“I’m Alec. Buckman,” he added, and all I could think about was how ridiculous the moment was. Like there was any way on earth I didn’t know his name.
“Um, yeah,” I say. “We have some classes together.”
“I know. But we’ve never talked.” He cocked his head to the side, his smile never wavering. “Why is that?”
Then I did turn to my locker to slide my books onto the shelf. “I don’t really talk to a lot of people here.”
“Salinas Prep is pretty insular.” He paused, like he wasn’t sure he should say what he was going to say next. “Kudos, because I don’t think I could handle starting here my freshman year.”
I zipped my bag, closed my locker, and looked at him. “I’m surviving.”
“Yeah,” he said, his smile growing so wide it made my skin flush. “You are. Mind if I walk with you to English Lit?”
And just like that, after a chance meeting in the freshman hallway during lunch, Alec Buckman became my first real friend at Salinas Prep.
“WHAT’S WRONG?” HER FACE IS SO DAMN EXPRESSIVE, it’s hard not to notice.
She shifts in the driver’s seat and sets her phone facedown on her lap. “Nothing.”
Now I feel bad. “Sorry about the car stuff. I was just being stupid.”
She looks at me, confused. “What?”
“I mean, looks like you just got some bad news, and I shouldn’t have been giving you so much shit.” I lightly drum against my thighs with my fingers.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just—” She breaks off, shaking her head. “It’s really nothing.”
“Okay. Doesn’t look like nothing, though.”
Marva sighs and leans her head back against the seat. “I can’t complain to a guy about another guy. You never understand where we’re coming from.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Who’s the we in this situation?”
“Girls. Women.”
“Try me.”
“It’s my boyfriend. Alec.” She spins the phone around on her knee. “He’s being a real jerk right now. Acting like…He’s acting like someone I don’t even know.”
Am I supposed to give advice about some dude I haven’t met? I’ve never even had a girlfriend. “What happened?” That seems like a safe response.
“Do you really want to hear this?”
“If you want to tell me.”
Marva tips her head toward the ceiling and closes her eyes. “Alec isn’t voting. Like, he’s registered and filled out his sample ballot, and he’s still not voting. After months of campaigning with me and discussing how important this election is. And it’s not like he only cared about it after we were dating. He was really into politics before we even got together.…That’s a big reason I started liking him.”
“What’s his deal now?”
“He’s suddenly concerned about voting in a two-party system.”
I snort. “White guy?”
Marva’s eyes fly open. “How did you know?”
“Because Black and brown people don’t have that kind of luxury.”
“Plenty of Black and brown people don’t vote either,” she says, her voice tight.
“Of course. But the reasons are different,” I say slowly as my finger-drumming tapers off. “You’re not the only one who knows about voting. Black and brown people vote more than we get credit for, first of all. We’ve stopped a lot of assholes from getting into office and voted out plenty, too.”
She nods, as if to say, Fair point.
“But the people who don’t vote…a lot of them think it’s because their vote won’t count. Or because they know the entire government is rigged against them. You can’t blame them, can you?”
Julian and his friends used to talk about this a lot. They’d have huge, sweeping arguments just about every time they got together, whether at our house or one of theirs. Sometimes it got so loud and heated that I wondered if it was gonna come to blows, but they’d always walk outside or into another room to cool off before it got to that point. They always remembered they were fighting for the same thing.
“No, of course not,” Marva says, sighing. “I just don’t want you to judge him because he’s white.”
“Who said I’m judging? I made an observation.” I shrug, looking out the windshield at a woman in yoga pants talking on a Bluetooth as she paces in front of Drip Drop. “And if it makes a difference, my mom is white.”
It’s funny to see who’s surprised by that info, and then how they handle it. White people usually seem shocked, because I look like any other Black person they know—darker skin than theirs, curly hair. But Black people have different reactions. A lot will say they knew right away, others seem like they couldn’t care less, and then there’s the few who give me a look of betrayal, like my blood is tainted. They’re usually the same people who say we haven’t had a real Black president, just because our first one had a white mom.
Marva grabs her keys from the console, sliding her phone in their place. “How is that?”
“Having a white mom?” I grin. Leave it to her to have the most surprising reaction of all.
“Yeah. And a Black dad, right?”
“Right. Uh, I don’t know. Fine, I guess? She’s the only mom I know.”
“Is it weird that they’re divorced now?”
“Nah. I mean, not really. You’d have to be living on another planet not to see that one coming.” I clear my throat. “But they didn’t split up because of the interracial thing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
But she says it so quickly that it must be exactly what she was thinking.
The thing about my mom is that she knew what people thought about her when she got with my dad. She’s been honest with us from jump, saying how it wasn’t easy, even with people she thought were progressive and open-minded. But she also vowed not to be a white person who raised her mixed kids without knowing anything about Black culture, like our history and how to do our hair. She’s not perfect, but she tries pretty fucking hard to do right by us.
“Things gonna be okay with you and your dude?”
“I don’t know,” Marva says quietly. “I’m almost positive he thinks this is some small disagreement. That we’ll be totally fine after the election. But…I’m not sure how I can look at him when I know he didn’t even try to do his part.”
“Maybe he’ll come around if you just talk to him again,” I say. “Sounds like you, uh, have a pretty good thing.”
I don’t know who I think I am, trying to give dating advice when I basically have the least experience ever with dating. Or talking to girls. Or fixing things when I mess up.
“Maybe,” Marva says. But she doesn’t look convinced.
Just as she’s putting her keys in the ignition, she glances out the driver’s side window and yelps. The Bluetooth woman is standing by the car, waving frantically at Marva.
“Mrs. Thomas?” Marva says, dropping her keys. They land with a metallic thud at her feet.