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  Fay, eager to break the tension, opens his mouth to say something, but I rise from my chair and immediately need to sit back down.

  “Y-you know, Joo. Why don’t you and Fay go dance?” I say. I quickly glance away and close my eyes tight, trying to stop the room from spinning.

  “What you trying to do, T?” Joo says as she sets her purse on the table. I’ve disrespected her and she knows it, but it can still go either way.

  “Chill, Joo,” Fay says.

  “Yeah, everybody chill. Why is it so tense in here?” I joke and turn back to look at them. “Fay, go dance with Joo. Brianne and I are gonna go to the bathroom.”

  Brianne, eager for an out, nods enthusiastically and hops from Joo’s side to mine.

  Fay squints as his body involuntarily moves to the beat. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, you gotta thank her for all that sugar, right? We’re all friends—right, Joo?”

  The ball is in her court, and she knows she’ll look stupid if she turns this into anything more than words.

  “Yeah. C’mon, Fay,” she says with all her teeth, but I catch her eyes cutting to mine a few times when Fay isn’t looking, searching for the real reason behind my acquiescence.

  I watch as he spins her twice before they make it to the writhing crowd. She laughs at something Fay says, and I take heartbreaking notice of how good they look together.

  “Bri, help me get to the other side of the building. I don’t feel too good,” I say, and lean hard on my friend since Girl Scouts, hoping against hope she knows how to keep her mouth shut.

  2 TAMAR

  I’M NEARLY INCONSOLABLE WHEN MY sister Aabidah finds me in the teachers’ lounge. The crying brought on a coughing fit, so she had to bring the oxygen tank through a side entrance so no one at the dance would see. Aabidah eventually had to half walk, half carry me out of the school building. I’m no longer crying, but I’m still sipping breaths from my oxygen mask as she draws me a bath with Epsom salts and eucalyptus oil to open my chest up.

  “You want to tell me why I had to come and get you? Or why you went to a dance when you know you’re not supposed to?”

  “I’m n-not a-a child,” I say, fully aware I’m acting like one.

  “I can forbid you from doing things, but I haven’t, because usually you don’t need me to be the adult in the room. You handle it yourself. But this? You could barely get up and get dressed this morning. There is a reason we’re doing virtual school online. Why, why—”

  “Because I’m seventeen. Because I want my senior memories to be more than doctors’ visits and binge-watching singing competitions,” I say, holding back the frustration and sadness building inside me as I pull the mask away from my mouth so she can hear me clearly.

  “Mama would be on your ass right now,” she mumbles to the tub.

  “But Mama isn’t here anymore, so…”

  “So…” She turns to face me, then shuts off the faucet and lets her hand drag in the water a bit to break up the salt crystals settling in like fog.

  “I saw Coach Letterman outside,” she reveals.

  “He tried to push up on you, didn’t he,” I say as I let the mask snap back in place.

  “Yup.”

  “Ewww.” My face contorts.

  “I don’t know how he keeps his job,” she wonders.

  “He only pushes up on the recent graduates. Once you cross that high school stage, you’re fair game. He needs to be reported.”

  Aabidah nods a little too fervently, and I can tell she’s hiding a smirk.

  “Did you give him your number?” I ask, drawing in a pained breath of shock. She breaks into a fit of laughter, and I can’t help but follow her. “Owwww. Don’t make me laugh.”

  “I didn’t give him my real number. But Coach Letterman is fine!” she argues.

  I grimace. “He’s old as hell, too.”

  “Whatever, I’m grown.”

  “See, y’all be encouraging that nasty behavior. What did Mama used to say? A fast tail makes a soft behind,” I chide.

  She sucks her teeth. “That is not how the saying goes. It’s a hard head makes a soft behind.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean.” I take a beat to let my breath slow, and slip off my robe to get into the tub. “I’m sorry for going out. It was selfish. Fay called, and I don’t know. I just couldn’t say no again,” I say, guiltily.

  Aabidah shakes her head. “Shut up. You’re supposed to go out and have fun, and you’re supposed to do it behind your parents’ backs. You don’t have any of those anymore, so my back will do just fine.”

  I slip lower into the water and let the warmth do its work. Eucalyptus pushes past the blocks in my nose and chest, allowing me to breathe just slightly better than a few minutes before, but the feeling is delicious all the same. Aabidah gets up to go, but I stop her. I don’t want this tension between us. I never ever let us leave a room without smoothing things out. Not after how Mama died.

  “Tell me what you remember most about senior year.”

  Her shoulders slump, hating the change in subject. “After you tell me what happened with Fay.”

  My chin drops to my wet chest and I draw circles in the water with my finger.

  “I ran. Metaphorically speaking. Really, I just leaned on this girl until I partially collapsed in the teachers’ lounge.”

  Her mouth drops open in genuine shock. “Why?”

  “I couldn’t stand looking into his eyes and seeing so much hope there. The wanting. How many times can I say no when he wants to come over? I know he just wants to see me, but I’ll be damned if he sees me with my face half drowned by an oxygen mask. The house smells like old sick people, no matter how much Pine-Sol you use. And I’m not blaming you. It’s me.

  “And Fay’s sitting there at the table and he wants to dance. He doesn’t say it but I know he does, and I keep coming up with these excuses because the truth is too real and too pathetic. I saw the looks on all the other girls’ faces. Pity. Not for me, but for him. Those bitches smell the blood in the water, and you know what? I agree with them. Why would he want to be with me when he could be with one of them? One of those smiling, happy girls with a scholarship on the way and finals the only fear in her heart. Somebody who can twerk and drink spiked punch and laugh at dumb shit ’cause laughing is easy. I thought I could handle it, but I couldn’t.” I pause to take a much-needed breath, small though it may be.

  “So that’s it, then?”

  “What’s it?” I say, the grief giving way to anger.

  “You just giving up? Like you did with Spelman?”

  “Spelman’s just on hold.”

  “Scholarships don’t hold. You’re a legacy. You’ll be the fifth generation of women in this family to go to Spelman College and pledge. Pretty girls do what?”

  I roll my eyes. “Wear twenty pearls. I know.” We don’t talk about how Aabidah missed her opportunity to continue the legacy because she had to stay home and take care of Mama. Her sorors are great, but the University of South Carolina wasn’t her dream. I think it’s too much for her to imagine that Spelman might not be my dream too, or that fate has intervened yet again to set fire to our family legacy.

  “I know their music program isn’t what you originally had in mind but—”

  “We had a deal!” I whisper-yell, rising just a bit in the water so she knows I’m serious. This part of the conversation is over. “No college dreams, no future plans. I want scandal and intrigue. Four years ago. Spill,” I demand.

  Aabidah chews her lip and fixes the decorative towels on the rack so they line up just so. Thinking. She wants to say more and I’m waiting for it, but she doesn’t go there. Instead she launches into a story about how the French teacher got caught cheating and his speech-pathologist wife tossed all his clothes onto the tennis court right before a match. It’s funny. It’s also a smoke screen. She gave up too easily, and if I know anything about my sister, it’s that she never ever gives up without a fight.

>   3 FAYARD

  I MISS HER THE MOST when it’s quiet. The air conditioner kicks in and a low rumble fills the media lab with background music that I hate, and there it is. Loneliness. Not that I’m alone. DeAndre is rendering some footage from the Winter recital right next to me, headphones blasting something I don’t recognize. His right hand, still a little dirty from automotive class, moves the mouse smoothly while his left is buried elbow deep in a bag of Wise dill-pickle potato chips. He chews with his mouth open and then licks his fingers.

  “Want some?”

  I shake my head. Nasty.

  I’ve been staring at the same footage for nearly an hour, turning my rosary beads over in my pocket like a worrying stone. Dre set up a few GoPros before the dance started, so we got some great stuff: the dance-off between the freshmen and the juniors, Cathy Tran’s promposal. But what I’m obsessing over won’t even make it into the final cut for our channel. It’s about a half hour after I arrive with T. She gets up from her seat at the table and then falls back down. I’ve got my head turned, mouth wide open, mid-laugh over something stupid, I’m sure. I didn’t see her. I wasn’t paying attention. I zoom in closer, looping the strained pull of muscle in her jaw when she rises, the look of panic in her eyes as she gets to her feet, and finally the plastered smile she gives me when I eventually turn back around.

  It’s the smile that’s the problem, because I didn’t see it for the paper-thin mask that it was. I remember wanting her to dance and even resenting her for being so bougie. I thought she was bored. I lean back in my chair and let the loop play over and over on the screen, as if on the next play it’ll be different: I’ll notice how much pain she’s in and take her out of the auditorium and to Finlay Park instead, carry her down the steps and let her watch the waterfall at night, wrap her in my mom’s old FAMU blanket I keep in the trunk. Or I’ll realize how dumb the whole dance idea was from the beginning and take her to Cool Beans, that coffeehouse on USC’s campus. We’ll sit in front of their fireplace and sip hot cocoa from cups the size of cereal bowls until curfew. I imagine all the scenarios that don’t end up with her staggering out of the gym on the arm of a girl whose name I can’t remember.

  “You can watch it loop like that forever. It won’t change what happened,” DeAndre says as tiny bits of chip fly out of his mouth. He pulls his headphones off and pauses the track. “Just go over there. It’s obvious you want to apologize.”

  “I called. She won’t answer. I texted. I get one-word replies. I’m iced out.”

  “You know my instinct is to say”—he pauses and flips me the middle finger—“but I know how you feel about T. I don’t understand it, but I acknowledge it. If you want my advice—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m gonna give it to you. Use your resources. Plebeians use lame stuff like telecommunications networks and social media. You a king or you a buster?”

  “Be plain. I’m not in the mood for your riddles, Dre.”

  “What I’m saying is that T is no ordinary girl, so you can’t go about this in an ordinary way. In Little League, what did Coach Barclay teach us about defeating your opponent?”

  “The three Ds?” I ask, not following his metaphor at all.

  “That’s right. T’s avoidance is your enemy, and you attack your enemy by distraction, deception, or destruction. Which is it gonna be?”

  “You know we lost nearly every game.”

  “Nevertheless. Which is it gonna be?” he urges, fully invested in this piss-poor advice. I gotta give it to him, though. He is trying.

  I shake my head. Dre’s got a sports analogy for every situation, and I don’t know why this would be any different, but he does give me an idea. It’s wild, but it is something. I shut down my computer and throw all my other equipment and books in my bag. It’s Wednesday. Bible study night. If I move fast, I just might make it.

  “Thanks, Dre.”

  “No prob! Don’t get arrested! Wear protection.”

  “I don’t think that applies,” I say carefully.

  He stuffs another wad of chips into his mouth and chomps down loudly. “It always applies!”

  * * *

  Sarah-Ann’s already got her seat belt on when I squeal into the parking space right next to her at Shining Point Church. I knew that as head of the Teen Ministry, she’d be the designated driver for the Bible-study carpool. She’s the church’s oldest Girl Scout and co–troop leader for the Daisies. The parking lot is full of the tiny girls in their uniforms. I jump out and give a silent thanks to God the meeting ended early enough to let Sarah-Ann drive. Her twin brother, Bo, is the backup driver for the Bible study pickup. My plan would be dead in the water before it even set sail if he’d gotten the job.

  She’s about to slam her car door shut when I stick my arm out to catch it.

  “Hey!” I say too loudly and too brightly, but Sarah-Ann smiles back.

  “Hey to you! I haven’t seen you around in a while,” she says.

  “I—I know. I have, uh… been doing a lot of silent study in my, uh… prayer closet. You’ve got to have a personal relationship with Christ.”

  For a second I think she’s going to sniff out my bullshit, but she nods enthusiastically.

  “Oh yes, definitely. But you’ve also got to consult people who’ve spent their lives in prayer and study like Pastor Roberts. Sheep need a shepherd.”

  That is not the analogy I would use, but I don’t have time to get into that with her.

  “Well, I was in prayer, and God put it in my heart to volunteer more at the church.”

  “You should! And the Teen Ministry would love to have you. We’re cleaning out Deacon Riley’s gutters this weekend, and then we’re going to delouse Mother Bolden’s three cocker spaniels,” she says excitedly.

  “Oh, wow. That does sound, uh, enriching, but I was hoping I could start today. As a service to you personally, I could do today’s carpool,” I say as earnestly as I can muster.

  “You don’t have to do that!”

  “I’d love to! I want to! You serve God by serving others, right? And that includes you.” I plaster on another big smile.

  “Well, I could use that time to put an extra coat of disinfectant on the toys in the playroom,” she says, more to herself than to me, as she thinks it over.

  “Great! When one door closes, God opens a window. Is that the list of pickups?” I slide the list out of her hands and make sure the Christian hug I give her once she steps out of the car is just a tad too long. A soupçon of guilt to keep her from telling anybody I stole her job for the day.

  There are four people on the list. Just enough to fit in my car. They’re all kids I know, and they all live so close to one another that I could get the lot and still be thirty minutes early for service. So when I idle the car in front of T’s house and walk up to the door, I’ve got reinforcements.

  The bell rings and I can hear her yell “got it” from inside. I thought I was prepared for when she opened the door, but I’m not. She’s in a pink T-shirt that says HOPE DEALER on the front and jeans that hug every curve. It’s just jeans and a T-shirt, but to me she couldn’t look better if she was in diamonds and lace or some luxury-brand stuff from the mall. She’s water in the desert.

  “H-hey,” I say, and watch her lips quiver as she smiles. I surprised her, but she doesn’t look mad about it. She leans over to the side to look past me at the car full of kids from our Vacation Bible School days.

  She rolls her eyes and laughs a bit. “Clever.”

  I shrug. “Still coming?”

  “You know it. Can’t let the devil keep me from church.”

  “I’m not the devil,” I say, giving her my arm so she can lean on me as we walk down the steps to the car.

  “So you say.”

  Dina Slater leans half her body out of the back window to whistle at us. “Don’t y’all look cute.” Her brother Philip pulls her back into the car.

  “Shut up, Dina!” he mumbles as he op
ens the car door on his side for T to slide in.

  “Nice to see you again, Tamar,” Bernard says in his uniquely formal way from the front seat.

  “Thank you, Bernard. It’s nice to see you, too.”

  “Fayard, did you know Tamar’s name is biblical? The biblical Tamar’s two husbands were killed by God for their wickedness, so she disguised herself as a prostitute to deceive her father-in-law Judah so she could bear a child,” Bernard recounts.

  “Uh… wow… uh. I did not know that,” I reply.

  I catch T’s face in the rearview mirror: Her hand is over her mouth, trying to stifle a laugh. Bernard’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and board games. I went over to his house one Memorial Day for a BBQ and promptly got my ass handed to me in chess, checkers, Monopoly, and Clue.

  Everyone but T files out of the car when we make it to the church parking lot.

  “Loop around a few times,” she says as soon as we’re alone.

  She doesn’t have to ask me twice.

  “You got it.”

  “So?” she asks.

  “So . . ,” I say back, suddenly at a loss for words.

  “You have my attention. This was cute. It’s nice to see you, and not in the same way that it’s nice to see Bernard.” She smiles, and the world slows down and clicks back into place again. I don’t feel right when she’s not around. I can’t even remember what it felt like not to know her, and if all I get is this bit of time in a church carpool, I’ll take it. Even if she’s still in the back seat and I’m chauffeuring her around the parking lot.

  “It’s good to see you, too. I promise not to compare you to a prostitute,” I tease.

  “Well, let me do a praise break for that.”

  I keep glancing at her in the rearview mirror, grateful for the distance. Otherwise I might just stare at her the entire time and let the minutes tick by as I memorize each divot in her collarbone or try to calculate the degree at which each of her eyelashes curls.

  “Pay attention to the road,” she says softly, chastising me.