I miss juggling completely different activities. When I was playing soccer, I felt balanced; on the field I could stop worrying about tests and grades and just lose myself in the game, and when I was in the classroom I didn’t have to worry about strategies for upcoming matches.
Laz doesn’t complain, but all I have to do is look at him to know when he’s overwhelmed.
“Is it weird that we like each other?” I ask.
Down the street, the train stops at the California Blue Line station. Faintly, I hear the brakes squeal and the doors fly open and the automated voice announcing the stop.
Laz shakes his head. “I didn’t expect it, but it’s good to see you like this.”
“Like what?”
He opens the door of the laundromat, motioning for me to go in ahead of him. The neat rows of stainless steel machines steadily hum and gurgle while the TV on the back wall blares a rowdy judge show. The woman who manages in the afternoons nods at us as she straightens a row of wheeled wire carts.
I plop the plastic tub of detergent on top of an empty machine. “Like what?” I prompt when he doesn’t answer me.
Laz takes his time emptying the smocks into the washer, then he drops the bag in with them. “Like… happy.”
“How am I normally?” I think of my conversation with my aunt last night. Even she seemed to think there was a palpable change in me, and we haven’t seen each other in forever.
Laz considers this as we sink into the chairs by the vending machines. He digs into his pocket and pulls out a couple of dollars. “Focused,” he finally answers.
Focused. The same word my mother used to describe Mimi and me. A word that described Mom when she was my age, according to Carlene. I wonder if there was ever a time Mom wanted to wild out—just completely break all her own mother’s rules.
“I’ve never seen you let anything distract you like this before,” Laz continues.
“I’ve never met anyone like Booker, I guess.”
“You guess? Mitchell was boring as hell.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrug. “I get that now. And there’s nothing boring about Booker.”
Laz makes a face. It’s slight—just a twist of his lips—but I notice immediately.
“What?” I say.
He feeds his money into the machine, and a bottle of soda tumbles out seconds later. “I just wonder… how long do you think this can go on?”
His words stab at the bubble of happiness I’ve been gliding around in since last night. I shove him when he sits back down. “What the hell, Laz?”
“I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m just being realistic. So you keep seeing him and you keep liking him more and more.… If you’re already sneaking out now, your mom’s gonna find out.”
“Maybe she won’t if we don’t tell her.”
“Or she’ll find out about everything like she always does and then you’ll be grounded all summer.”
Laz is right. There is something disturbingly clairvoyant about my mother. She’s so intuitive it makes me wonder if she can see something in me that even I can’t at times.
“My aunt seems so different from my mom. She’s really chill.” I bring my knees up and wrap my arms around them.
“Isn’t everyone chiller than your mom?”
He has a point. My mother is so invested in making everything about our lives look good and respectable that she’s always on edge.
“Okay, what’s your best-case scenario with this whole thing?” he asks.
“That I introduce him and she likes him and we can go out without sneaking around.”
“Right,” Laz says, and it makes me smile, to think of things going so easily with my mother. Until: “But then that all goes to shit when she finds out he’s been in jail.”
“It wasn’t jail,” I say quickly. “It was juvie. There’s a difference.”
“Have you met your mom? The only thing she’s gonna care about is that Cook County had its hands on him.”
The happy bubble officially bursts. I know Laz isn’t saying this to be mean. He’s never been more right about anything. Even if my mother did like Booker, she’d never let me date someone with a past like his. It doesn’t fit in with her plan.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised when I heard he’d been in trouble. But I think sometimes people judge situations too quickly without considering the people behind them. The more I know Booker, the more I like him.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t see him.” Laz twists open his bottle of soda. “I just don’t think your mom’s gonna be cool with it.”
I stare at the judge show on TV, where a white woman with watery brown eyes is pleading her case.
“There’s a party this weekend,” Laz says slowly. “Sort of a last hurrah before we have to give up our lives for exams.”
“I know,” I say. “Booker told me.”
“You should come.”
“How am I going to get out of the house for that? You know she’ll find out right away that no parents are going to be there.”
Laz pauses. Says, “Tell her we’re going to a movie or something. I’ve got your back.”
“Really?”
“You’re my best friend. Of course I do.”
“Thank you,” I say. He doesn’t have to help me out with this. I know it puts him in an awkward position; Ayanna wouldn’t be very happy if she learned he was helping me sneak out to places I’m not supposed to be. I don’t want to create any unnecessary tension between her and my mother… but I also want to have a life.
I used to worry that Laz and I would grow apart once he started getting more involved in sports and I devoted all my time to academics. It’s hard enough not going to the same school. But every time I think we might be growing apart, he does something to show me he cares.
I nudge him when he takes a break from chugging his soda. “What are we gonna get into this summer?”
“Definitely the beach,” he says, and I nod right away. Summer isn’t summer without at least a handful of trips to Montrose Beach. “I want to hit up Ribfest this year. And the lineup for Ruido Fest is crazy good, but I gotta get a loan from my mom. Tickets are ridiculous. What’s on your list?”
“Um, I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I haven’t really thought about it.”
Laz gives me a look, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. “The only thing you’re thinking about is seeing Booker.”
“Busted.”
It’s true. I’m still on my Booker high. Not as much as before I talked to Laz, but it’s still there. I can’t let go of this… whatever it is with Booker.
Not yet.
I’M SITTING IN THE KITCHEN SATURDAY MORNING, EATING A LATE BREAKFAST alone, when my phone rings.
Mimi.
I answer it right away—even though it’s a video chat and I’m still in my pajamas, my black curls pulled into a lazy Afro puff.
“Good morning,” Mimi trills like she’s starring in a princess movie. She used to wake me up that way sometimes when I’d pressed snooze too long and we were going to be late for school. Even when she was younger, she liked to be up earlier than everyone else.