Glitz Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2011 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Philana Marie Boles, 2011 All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Boles, Philana Marie.

  Glitz / by Philana Marie Boles.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old orphan Ann Michelle runs away from her grandmother’s

  house in Toledo, Ohio, with a new friend who is intent on seeking her own fame

  while the teenagers follow a hip-hop musician to New York City.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51317-0

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Runaways—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction.

  4. Orphans—Fiction. 5. Musicians—Fiction. 6. Ohio—Fiction.

  7. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B635883Gli 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2010024531

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For GXL,

  the world’s illest MC.

  “Rock chinchillas, a’ight?” ✩

  Thank you for being my brother.

  I love you so much.

  And for Charles Higgins,

  king of the 1s and 2s, my

  “brother from another set of parents”

  who always looked out.

  Love you, bruh!

  1

  Some people will do anything to get famous. Like Raquel Marissa Diaz. She wanted the world to respect that she was hard like a rock, so she called herself “Raq” for short. It was the first week in October, my junior year of high school when she arrived. I never meant to be her friend. In fact, I lost all my other ones because of her.

  By Halloween night, Raq was the only girl I had to hang with. With her daring eyes and those precisely arched eyebrows, it was easy to imagine her as a star. At first I was just a happy passenger on her ride to fame.

  Once upon an eternity ago, the place we were headed used to be the VFW 14 Hall, where our grandparents would have BYOB cabarets and boogie to Motown. But this was a new era and that night it had been transformed into the hottest underground hip-hop concert Toledo had ever seen. The Halloween Jam was an ages-eighteen-and-up show and we were only sixteen. But, thanks to Raq, we both got in without being carded. It was like that with her—as if the rules didn’t apply or something—and I’d never met someone like that. I’d lived my entire life in a cage and now there was someone holding open the door, saying, “Guess what? You can experience things now. You’re free.”

  Standing in the doorway that night, I was frozen, hushed by the thrill of the scene. Hood-rat and swagger-cat packed, the party was just getting started, but already it was deliciously full of the city’s most devoted hip-hop heads. Rebels, hustlers, and groupies were everywhere. You couldn’t tell who was rocking costumes and who flat-out dressed like that on the regular. It was wild.

  Fake cobwebs hung from the ceiling as far back in as we could see. Through all the strobe lights and thick fog from a smoke machine, I could see hints of big, fat jack-o’-lanterns and glow-in-the-dark skeletons. Buffet tables were surrounded with long lines of ninjas, French maids, and pimps. The dance floor was sick! Some folks were poppin’ and lockin’, while others just stood there confident as they flat-out chilled like they didn’t have a care on earth. Shrieks. Howls. Laughter. And an eager ache in my gut. Raq was determined to get us backstage, and I was a wreck imagining what would happen if we saw Piper—a Detroit-based rapper whom I loved more than any other—up close. Would we have a chance to talk to him? And if we did, what would I say?

  We were still in the lobby, and already even my skin was vibrating from the bass of the music, a beat so hypnotic that my head had given in to a slow nod. I pretended, as best I could, that I was cool, that this was my club and I owned the night. Yeah. I not only belonged, I was necessary. Me and Raq. World famous and respected. Heads moving and wordless. Vibin’. Coolin’ ...

  From what we could hear, the concert hadn’t started yet, but the deejay was spinning Millionaire Mal and the crowd was hyped, us included. Never mind that Mal wasn’t actually physically there, just playing his music made his presence consume the room.

  Millionaire Mal was famous for spittin’ stereotypical rhymes, stuff about rising up from the hood and pushing phat whips and owning “thangs,” repping the street life to the max. He was dropping lines about hustling drugs to stay sane and I grooved to the bars—one anecdote after another—as if it was real to me, too. Hip-hop was funny like that, how I could listen to the flossiest street tales and relate. As if I, too, knew the pain of having my flesh kissed by a bullet. Please. I’d never even seen a real gun. We were so middle class.

  I grew up in a comfortable home with a grandmother who liked for us to sing songs by the piano together at Christmas and even bought us matching holiday sweaters to wear when we did. So, okay, my parents were ripped into heaven before they even got to see me crawl, and I’m sure Gramma was probably just determined to make my life as perfect as possible, but give me a break. Maybe I didn’t want that. I grew up never lacking for clothes or money or food or anything. So corny, I know. But I wanted to feel real, like normal
people.

  And despite my lack of desire to pledge some uppity sorority someday like she had, and also my total lack of interest in even going to college and then to get a master’s degree in music education like she did, my grandmother was still crazy about me. And I always felt loved. But that’s a grandmother’s job. A girl eventually needs to feel wanted, too. I’d never had a guy to be down for like Millionaire Mal had me nodding my head about. Yeah. That was the thing to be. So loyal to a guy that you’ll flap your arms and jump if he says fly, only question asked is how high.

  I wanted a guy like that.

  My life was so boring, never anything rough. Mal was going on about the humility of having his electricity turned off, of having to use lighters and matches to find his way to the bathroom at night. For me, there’d always been smoked turkey wings, beans and cornbread, corn-flour tamales, Italian sausage lasagna, or some other hot meal on the stove when I got home, a cozy three-bedroom house for just my music teacher grandmother and me.

  Occasionally, Gramma’s church-choir friends would stop by and practice their songs, but that was the most excitement our walls ever saw. I used to have friends over, too, but usually we just watched DVDs or did homework together. Life, for me, was pathetic. Before Raq, I’d never even had a friend who talked about anything in the future besides college. Visions of the future with Raq never involved books and academic degrees. We pictured spotlights and exciting cities, signing autographs and arriving first-class at fabulous parties. With her it was okay to love what I loved more than anything. Music. And especially the people who made it.

  Gramma had her first glance of Raq on the same day that I met her myself. Raq and I were both waiting outside for our rides after school, me for my grandmother and Raq for her foster parents. As soon as I crawled into the passenger side of Gramma’s Cadillac, she made a very matter-of-fact announcement. “That child is never allowed into our home,” she said. And then she asked if I had any homework. Just like that.

  I glanced back over my shoulder as we drove away from school, saw Raq throwing up the peace sign, and I threw one back. Then I turned back around and asked Gramma, “Who, Raq? She’s cool.”

  Gramma shot me a look. “Stone. Brick. Or Pebble. Whatever that child’s name is, I’d better not find her at my doorstep. Not enough time in the world for me to nail down everything I own.” She pulled out of the parking lot. “Child watches the world like she’ll steal air from the wind if she can figure out a way.”

  It was too late, though. Raq and I were already friends.

  Earlier that day, because my regular lab partner for anatomy—Corrine Carter—was out with bronchitis, the new girl was assigned to the empty seat beside me. Raquel Diaz—Sister Whitney announced her name—caused an immediate hush as we all looked up at her. She was very pretty, but it was obvious from the way she rolled her eyes that she was also very tough. By the end of that day, every one of us do-good girls rocking Catholic school uniforms was aware of the tattooed rebel (a microphone on her left wrist) new on the scene.

  Most girls had to spend four years, or at least three, building up the right to have the kinda stance she took on her first day. With her pink, shimmery glossed lips pursed and her heavily lined eyes, poised to hiss at anyone who dared look at her wrong, the expression on her face said she hated even the way the dry-erase markers smelled in our classroom. She sat down next to me after Sister Whitney pointed her in my direction.

  “Hey,” I whispered as Sister Whitney began droning on about the day’s assignment. Something about coloring in an illustration of the nasty-looking human digestive system and labeling the parts. “Are you new to Toledo? Or did you just transfer to our school?”

  She didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at me. She was too busy studying her acrylic French-manicured nails. Was this girl really going to sit ten inches from me and act like I wasn’t talking to her?

  I decided to try one more time. “Where are you from?”

  “’ Nati,” she whispered, her voice all raspy and deep. She had chocolate Cocker Spaniel eyes and the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen. With an expensive-looking rhinestone ring, the initial “R,” on her pointer finger, she flicked her long dark curls from her shoulder and I got a whiff of a citrus scent, either her body spray or shampoo. She challenged me with her tone: “You been there?”

  The attitude and toughness didn’t really faze me any. I had a grandmother with a pit-bull growl, and I wasn’t about to be intimidated by some new girl thinking she was all that just because she was from Cincinnati, Ohio. Please.

  So I just shrugged. “Nope.” Then I spilled my box of Crayola pencils out onto our lab table and waved my hand toward them. “Help yourself,” I said. Then I began to color.

  With a smirk, Raq rolled her eyes and whispered, “You wouldn’t last a week where I’m from. Give you one day in juvie—let Comic or Spidergirl get a hold of you—and I bet you wouldn’t be all nice like that.”

  As if I cared—I didn’t (okay, maybe I did, but that’s just because their names sounded cool)—she continued. “Called her Spidergirl ’cause she climbed a wall once to get into a seventh-story apartment. Sliced a girl in her sleep after she crawled in. Comic? Man. She’s just funny as hell. Makes us laugh with all her twisted jokes. . . .”

  Why would I want to last longer than a day with girls like that? Please. I would never do anything to end up there in the first place.

  Raq picked up one of my pencils and filled in the gallbladder quickly before choosing another color for the esophagus.

  “Been in and out of juvie since I was thirteen,” Raq explained in a quiet tone. I immediately liked that about her, the way she could whisper while appearing to be doing her work. Corrine and I did that, too.

  She said, “Got a druggie madre and a damn pimp for a so-called daddy. Shoot. Fool foster parents really think they’re gonna move me to Toledo and make my life right? These people are straight buggin’, actin’ like they’re the Latin Huxtables or something. Whatever.”

  Just then, Madeline Berber, a nosy goody-goody girl who was sitting at the table in front of us, must have overheard Raq, because she nudged Georgina Welch, one of my best friends.

  By lunch, Georgina was going to make sure Jewel Jones and everyone else in our crew knew all about Raq. And that I had been chatting it up with her. Watch. I braced myself. Jewel Jones wasn’t too keen on new girls and especially not any girls who rocked tattoos. She got her uppity ways honestly, though. Jewel’s family—all jewelers, her grandparents owned Jones Diamonds—are a pretty elite bunch around Toledo.

  Raq asked, “So, where you from?”

  Sister Whitney passed by our desk then, peering over to check our progress. Eyeing Raq’s diagram—a mess of sloppy colors with nothing labeled—Sister cleared her throat but carried on up the aisle.

  “Right here in Toledo,” I whispered back when it was safe. “Born and raised.”

  “Whoa.” Raq shook her head. “Sorry about your luck. Been in this city a week and already I don’t know how you can stand it. What do y’all do to stay awake around here?”

  Mostly, I liked music. Really, I loved it. With my friends though, I just spent the weekends store-hopping at outdoor shopping plazas like Levis Commons or Fallen Timbers or going to football or basketball games at St. John’s Jesuit—our brother school. No one in my crew cared much about hip-hop besides me. That’s just the way it was with them. Sometimes we’d mimic dance routines from videos, and occasionally we’d hang out in Jewel’s basement doing each other’s facials and manicures or watching DVDs—her house had a real mini-cinema with stadium seats and everything—but that was pretty much it. I realized how whack all those things would probably sound to Raq, though, and so I just shrugged. “Not much,” I said.

  But glancing over at her wrist—she had a tattoo, okay—I got up a little nerve. “Well, I’m kinda into hip-hop.”

  She gasped. She smiled.

  Then she narrowed her eyes a bit and checked me out.
“Run-DMC or Beastie Boys?”

  Making sure, first, that Sister Whitney was occupied—she was—I replied, “Run-DMC.”

  “MC Lyte or Lil’ Kim?”

  “L-Y-T-E.” I felt a smile rising across my face. “The scholar MC . . .” Then I added. “But I like Lil’ Kim, too.”

  Impressed, Raq nodded as she picked up a blue pencil and started to color in the liver. “Okay, okay ... I see you tryna rep some old-school. That’s what’s up, chica. All right, so Fat Joe or Pitbull?”

  Madeline and Georgina both side-eyed us. I ignored them. Who did they think they were, anyhow? Just because they weren’t into hip-hop didn’t make it a bad thing. “Fat Joe,” I replied. “But Pitbull is cool, too.”

  I couldn’t believe it! I could never have had a conversation like this with Jewel or the rest of my friends. Hip-hop just wasn’t their thing. The listened to top-40 songs, pop and R&B, but hardly ever rap.

  “Good answer,” Raq nodded. “You’re smart. I like that. I like that a lot. Soo ... Millionaire Mal or—”

  “Millionaire Mal!” No question.

  Slap. Slap-slap-slap. Sister Whitney tapped her marker on the dry-erase board, demanding our attention. “I hope”—she looked directly at me—“that all the talking indicates your efforts to acclimate our new classmate to the assignment and nothing further.”

  “Of course, Sister Whitney,” I replied with ease.

  Once Sister Whitney turned back around and continued writing our homework assignment on the board, Raq quick-rolled her eyes and then smiled at me. As if we hadn’t been interrupted, she continued. “Pac or B.I.G.?”

  I took a deep breath and whispered back, “Tupac Amaru Shakur.”

  Simultaneously, we smiled and quiet tapped a high five in the air.

  “When I get to heaven someday,” Raq said, “I want to marry him.”