Throb (Club Grit) (17 page)

What was worse was how I was being treated by people who were supposedly part of a “community” with me, people who had seen me in the halls before or at parties or socials, and now, just because a piece of news had gone viral, treated me like I was an exhibit for them to poke at and take pictures of.

Was this really what it had come down to? Harassment and hazing based on the fact that a celebrity had started a rumor about me that wasn’t true, because they needed someone to take the fall? Where was the “strong”, “united” community that had been advertised when I was applying to colleges? Where was the “code of conduct” now?

This wasn’t what I’d wanted it or what I asked for, but was it what I deserved?

I knew what I had to do. I hadn’t meant to get Jason involved in this, and although right now, his name was out of the media, I knew that if he was linked to me, he could get unwanted attention to and that could affect his future. He hadn’t made the mistake I had, of trying to live the high roller lifestyle with a celebrity. His mistakes had been easier to brush under the rug, but something like this? The rumors of me and Keanne had spread like wildfire and it wasn’t going to be long until somebody spoke up and linked me to Jason.

As I exited the building, I expected maybe a few more students with cell phone cameras that were going to try and get rich (or at least make enough to pay off their student loans) by selling pictures of me. I didn’t expect reporters with microphones and cameras pointed at my face. I put my hoodie up and walked silently but strongly up to a security guard.

“Can you help me?” I asked. “These reporters are harassing me.”

“Sorry, no can do,” he said, looking away. “Freedom of the press.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, pleadingly, but he didn’t look back at me. I knew if I said anything to the reporters, they’d get it twisted, so I made my way to the administrative building and then down to my dean’s office. I waited for fifteen minutes until he was finally free and could see me.

He explained that the school was not pleased with the attention I was getting because the reporters were an obstruction on campus. There wasn’t a lot they could do about it, but hopefully, things would die down by graduation, which would be in two weeks, after finals were over. In the meantime, I could take my classes with my professors via Skype, have a proctor for exams in a private location, and minimize my time spent on campus. It wasn’t perfect and it was far from ideal, but it was the best they could offer.

As soon as I left the building, I was swamped my more reporters and more students that wanted to get pictures of me. A few students tried to talk to reporters but they weren’t interested: while I was still on campus, I was still a target. I went back inside the building to figure out what to do.

That’s when I saw the last person I wanted to see: Kim. She came up to me and before she could say anything, I told her, “Get away.”

“I heard about what happened. I know it’s not you, you wouldn’t do that, ever. And I know the reporters are here for you. I can get you out of the building,” said Kim, ignoring my order. I looked at her, and her face was free of any signs of treachery.

“Why?”

“Because that’s what friends do,” said Kim. “Come with me.” She started walking to the bathroom and I followed.

“We’re going to switch hoodies,” she said, unzipping her surprisingly plain grey hoodie and trading it with me, taking my bright pink terry hoodie. “I can mail it back to you but basically, if I leave the building in your hoodie, they’ll follow me and you can leave afterwards. They won’t suspect a thing.”

“Kim, why are you really doing this?” I asked as we traded sweaters.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said, zipping up the hoodie.

“Since when did that matter?” I started to ask, but she already was racing out, hood up, and out the doors. I never got an answer, but what I got was a chance to escape. As Kim sprinted across the quad in my hoodie, the reporters followed her, thinking she was me, and when there was nobody left, I started to walk out of the building too, in the opposite direction, and then walking faster and faster, until I was in full jogging mode. I sprinted off into the largest crowd I could find, not stopping until I was sure that there were no reporters following me. I hailed a cab and made my way to the apartment.

Jason deserved better than me. He didn’t need to be tangled up in a fight that wasn’t even his fight. He didn’t need drama. He’d been so nice to me, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him. I knew that if I did what I was planning, he’d be devastated, but at least he wouldn’t be ruined. I couldn’t let that happen to him. His heart could heal, but his reputation? That was harder to mend, and I didn’t want to destroy the life he’d been building for himself. He hadn’t been the one that took a risk, that had taken a job like the one I’d taken with Keanne. My mistakes were mine, and though I knew Jason would take the fall with me, that he’d take a thousand falls a thousand times over, I knew I couldn’t live with myself if he did.

When I got back to the apartment, I packed a duffle and left a note for Jason on the fridge.

Jason,

It took me too long to realize that I love you.

That’s the reason I can’t be with you anymore.

It’s not your fault and it’s not mine, but you were born into a world that I thought I wanted to be part of, but now, want to escape. I don’t want to be a Beverly Hills girl anymore. I’ve lost my sense of self, and I’m not a person I’m proud to be anymore. I don’t know what I can do, but I can promise I’ll try not to do anything stupid.

I’m so sorry,

Becca

And then? I went home.

T
HERE WAS ONE PLACE I KNEW I COULD ALWAYS GO. As soon as I knocked on my parent’s door, I thought about what I’d tell them, what excuse I’d give them. It didn’t end up mattering.

My mom sat me down in the kitchen as she made us a cup of tea. Luckily, it was her day off from work, or else I would have come home to an empty house and, knowing me, would have tried to hide under the covers in my room, which was still the way I’d left it when I’d last been home to visit, over Christmas vacation. My parents wouldn’t have known I was home until I’d inevitably come out once I smelled my dad’s cooking.

My parents hadn’t heard the radio interview or seen the celebrity gossip on television. They weren’t into that side of So Cal, the side that was full of glitz, glamour, and the sort of conspicuous consumption they were against. It had been hard to convince them I should go to UCBH over Wesleyan back when I’d applied to college, precisely for that reason: they were worried that crossing over to the wrong side of the tracks, the side which cared more about what was in the tabloids than what was in the New York Times, would turn me into someone that I wouldn’t like. For that same reason, they’d been against me being in Omega Mu Gamma, and the only way I’d been able to convince them to let me attend UCBH was because I’d said that “connections” would be helpful and that I’d visit home often (I hadn’t). I’d told then that I wouldn’t change, that school would come first, and that Omega House was just for the resume, so I’d have an easy extracurricular, and that it wouldn’t change me (it had).

As I sipped at the cup of Earl Grey my mom had made, an uncontrollable, unstoppable image of Jason’s face popped into my head.

I got changed, out of Kim’s clothes and into the pajamas I’d packed without looking. If I’d seen which ones I’d packed, I would have chosen something else, but there they were, in my hands: plaid pajama bottoms and a thin ribbed cotton tank top. They were the ones that Jason had bought me to wear at his house, the ones that I’d worn when I slept next to him, the ones that, as I raised them to my face and inhaled, still smelled of him: of us. It was sweet and musky at the same time, like a deer eating an apple, and it was uniquely ours, a blend of both our natural scents and of the smells of our lifestyle: his body wash, my shampoo, the tea we’d drink together as we watched the TV in the room that smelled of vanilla candles.

After I slipped them on, I looked in the mirror, and I knew I had to do something. There was something that I needed to change, and it was something I should have done a long time ago, or rather...not have had to have to do at all.

“Mom, do you know where Jaina’s working now?” I asked, as I came out in the pajamas.

“Oh, usually around five, why?” she asked, curious that I’d want to hang out with a cousin I hadn’t exactly gotten along with in elementary school, before I’d become interested in fashion the way Jaina always had been. She’d been the prissy princess, I’d been the tomboy and slight bully, before I became the nerd.

“There’s just...something I need,” I said, and I texted Jaina, asking her when I could see her. I got a message back in minutes: she had a free spot open up and could see me if I got to her salon soon. My mom gave me a ride, knowing that if I needed to see Jaina about something, it was important.

It was, in a way, but not for the reason she thought. As I entered the salon, Jaina turned, her hair not in braids or a colorful weave as I’d last seen it, but just worn naturally and plainly. The salon had looked very eighties before, but now, it looked more modern, with black counters, white tile flooring, and soft lighting. “Cuz! You look a mess,” she said, ushering me over to her chair. “I would be to, though, if everyone knew I was a man stealer!”

I sighed. “It’s not like that. At all. I’ve never even been with Keanne... ‘that way’” Every time I came home, I felt like I was under a microscope. It could get annoying and it was part of why I didn’t come home. My parents were serious and would ask me about school and my career plans. My other relatives would give me the third degree on my dating life. “Anyways, I came because I need a favor. I can pay, obviously. I just need to get this weave out.”

“I can’t, it looks so good!” said Jaina, combing through the weave with her fingers. “You sure you want this out? It’s such a good weave! Whoever put it in did such a good job.”

“You mean you?” I said with a sigh. I would pop in to see Jaina for touchups but they weren’t really necessary, and the last time I’d come in was over Christmas. Most weaves only lasted a month or two, but Jaina’s lasted five full months. She’d taught me to take care of it and I’d always followed her instructions.

“Whatever, Becca. It’s your hair, you want it out, you want it out.” As Jaina carefully undid her handiwork, wefts of hair, over the next few hours, I watched as the girl in the mirror became at once a stranger as well as a picture of me, from my all-too distant past. I hadn’t seen my natural hair in the longest time: it was bouncy, curly, and as dark as my eyebrows, unlike the light brown weave, made of the hair of some woman I’d never met who lived in India and had probably had it purchased for pennies and cents, although it had cost Jaina tens of dollars and myself hundreds to purchase, to have treated, and to be made into something else. It wasn’t really anyone’s hair. It wasn’t mine anymore, it wasn’t that Indian woman’s, and there was no magical woman with hair the color of iced coffee that was missing it.

After Jaina had removed every section of weave, I was left with rows of cornrows, which weren’t meant to look especially fashionable, but just acted as anchors for the weave. “Do you want those taken out too?” she asked gently. She knew how much the hair issue had bothered me when I first had come to her, when I was rushing Omega House. I had been the only black girl at rush, and when I was accepted, I was the only black girl. Although the numbers were getting better, girls like Kim and I had been the exception, not the rule, with more girls fitting the stereotypical blonde haired, blue eyes, pale skinned stereotype. It was so fucked, that a city like Los Angeles, which was filled with diversity, was though to just be another playground for attractive white people, but maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Growing up, all I’d seen on television, in terms of representation of the city, was shows about idle rich kids. The only times I saw people that looked like me, in a city like my own, they were portrayed as thugs or as criminals. Things were getting better now, but not fast enough.

As I looked at my head, covered in row after row of tight braids that had barely loosened since Jaina had last touched them up, I said, “Yes.” And I meant it. I knew that having natural hair wasn’t considered “professional” but that was such a double standard. How could people argue that who I was, the way I looked without processes or treatments, was somehow unprofessional?

Maybe the same reason that the girls at school had called me “Becca” instead of “Rebekah”, the full form, spelled the way my parents had wanted, the way that most would thing was “ghetto” or just plain out “wrong”, the same way my hair was considered to be, without them asking what it meant or why it was spelled that way. Nobody outside family members had called me “Rebekah” since middle school, not even close friends, and Jason only knew its true spelling because it’s what I signed on receipts. I’d insisted that my mom and dad call me “Becca” too, and they had, begrudgingly. People who thought my name was ghetto? They didn’t know that it was spelled that way because my mom’s grandma had been important to her and they wanted to spell it the same way hers had been spelled. They didn’t know that when they touched my hair and told me how “real” it felt, that it wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

I didn’t want to cause trouble, but at the same time, I shouldn’t have been concerned that bringing it up would be a problem. I shouldn’t have been scared to confront the people that I thought were my friends about their inappropriate behavior, but I guess that was further proof they weren’t really my friends. They were just a bunch of girls I lived with.

Finally, the braids were undone, and I was left with about six of thick, curly hair. I hadn’t seen it, in its natural state, for almost four years. Jaina took me to the washing station, used the salon shampoo and conditioner she’d send me home with, and took me back to the chair, where she trimmed the ends while they were still a bit wet, before drying it, doing a bit more trimming, and finally, adding her salon’s secret product, a mix of a bunch of stuff she mixed in the backroom, which gave my hair extra shine and protection from the elements.