita reached from across the table to touch the back of her hands.

“Don't worry about him,” Laurita said.

“Yeah, he's nothing,” Sophia said. “Come with me to the home ec room. I'll buy you a cupcake from their bake sale.”

“No, thanks,” CeCe said, lowering her hands and looking at her friends. New friends who were already looking at her differently. Already wondering if they'd made a miscalculation. CeCe knew how it could be for kids on the fringe, like them. In middle school, she had thought all the outsiders would stick together. On the contrary, missteps or misjudgments were much more detrimental to their social survival, and the fringe kids had learned to cut bait fast.

 

At home, CeCe continued to think of Michelle. Not only their last night, but all of the memories they'd accumulated over the years. In actuality, Michelle and her twin brother Michael had been CeCe's oldest friends at Neil Armstrong. Now, her single remaining close friend was Pam, and CeCe needed to talk to her now. In the middle of reading her American history assignment, CeCe swung her feet stood up from the couch and went to the phone in the hallway.

Her mother sat at the kitchen table, staring into the usual nothing. CeCe looked at her mother as she lifted the receiver. Waiting, CeCe realized, for her mother to ask—even demand—just who in the world did she think she was calling?

Her mother kept staring.

CeCe looked away and punched Pam's number into the phone. She raised the receiver to her ear and waited. Silence. CeCe pressed the phone hook with her index finger, but still heard no dial tone. CeCe tapped the hook impatiently.

“Mama, where's the phone bill?” CeCe asked, looking down at the floor and not at her mother.

“What'd you say, CrimsonBaby?” her mother said.

“Where is the phone bill?” CeCe repeated, still looking at the linoleum floor. She kept one finger on the phone hook and the phone receiver in her other hand, as if the line might spring back to life. CeCe couldn't look up at her. She wouldn't be able to stand the slumped shoulders, the ever-present coffee mug, or her vacant expression.

“The phone bill?” her mother repeated. Eyes still on the floor, CeCe could hear her mother shifting in her seat, building momentum to stand, perhaps. CeCe imagined her mother standing and glancing around on the floor as if the bill might be there.

“Forget it,” CeCe said, slamming the phone on the receiver. She went to the hallway desk and fished inside for the notepad she'd made in fifth grade to keep track of their account numbers for the phone company, the electric company, and the bank, contact information for the lawyer's office managing her mother's trust fund, and the address for Aunt Rosie and Cousin Coretta.

CeCe didn't understand how her mother could confuse such a short list of tasks. Sweep the kitchen. Clean the coffee pot. Bring in the mail. Leave it for CeCe. CeCe would have to take three buses downtown tomorrow for a money order and to pay the phone company. CeCe didn't look at her mother for the rest of the evening.

 

At school, Jesse continued to yell “narc” at CeCe in the hallways and call her friends “bats” in the lunchroom. Although, Laurita admitted he only acted that way around CeCe, ignoring them when the girls encountered him alone.

“I know you can't tell us what happened,” Sophia said one day, “but this guy is really, really pissed at you. Maybe you should apologize.”