Sweet 16 to Life (18 page)

F
riday morning, I slept in with a too-much-turkey-and-dressing hangover. But that wasn't the only reason I stayed in bed late. The first thing I saw when I woke up was the dress still hanging on the back of my door with nowhere to go. More time asleep meant less time thinking about starting the lamest sixteenth birthday ever. It took me a few seconds to notice the sticky note attached to the clear plastic dress bag. The note was in Lana's handwriting.

Now it's a couple of minutes before noon and I'm waiting on the porch, shivering, because I refuse to cover up my gorgeous dress with a coat. But I'm carrying a coat anyway because I know Lana will fuss if I don't. I've gotten used to the idea there won't be a party, but at least I'll get lunch. And there's no way this dress is going to the Cheesecake Factory, no matter how good the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake is. This birthday, I'm picking someplace special. That's what I'm thinking when Marco pulls in front of my house on a motorcycle. No, not a motorcycle—one of those scooter things. What the . . . ?

“You ready?” Marco says. “Wow, you look . . . beautiful.”

I'm so surprised to see him, I forget to thank him and say, “You're taking me to lunch? I thought my mom . . .”

“You aren't the only one with secrets and plans. Your mom gave me an assist. So did your friend Tasha.”

“Tasha?”

“I ran into her on my way out the night you and your mother left me at your house. I waited around a couple of hours, but no more packages came and I had to get home. Tasha didn't even pretend to run into me accidentally. Said she saw me come over and was watching for me to leave so she could find out why I was hanging around your house, which she claims was her right to do as your best friend.”

“Sounds like Tasha,” I say. It makes me smile to know she still considers us best friends. I've been distracted and not holding up my end of that for a while.

“She had a few words for me. Something about dogging her friend.”

“I'm gonna kill her.”

“She was just looking out. I guess she filled you in on my extracurricular activity when I was at North DH.”

“I'm really,
really
going to kill her.”

“Don't, because it gives me a chance to clear that up. Most of those stories aren't true. Ask any quarterback—girls come with the position. Doesn't mean I take them up on their offers. But my friends . . . you know how guys are. It was easier to just go along with it.”

“That time I saw you and Angelique at the TasteeTreets, I could tell y'all had history. And chemistry. I mean
serious
chemistry, and I've never even had a boyfriend. I figured that was another reason y'all hooked back up. She was more . . .”

“Angelique's great. You were right—my parents do love her. We've known each other since we were kids and we've been on and off again since ninth grade. But mostly we've been off. Outside of the ‘serious chemistry,' there's not much else between us anymore. She was just, I don't know—”

“Comfortable?”

“Yeah, that's a good word for it. I figured it out that day you sat in your mom's car and we talked on the phone for an hour.”

“But you had to hang up the call because you had a date with her.”

“And the whole time I was with her, all I could think about was you. I ended it that night.”

“You didn't tell me. . . .”

“Because I didn't think it mattered. There was still the problem with my parents, my cousin, your playing cop. But it wasn't fair to keep Angelique as my backup plan.”

“Aren't your parents still a problem?” I ask.

“Probably, but they can't say it's because of David anymore. He decided to go back to Mexico.”

“Oh no, not because your family's afraid I'm going to screw it up?”

“No, nothing like that. He just missed his parents.”

“That's perfect, Marco. I mean, not for David, but—”

“David will be okay. And we still aren't totally in the clear. My parents still think you might get me killed, but eventually they'll see how great you are.”

“I'm great?”

“Yes, and never, ever comfortable.”

“What about the chemistry part?”

“You don't think we have chemistry? Because I know I'm feeling something right now.”

“Um, you know what I mean. I noticed you said
most
of those player stories weren't true. I'm not ready for . . . I mean, don't guys think that's the important part?”

“It does rank pretty high, but there's a whole lot that happens between the first kiss and
serious
chemistry,” he says. He smiles in that way that makes me think maybe I won't want to wait so long for the serious chemistry part to happen.

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Like riding a Vespa—”

“Yeah, riding that thing through Denver Heights will probably get you a beatdown. You know better than I do this ain't a scooter-riding kind of neighborhood.”

“—to a sidewalk café where we'll sip champagne,” Marco says, ignoring my interruption.

“I know it's a sunny day, but isn't it little chilly for that? And I'm turning sixteen, not twenty-one. I'm pretty sure we'll get carded if we try to order champagne.”

“So we'll order ginger ale,” Marco says, looking exasperated, at least until he smiles. “Will you stop playing detective for a second and let me finish telling you what comes between the first kiss and serious chemistry?”

I fold my arms across my chest and stay quiet.

“There's a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, buying gelato from a street vendor, and dancing—”

“Marco—you watched
Roman Holiday
,” I squeal, and I
never
squeal.

“Today, we do whatever you want. I'm going to be the guy who helps you turn an ordinary sixteenth birthday into a fairy tale.”

“You forgot one of the in-between things.”

“Which one?”

“The kiss.”

“Oh, I didn't forget that. But it doesn't happen until the end.”

“I thought I get whatever I want.”

“You're right,” Marco says, putting his arms around my waist.

Finally, I'm going to get that second kiss I've been dying for since before we even broke up. I close my eyes and wait for it . . . and wait for it....

“Sorry to interrupt, Chanti—but we need to talk.”

That isn't Marco's voice. When I open my eyes to see who has just royally screwed up my moment, I find Cisco standing at the bottom of my porch steps. My sweet sixteen might not become a fairy tale after all, but considering the way my life's been going, it's definitely turning into an ordinary day.

APB
:
abbr.
All-points bulletin.

BOLO
:
abbr.
Be on the lookout.

CI
:
abbr.
Confidential informant.
slang.
snitch; narc.

CO
:
abbr.
Commanding officer. A police officer's boss.

defendant
: Person charged with a crime by the court.

Five-O
:
slang.
1. Police officer, detective, etc. 2. Black-and-white, po-po, the man.

MO
:
abbr.
Modus operandi. How someone operates.

perp
:
abbr.
Perpetrator. Person suspected of committing a crime.

plaintiff
: Person charging a crime in the court.

prosecution
: A court's case against a defendant.

running hot
: Police car running with lights and sirens. Generally, patrol cars only run hot when something very bad is happening, like a crime in progress, and getting there fast is critical. If you reported your car broken into, they wouldn't run hot to your house to take your report. If someone was trying to break into your house, they would run hot.

street cop
: Patrol officer, as opposed to a detective or ranking officer. 2. Beat cop, uniform.

vice unit
: 1. Police department unit that usually handles narcotics, prostitution, and gambling crimes. 2. Where Chanti's mother Lana works undercover.

Meet Chanti for the first time in

 

My Own Worst Frenemy
.

 

In stores now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turn the page for an excerpt of
My Own Worst Frenemy
. . . .

I
'm eating Cocoa Puffs on my last day of summer vacation and watching the news because there's nothing else on but Sunday-morning church shows and infomercials. The reporter is on location, telling me how the police finally closed down a prostitution ring. I'd rather not share my breakfast with hookers or the helmet-haired reporter who's way too happy reporting their arrest, so I reach for the remote. That's when I recognize one of the women being loaded into the police truck. In case I'm not sure what I'm seeing, the reporter steps to the side and passes her arm through the air, Vanna White—style, so I can get a better look. The woman is trying to hide her face, and doing a good job, but I'd know that outfit anywhere.

It's definitely Lana, in her favorite wig, the platinum-blond one with the bangs. She's wearing a baby tee that reads
YOUNG, WILLING, AND ABLE,
with the neckline cut wide so one side slips off her shoulders to reveal a red bra strap. The T-shirt is cut so short that if not for the bra, all her business would be peeking out from the curled edges of cotton. If the shirt isn't bad enough, the Daisy Duke shorts are. And God, please don't let her bend over to duck into the truck like the other hookers are doing. Too late.

But that isn't the worst of it. People I know might be watching this. I might have to explain to them that my mother is not really a crack ho. Come to think of it, I'd be better off letting them think she
is
a crack ho since her real job is ten times worse. In my neighborhood, you can't get much lower than a vice cop.

 

A few hours later, no one has mentioned Lana or the fact that her butt cheeks were all over the news. It makes sense—none of my friends would be up that early on a Sunday, especially when it's our last day of freedom. We're spending it on my front porch doing what we've done pretty much all summer. Talking about being broke, gossiping about who hooked up and who broke up over the break, and trying to figure out what's going on at Ada Crawford's house across the street.

Ada's house doesn't fit in with the rest of the street. It was built in the fifties like the others, but her house is prettier, what real estate agents would call a
real cream puff
if anyone was actually interested in buying in our neighborhood. It's freshly painted and newly landscaped with the greenest grass that Ada has to water practically 24-7, which is no problem since she also has a new sprinkler system. Everybody else's house appears to have the original 1950s paint job, new landscaping is limited to plastic flowers on the porch, and we have to water our half-green, half-brown grass with a garden hose. What makes Ada a mystery is that she's got the nicest house on the block and no job. I know people can make a food stamp stretch, but not that much.

“It has something to do with all the men coming and going,” I speculate. “There goes one now.”

“Maybe she's a romantic and has lots of generous boyfriends, Chanti,” Michelle offers.

“Riiight, she's a romantic. And please pronounce my name right—
Shawnty
, not
Shanty
like the towns where poor people live in a Steinbeck book.”

“Who?” Michelle asks.

Maybe if she stopped calling me a book geek and picked one up herself, she'd find out. I know I sound a little testy, but Michelle annoys me. She's taken my best friend since third grade away from me, which is funny because Tasha and I never hung out with her before this summer. We even called her Squeak when she first moved on the block—not to her face or anything—because her voice reminded us of Minnie Mouse. Now they're almost besties. It isn't all Michelle's fault since I've been somewhat negligent in my best-friend duties and I suppose Tasha had to find someone to hang with all summer, but I'm still a little peeved.

“Well, she can't be dealing, because someone else has cornered that market, right, Michelle?” Tasha says as she glues a track onto Michelle's scalp. Tasha's mom can't stand the smell of the glue, so she has to do all her weaving outside. Most people would be afraid to get their weave done on somebody's porch by a girl with no professional training, but Tasha is a lot cheaper than the salon and really has a way with hair. She's like the weave whisperer or something.

There's a loud bang and Michelle jumps out of her chair and ducks behind the glider swing, ripping the newly glued track right off her head because Tasha is still holding it.

“What is your problem?” Tasha asks.

“I thought I heard a gunshot.”

“I know this isn't the farm, but it's not
that
bad, Michelle,” I say. “Mr. Harrison is trying to get his lawnmower started. It always sounds like that.”

Michelle comes out from behind the glider and returns to her chair. “Now it's my turn to correct you—I lived on a ranch, not a farm.”

“Close enough,” I say.

“Michelle isn't too far off the mark,” Tasha defends her. “Isn't that why you aren't working at Tastee Treets anymore?”

“My mother made me quit because a meth-head held us up, even though I was in the back walk-in freezer sneaking some Rocky Road during the whole thing,” I say. “Besides, that guy pulled a gun—he didn't shoot it.”

“Well, I heard somebody did get shot last weekend, a couple blocks over,” Tasha says.

Tasha knows everything about our neighborhood, but I know there wasn't a shooting two blocks over because Lana would have been talking about it for days. It would have been another justification for making me change schools, which she decided to do when my school announced it was closing. After years of people leaving for the suburbs, our school was down to five hundred students so the city merged it into our rival, North High. Lana won't move because she says if we wait a minute, it won't be long before someone opens an Asian bistro, a yoga studio, and a Starbucks on Center Street and we'll be all gentrified, like what happened in some other Denver neighborhoods. Then she plans to sell for a lot of money. Lana is more optimistic than I am. I think we'll be waiting longer than a minute for that to happen.

“Chanti, you can't convince your mother to let you go with us to North?” Tasha says. She knows me so well, it's like she can read my mind. I bet she can't do that with Squeak.

“It's the day before school starts. What do
you
think?”

I've been telling her all summer that nothing I say will make Lana change her mind about forcing me to go to some stuck-up rich school across town just because I made one little mistake. She thinks I'll get into more trouble if I stay in Denver Heights and go to North.

“Don't get attitudinal on me, Chanti. I'm not the one who screwed up my life.”

I ignore Tasha and do the only thing I can given the situation: I lie.

“The only thing worse than going to a school you hate is starting a new school after everyone else. Even if Lana lets me go to North, by the time the transfer paperwork happened, I'd be starting three weeks late. By then, everyone will have staked out their tables in the cafeteria. All the back seats in class will be taken. I'd rather go to the new school on day one than start North late and be the new girl.”

“That would be tragic,” says Michelle in the only tone she seems to know—sarcastic. “Ow, Tasha. Stop pulling!”

“At least I didn't choose my school based on a boy,” I say to Michelle, who gives me the finger. “A boy so sorry he gets kicked out of school before he even started it, and in the meantime spends the summer cheating on me with Rhonda Hodges so I have to break up with him anyway.”

Michelle looks sincerely wounded now, not just from the way Tasha is handling her head, and I feel bad for adding on that last part. But not as bad as I feel about her messing up me and Tasha's perfectly good friendship. Although I'm sure Tasha would say I was the one who messed things up.

“You wouldn't be new,” Tasha says. “You'd know me and Michelle, and a bunch of other people from the old school. Not to mention kids from around the way, like . . .”

“Speaking of kids from The Ave,” I say, cutting her off because there's no chance of me going to North and it bums me out talking about it. “Did y'all hear about Donnell Down-the-Street?”

“What about him?”

“He got picked up.” I say this as though it's old news, knowing that neither of them have heard a thing about Donnell Down-the-Street. We call him that because there are two Donnells on Aurora Avenue, where I live. The one closest to Center Street got to keep his name without anything added on. The other one got arrested yesterday. I only know this because Lana told me during this morning's tirade entitled
Chanti,You're Going to That School and Donnell Is Just Another Example Why—As If We Need More Examples—and You Better Not Ask Me Again Because You're Going and That's All There Is to It.

“No he didn't!” Michelle says without a hint of sarcasm. Until recently (well, until Rhonda Hodges), she had a serious thing for Donnell DTS. “For what? How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Tasha vouches for me. “Chanti always knows this stuff before everyone else. She just does.”

My friends can never know Lana is my source. They think she's a paralegal in an office downtown. That's because when you're Vice and all the undercover cases you work are related to drugs, prostitution, or gambling, it's all about the down low. The minute anyone figures out she's a cop, she'll have to leave Vice and go back to the burglary division, which she says is nowhere near as exciting. Lana guards her secret like Michelle guards the fact she is no longer a virgin (thanks to Donnell DTS) from her preacher daddy. But I know all about Michelle because Tasha can't keep her mouth shut. I keep it to myself because that's one of the things I do well, hold on to other people's business. You never know when you might need it.

Information is negotiable, like currency. I learned that from Lana. Not information like her identity, of course. That secret keeps us both safe. It's the reason I call her Lana instead of Mom, even though everyone knows her by a totally different name on the street. Thanks to great genes and the fact that she had me when she was just sixteen, Lana looks too young to be my mother, which is kind of helpful. The fewer people who know I'm her kid, the better. Some of her more vindictive perps would be happy to know she has a kid. Except for my grandparents in Atlanta, I'm the only one outside the department who knows what she really does—we don't have family in town and Lana's closest friends are cops. So keeping Lana's secret sort of makes me her partner. It's like I'm kind of a cop, and it doesn't matter that I'm way too scared to actually ever
be
a cop.

Just as I'm about to tell them what I know—which is nothing, but I'm very good at embellishing—we see MJ Cooper walking toward us, on the other side of the street. Tasha and Michelle go quiet because they're too busy trying to watch MJ without actually looking at her. Well, I'm not afraid to look at her, and I do. That's why I notice that she stops for just a second, like she might consider crossing the street, but she gives me a look that almost strikes me down where I'm standing, then keeps walking.

Michelle speaks first, but only when she's certain MJ is halfway down the block. “What's
she
looking at?”

“Seems like she's still mad at you, Chanti,” Tasha says. “What did you do to her, anyway? Whatever it was, I think you best watch your back.”

“Please. She's just been watching too many reruns of
The Wire
. Thinks she's Snoop Pearson or somebody,” Michelle says. “Nobody's scared of her.”

“Chanti's mother is. That's why she's sending her away to school.”

Tasha thinks she knows everything.

“It isn't
away
. It's like ten miles from here, and I'll be taking the bus there and back every day.”

“Well, MJ's still the reason,” Tasha says, smug in being right.

“I wonder if she had anything to do with the police harassing Donnell,” Michelle says.

My natural instinct is about to kick in, the one that makes me angry whenever anyone acts like the cops are the bad guys, but I let it go. Because around here, where profiling was probably invented, sometimes they
are
the bad guys. Still, if anyone on The Ave is prime for getting picked up, it's Donnell DTS, if not for whatever he did last night, then surely for something else.

“Donnell doesn't need to be harassed,” I remind Michelle.

“It isn't his fault he's like that.”

“Whose fault is it?” Tasha asks.

“My daddy says it's because he doesn't have a father figure. He sees that a lot in his congregation.”

“You mean his church of twenty that he holds in your basement?” Tasha asks.

“It'll be a big church one day and you won't be talking smack then,” Michelle says. “He used to have a good-size congregation when we lived in Texas.”

“My father skipped out before I was born and you don't see me going to jail,” I say. “It's Donnell's third time in. Don't make like he's a choirboy.”

“It's only his second time,” Michelle says, as if it still makes him eligible for that choirboy job. “Not that I'm defending him or anything.”