Then
“School out already, girls?” The man at the deli checks his watch before handing Desiree the change for our sandwiches.
She swipes the bag on the counter with one hand and grabs my arm with the other.
“It is for us!” she yells when we’re halfway out the door.
Her response is too bold and too loud for this time of day, when everyone else is still in school across town.
We slipped out right before the bell for last period.
Desiree’s taller than me and way more developed—she miraculously grew curves overnight just in time for high school. Her signature hairstyle, a bouncy silk press, grazes her shoulders as she moves. The sunlight makes the burgundy dye shine even brighter against her dark skin.
“Shhhhh!” I pull away and head toward her uncle’s apartment, our safe house.
“Oh please,” she says. “If you cared that much you’d be in class.”
I roll my eyes. She’s not wrong, just annoying. “Well, you’re here too,” I say.
“Difference is, I actually don’t care,” she says, running ahead of me. She comes to a quick stop just as a police car turns down the block. We both duck into the closest doorways. A few seconds later, our eyes meet as we poke our heads out, and we laugh. Then we run.
“You’re so bad at this for…” Desiree starts as I fall behind a few paces.
“… someone whose best friend runs track.” I finish the sentence through choppy breaths when I finally catch up to her.
She never lets me forget it. She’s flipping me off when an older woman walks out of her uncle’s building and makes a disapproving face.
“Hello, ma’am, sorry, ma’am,” Desiree says.
I let out a snort when the woman is out of earshot.
“I’ll leave you out here,” Desiree jokes, opening the door with the keys she took from her mom’s purse.
I push past her and up one flight to her uncle’s front door.
He’s been on deployment for a while so we haven’t had to worry about anyone popping up here.
I’m happy to finally have made it somewhere we don’t have to watch our backs.
My mom is always nagging me about coming straight home after school, doing my homework right away, not talking to boys. It’s suffocating.
“I’m starving, sandwich, please,” I say.
Desiree passes me the bag and marches right to the bar area. “Should we open something fun to go with our lunch?” she says, running her hands across all the different bottles.
“Does that mean you’re staying here?” I ask. Desiree is a lightweight and her parents would know immediately that she had been drinking.
“Maybe. You want to?”
I shrug. My phone rings loudly in my pocket and we both jump a little.
“If it’s your mom, don’t answer,” Desiree says.
I press the side button to silence the ringer as I check the screen. Darius. I decline the call.
“Who is it?” Desiree asks, pouring orange juice into fancy glasses.
“Stupid Darius,” I say, putting my phone on the table. Darius is my ex who believes our breakup was mutual because I didn’t cry in front of him. I took my tears home and almost drowned in them. He’s in my last period class—and the main reason I keep missing it.
I’ve known Darius my whole life, and for the early parts of that, we were inseparable.
I loved him a lot but not the way I did when we started high school.
He had a crazy growth spurt the summer before, so his facial hair, deep voice, and big ego were the talk of all the freshman girls.
It annoyed me so much that Desiree decided to tell him I was in love with him.
I would’ve been upset with her, but he asked me to be his girlfriend, so I guess her tactic worked.
He said he was always just waiting for me to admit I liked him.
Things were cute and fun until the novelty wore off for my mom and she tightened her reins.
It didn’t take long for Darius to realize that other girls had the freedom to drop everything when he wanted them to.
He broke up with me in the hallway before class.
I shake off the memory as Desiree hands me a drink. The liquid smells poisonous.
“Drink up,” she says, clinking her glass with mine before taking a sip. She winces, then tries to smile.
“You’re so bad at this,” I say as I take my own tiny sip.
It tastes worse than it smells. I slide into a plush dining chair set at a dark wooden table and carefully put my cup on a mat.
The apartment is super nice and decorated how I imagine mine will be one day: moody and expensive.
If you close your eyes tight enough, you can almost hear a jazz band playing, almost smell the cigars.
My phone rings again just as I open my sandwich. Desiree tries to look at it from across the dining table. I groan and push the side button so it stops ringing. I didn’t even see who called but yes.
“I’ll stay,” I say to Desiree.
“What about your mom?” she asks with a half-full mouth.
I hear her concern loud and clear. My mom isn’t known to be very easy on anything, especially me. She thinks Desiree “lacks any real home training” and doesn’t like when I hang out with her outside of school. She has all these rules to make it hard, but we always find a way.
Things weren’t always so tense between me and my mom.
We were close once, each other’s everything.
But then I hit high school and suddenly she’s working two jobs and always looking over my shoulder, making sure I don’t make a single mistake.
Probably she’s thinking about herself at my age—wanting to make sure I have options, since she was so young when she got pregnant with me and all of hers were suddenly shut down.
But doesn’t she understand that I’m a teenager and need space to live my life, maybe even make my own mistakes?
That the more rules she puts in my path, the more tempted I am to break them?
I used to wish that Desiree’s parents could take me in. They let her do whatever she wants.
“She’ll probably ground me for life, so you better wait for me,” I say, half joking. Desiree doesn’t laugh. I pick up my cup and take a big gulp. “Catch up or I’m going home,” I say, kind of hoping she tells me to leave.
She doesn’t. She picks up her drink, finishes it, and points it in my direction with a smirk. Then she laughs.
“Okay then, let’s do this.”
I’m woken up by a frantic Desiree standing over me with a large glass of water. I groan. Memories of last night come back in flashes: more of the poisonous drink, greasy pizza, an attempt to watch a movie, and then—nothing.
“Get up and drink this, Jas, your mom is pissed,” she says.
My head feels like a rock on my shoulders as I push myself up. “Huh? How do you know?”
“She called my mom at like five a.m.,” she says, “so she knows you’re here.”
I grab the glass and finish the water in what feels like one gulp.
Desiree looks worried. “Come on, Jas, my mom is gonna drop you off,” she says.
“What time is it now?”
“Seven thirty. I had like ten missed calls when I finally got up.”
“Shit. Are you in trouble?”
“Not really, I told her I was gonna stay over here,” she says. “She’s mad about you though.”
I nod and get my stuff together quickly.
“She’ll be here in like five minutes,” she says, straightening the couch.
“Yeah, I’m just gonna go. I’ll get the bus,” I say, throwing my jacket over my arm. “Call you later.” I wipe the sleep off my face and run out the door before Desiree can protest.
The bus pulls up just as I make it to the stop.
I blend in with the other students on their way to school.
The driver calls out the next stop, which is mine, and I hesitate to ring the bell.
It’s weird to get off where I should get on, and I wonder for a second if everyone on the bus knows I stayed out all night.
I could just keep going to school, but I’d actually rather my mom yell at me in the house.
The hallway seems a lot longer than usual as I walk down it toward my apartment, and I imagine myself already inside.
When I open the door, the chain stops it so aggressively that it yanks my keys from my hand.
I look around to see if it was loud enough for my nosy neighbor to come out.
I’m not in the mood to explain anything.
“Phone. Now,” my mother demands through the crack in the doorway.
“Seriously, Mom?” I hear a door open down the hall. “Can I come in first?”
She hears it too and lets me slip through. “Phone,” she says again before I can make a dash for my room.
I hesitate, mentally running through the last messages I can remember, then drop it in her hand. “So that’s it?” I ask.
“Not a chance.” She gestures toward the kitchen table. “Go sit.”
My mom being home on a Tuesday morning is enough for me to know she’s serious about whatever she’s going to say. She works all the time, spending most nights at the local hospital and most days at a nursing home in the next town.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say as she throws my phone in her work bag and takes the seat across from me.
“Aren’t you tired, Jasmine?” she asks, putting both hands firmly on the table in front of her.
“Of what?”
“Oh, of what? How about these conversations?”
“I don’t ask to have them,” I say.
“I can’t believe you’re this ungrateful,” she says.
“I’m not.”
“That’s not what your behavior suggests, Jasmine. You scared me!”
“You weren’t even home,” I say. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Yeah, because I was at work, making sure you have a home to disrespect,” she says.
“I really didn’t think it would be a big deal.”
“Then why was your phone off? Why not just tell me?”
I don’t have anything to say that won’t sound stupid, so I say nothing.
Sometimes I think she’s ashamed she had to give up her dreams to take care of me and is trying to make sure I don’t enjoy my life, either.
It’s not my fault she and my dad had me young.
And like, how can she be this strict when she’s never around?
I almost want to scream it at her so she knows I think it’s stupid.
But I’ve learned my lesson about trying to be honest. The older I get, the more rules pop up.
At this point, if I’m going to get in trouble anyway, I’d rather make it worth it.
“You know what, Jasmine? Fine,” she says, taking a deep breath. “You don’t want to be treated like a child but then you won’t stop acting like one. So FINE.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It’s time for me to…” Her phone pings on the counter. She pushes herself from the table and sighs at whatever is on the screen. “Shoot,” she says as she turns to me. “I have to get to work. We’ll continue this later. You are not to leave this house.”
“Mom, what?! But what about school?” I watch her pack her things into the bag my phone is in.
“So, you care about school now? It’s fine, I’ve already contacted them.”
I groan. “Whatever.”
She shoots me a look. “Maybe use the day to think about how you can get your act together.”
I want to tell her maybe she can use the day to ask her coworkers if they punish their teenagers for trying to be normal. But probably not, since that would require her to admit that she really is a dictator.
“Yeah sure. My phone?” I say instead.
She looks up from tying her laces, her eyebrows raised.
“How am I supposed to call you if…” I begin.
“If what, Jasmine?” she says. “If you need to reach me? Like you should have done last night?”
“Yeah,” I say, embarrassed by the irony.
She shakes her head and places the phone on the table. “Fine, here. But you should be studying today, not texting Desiree.”
“Okay. I’m sorry, Mom … really,” I say.
“I hear you,” she says, “but this isn’t over. I have to figure out what to do here. We’ll talk more this weekend.” She closes the door softly behind her, leaving me to wonder whether she really means it this time, and if something is actually going to change.