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  Turning away from Gramma, I asked Raq, “Really? Like, for real, for real, for real? You really quit?” I had to be careful before getting too excited because Raq had a way of exaggerating, like the time she’d told me she’d hit the lotto when really she just had a scratch-off worth five dollars. I had to be sure she wasn’t fantasizing out loud.

  “Yup, yup,” she said. “No more ringing up peas and babies’ ass wipes for me. Never ever. I’m gonna be famous, chica. And tonight, we gotta start acting like the very importante people that we are. Ay, we gotta go meet Piper! You down?”

  “G.O.S.,” I said as Gramma hummed along to the music.

  “Your Gramma is always over shoulder.” She laughed. “Okay, so don’t even mention the party being for eighteen and up if you think she’s gonna trip out about it. Just tell her we’re going to get pizza.”

  Raq informed me that she was like twenty minutes away and she was gonna blow the horn when she got here. If I wasn’t lame, she said, I’d be down with her. Already, I was sprinting upstairs to my bedroom.

  Flipping through hangers, I settled on my new black zip-up hoodie—with the word GLITZ in rhinestones on back—and my pink-and-white Pumas. I grabbed my new damaged jeans and a fresh black tank and laid it all out on my bed. Perfect. If I was going to meet Piper, I didn’t want to be in a corny Halloween costume.

  Staring at the back of my bedroom door—plastered with pictures—I noticed my absolute favorite photo of my parents. It was taken right after they got engaged. They were at the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, and it must have been windy up there, because my mother was resting her head on my father’s chest and, just before the photo was snapped, a bunch of her hair had blown into his eye. He was captured laughing while she was posing and smiling. I always imagined that when they saw the picture with her hair in his face, they’d laughed out loud. And I always wondered what that building looked like. Sure I’d seen pictures of the Empire State Building in movies like King Kong, but I wanted to see it in real life, the place where my father had given my mother the ring that she was wearing in the picture. I smiled and pressed a kiss to both of them.

  Taped on my door, too, were all of my collected images of the sickest in underground hip-hop. I zeroed in on Piper’s face, his chestnut skin, his braids that fell onto his shoulders like happy snakes, and I kissed my thumb and pressed it onto his cheek, just below his tattooed teardrop. Piper was a small-framed guy and still only a rising star, but he was so large in my eyes, and in Raq’s. Underground hip-hop heads had already crowned him as heir to the king-of-hip-hop throne and—as history had proven—the commercial world eventually always follows the buzz.

  “No need to honk. I’ll be waiting by the curb,” I said before hanging up, tossing my phone on the bed, and dashing for the shower.

  Gramma was shuffling a deck of cards when I made it back downstairs. Solitaire. She saw me standing in the doorway and flipped the cards even louder. She paused to make a face. “That child is going nowhere.” She frowned. “Nowhere, fast!”

  I was so used to this.

  She continued to fuss, “And you’re gonna be sitting right there next to her too. In a jail cell or on a bench in hell. Keep on.”

  I cleared my side of the table, wiping crumbs from Corn Nuts into the palm of my hand, and I didn’t say a word. What would have been the point? There was no reasoning with Gramma about Raq, ever.

  Grandma kept scowling. “Can’t stand that girl. Little jezebel child. Where do you think you’re going with her? ”

  I emptied the crumbs into the trash. “She’s not a jez,” I reminded Gramma. “I’ll be back. Okay? We’re just gonna ride past the concert. Maybe go grab some Gino’s Pizza ... All right?” I had never lied to Gramma before and technically I felt like I hadn’t. I mean, we hadn’t made it into the concert yet. Maybe we really would just drive by.

  Gramma shuffled the cards once more. “Listen to me.” She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know a thing about how that child was raised but you, I do. You just remember that God’s only gonna protect you so far. So you go on and be stupid if you want to, ya hear? Test God if you want to. ”

  She’d say anything to scare me away from Raq. Just anything ... I sighed. “Okay, Gramma.” I zipped my hoodie and snatched up my nylon backpack.

  Taking a moment to think, she added, “Now, you listenin’ to me, okay?”

  “Yes!” I said. “Raq is a jezebel. She’s a heathen. She’s—”

  “Fast as the devil in a skyrocket!” she snapped. “But that’s not what I was going to say.”

  “Oh, sorry! What? She’s gonna be an ax murderer or something. Sorry. Forgot about that one.”

  “I don’t know what her profile on America’s Most Wanted is gonna be exactly, but she’s gonna do something. I know it.”

  “Oh, oh,” I said. “Don’t forget your favorite. She’s gonna get knocked up and have twenty babies—”

  “By thirty different men. That’s right! I said it.”

  “She’s this. She’s that. Gramma, you don’t even know anything about her. . . .”

  Her eyes narrowing in, she asked, “Oh? And you do?”

  “I know she’s not a snob. Like Jewel and Yan—”

  “That’s not what I asked you, child,” she said.

  I stood silent. “I know enough,” I finally said. I waited. “And I know she’s really nice to me.”

  Gramma cleared her throat. “Okay, so let’s just say never mind to your grandmother who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.... Instead of me saying it, you tell me what type of person she is. If you had to ask yourself the questions: Is this heathen a good person? Is the little dummy smart? Is the little liar honest? What would your answers be? Because if you can honestly, with all your heart, look your grandmother in the eyes, stand there bold-faced and honestly lie and say—”

  I heard the honk and my heart leapt. “Gramma, please. . . . Nobody’s perfect. Not me. Not you. Not Jewel. Not any of us.”

  “Who said anything about being perfect, child? I’m just talking about not being the devil. You sure don’t have to be perfect, but so long as you got an inhale left in that scrawny little body of yours, long as you’ve got my surname attached to yours, you will be decent. You hear me?”

  I was so irritated I could have screamed. But doing so would have just made the argument with Gramma escalate and take even longer. And for what? I had never one time in my entire life won an argument with my grandmother. If I had said, “Gramma, the sky is blue and the clouds are white,” she would have said, “Child, you don’t know anything about life. I’ve lived a long time and trust me, the sky is indigo and those clouds are silver.”

  Gramma wouldn’t even look at me now.

  Her hand to her forehead, she only sighed.

  I took deep breaths and made a deliberate choice to wait without a word.

  In a low voice, she said, “I’ve lived a long time, learned a lot of lessons. I just don’t want to see you—”

  “Gramma! You can’t choose my friends! You can’t keep—”

  “Child, ain’t nobody trying to pick your sorry little friends! I’m your grandmother and I’ve got a natural-born God-issued right to call it like it tiz! If I wanna—”

  “Gramma!” I was fighting tears now, shaking my head and pleading. “Just let up! Will you? Please? You said yourself you remember what it was like when your favorite groups came to town,” I said. “I just want to at least drive past. Maybe see the marquee . . . Maybe take a picture of his limo or something.”

  She waited.

  I said, “And I’m sorry that Raq isn’t the wannabe sorority girl like everyone’s precious little Jewel. But Raq is my friend. And some things are more important than all that—”

  “Like?”

  “Gramma! I just want to go out for a little bit like every other normal teenager in the universe. I just want to have a regular night. I just want to go out with the only friend I have. Can you please—�
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  Dismissing my pleas with a wave of her hand, Gramma surrendered. “Fine, child. Sounding like I’ve got you living on a house in a prairie somewhere. Go on. Get on outta here, child, before you ruin my night, too. Go on with your little heathen friend—”

  I shrieked. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank—”

  “Back in here before midnight,” she said. “Or it’s poof! Just like Cinderella. I’m gonna turn into the little wicked witch on the bike coming to get you. I want you in here by eleven fifty-nine, you hear me? I’ll get the mayor to come with me if I have to. You know there’s a citywide curfew for y’all little kid rascals anyhow.”

  Not bothering to remind her that the witch was in The Wizard of Oz, not Cinderella, I exhaled. “Okay. Fine.”

  “I mean it,” she said. “That little clown child can stay out all night and go be a clown in the circus if she wants, but you? You’d just better be back here.”

  On the way out, I accidentally slammed the front door. A thud sounded off as proof that the clock had jumped and wobbled on the wall inside. I waited. It did not fall. Tonight though, I probably wouldn’t have cared if it had.

  While walking to the curb toward the red two-seater Raq was driving, I fumbled around in my backpack. I was looking—I suddenly realized—for nothing.

  My subconscious whispered to me then, “That was bad. You should have said good-bye. You could have been a little nicer. That’s your grandmother. She’s all the family you have. . . .”

  Immediately, a voice echoed back at me, my inner Raq: “Chica! Relax. You’ll be back later. You can just be all goofy smiles and corny grins when you get home.”

  Raq’s horn bellowed as she waited for me to hurry up.

  I crawled in, the thump of Piper’s bass from the speakers instantly lifting me, the familiar smell of Raq’s body spray—a peachy burst of citrus—relaxing me, too.

  My friend. My life. And so we rolled.

  3

  “That store can kiss my plump booty.” Raq laughed as she drove. “Both cheeks. Twice.” She slapped her hand on her thick thigh as she cracked up some more. She had the kind of body that filled out jeans like a grown woman. Mine, I imagined, would do the same someday. Hopefully. But not yet. Not hardly.

  I co-signed, helping her to add insults about her stupid boss. Raq said he could pucker his skinny little lips to her ass. Flipping up the sun visor, she added, “Judge and Kitty, too. My phony padres who got me that stupid job and enrolled me in that tormented place.”

  Raq never referred to them as her foster parents, always “phony.” To Raq, our school was a horrible place that her new estupido phony parents—the “honorable” Judge and Kitty Ramirez—had forced upon her. She said when they’d come to rescue her from the detention center where she’d lived for eight months after beating up her previous foster mother (who, according to Raq, had it coming for taking the money she got from the state to buy stuff for Raq and spending it on herself instead), she took one look at them and had ’em pegged. Anything for image. Anything for reelection. Already, she said, they had an appointment scheduled for a family portrait.

  Raq had said she’d roll with all the phoniness at first—she’d use her foster parents to stack up all the clothes Kitty Ramirez was happy to buy for her, drive the car they gave her to use, and also save every dime she made at her part-time job that she didn’t have to spend on gas—until she could figure out a plan, but eventually she said she knew she was gonna have to press on from Toledo. She said she had big talent and big dreams and wasn’t nothing gonna stop either.

  I did the unimaginable, reached up and turned the knob, Piper’s hyper and urgent rhymes fading to make the silence too loud. We never rolled without the sounds of Piper, but I wanted to hear what Raq had to say.

  “Forget them,” she said. “Forget that job. Forget this life, chica! I’m so tired of cleaning dusty shelves and I am sick of sitting around a dining room table discussing life with two of the phoniest people in the universe. They know nothing about the real world.”

  I knew exactly what Raq meant. She was stuck with fake parents and I was stuck with a corny existence. In a way, I could relate to Raq. Growing up sheltered and babied all the time felt just as bad as prison. The only real experiences I’d ever had in life I’d been forced to imagine while listening to music.

  “Look, kid,” Raq said, her voice thick with authority, commanding my attention. “Mi nombre es Raquel Marissa Diaz, yes, but they don’t call me Raq for nothing, all right? So let’s not ever get shit twisted. I don’t answer to nobody! Nadie. Not. A. Soul. You hear me? Not for nada! Not tonight.” She cracked herself up.

  I laughed with her. “Got my grandmother on my back. Won’t let up. Treats me like a baby. I hear you.”

  The sound of plastic twisting was followed by a loud crunch as Raq bit into one of those red-and-white spicy peppermints, her favorite. “Mira!” she said. “This big old world. You think I can’t find somewhere to live? You think I can’t pick from all these places to choose from? Shoooot. You got Detroit. You got Sheee-Caaa-Goooo . . . You got places with palm trees and stuff . . .”

  “Like Miami,” I said, daydreaming, too, of waking up someday and being able to do whatever I wanted to do and with whomever I chose.

  “Nobody is gonna stop me from making it,” Raq said. And I could tell she meant it.

  And it was funny. Even when I pictured her on some quiet and relaxed beach somewhere, even with a stupid-looking sombrero on her head, I visualized her hands on her hips and her lips curled up into a frown, her signature Don’t step to me expression stamped on her face for anyone bold enough to visibly wonder who she was.

  “For real,” she agreed. “Florida would be hot! But then, maybe I don’t wanna have to deal with hurricanes, you know? So, maybe just Los Angeles. Maybe I’ll go be on a soap opera or something out there. Sign autographs on cement and press my handprint on the ground like you see on the news. . . .”

  I wondered then . . .

  What about me? Where would I be?

  As if she was reading my mind, Raq said, “And you’ll be right there with me. It’s you and me against the world, chica!”

  “Yeah,” I said, and I could feel myself smile. “Let’s think of other places we can go.”

  “Anywhere but here, right? Just far away from all the people who look at you when you walk down the street. Ooh, there’s the girl whose madre loved crack more than she did her own little daughter. Ooh, there’s the girl whose madre worked the streets for her own papa. Mira. I can go anywhere—just show up somewhere—and what? Raquel Marissa Diaz, better known as Raq, is here, I’ll say. No more phony judge and his goofy little wife pretending they care.”

  I nodded along with what she was saying.

  “People won’t look at you anymore and say Ooh, there’s the girl whose parents died and left her stuck with an overbearing grandmother. Ooh, there’s the girl whose friends were phony and too stupid to keep a good friend.” She laughed. “Pull the lever on the side, chica. Lean back in your seat and take a good look at this boring life we have.”

  We drove down Dorr Street, and even on a crowded night like Halloween when everyone was supposedly out, the main strip of the city was always free-flowing traffic. Already we’d passed three McDonalds and a couple of Rite Aids. Fast-food joints and drug stores. Wow.

  She said, “How can I have my life here? Huh? And how can you?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, watching the occasional cars pass us by as we cruised.

  Then she added, “We’ll be grown next year, chica. So whatever.”

  “Exactly.” I smiled. “Gramma won’t have Ann Michelle Lewis to keep fussing at much longer.”

  Raq laughed. “Well at least she gets your name correct. Judge and Kitty will be over Rachel in no time.” Raq said that Judge Ramirez had gotten tired of being corrected and now he just called her “sweetheart.” How was school today, sweetheart? How was work, sweetheart? Do you have any homework, sweetheart?
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br />   “Maybe New York,” I suggested then. “They say that’s the best place to get famous. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  “Me, too!” she screamed. “It’s where it all began. . . .”

  That stopped me up for a moment. How’d she know that New York was where my father proposed to my mother? I thought of my favorite picture of them at the top of the Empire State Building. I must have looked confused because Raq nudged me.

  “The birthplace of hip-hop,” Raq said. “You know . . . the Bronx!”

  I felt myself smile. Of course. “I know,” I said. “It’d be really cool to see New York. . . .”

  “And hip-hop ain’t never seen nothing like me,” she said. “Ooh what I could do to a hook. How much you think chicks that sing hook get paid?”

  She wasn’t kidding. And boy could she sing.

  On Raq’s second day at school, she and I had sat together at lunch again—by ourselves—while my old friends pretended not to watch us from across the cafeteria. Raq said she was sick of all the phoniness in the world and that hip-hop was where she needed to be. Politicians, she said, repulsed her and so did all the people at our school. I remember the way my so-called friends had leaned in while they whispered, while they laughed, and how I tried to ignore them while listening to Raq going on and on about getting famous someday.

  “So,” I had finally asked her, “can you really sing?”

  Raq nodded and then washed down the last of her cookie with a swig of the Dr Pepper she’d scored from the vending machine. She sucked her teeth before answering with a smile. “Wanna hear?”

  “Ha!” I laughed. “Of course!”

  And then, right there in the cafeteria, in her gruff yet pitch-perfect voice, she sang, sounding as soulful as Mary J Blige herself, “It’s just those rainy days . . .”

  After Raq had finished the entire song, I sat in awe. Finally, I unlocked my jaw and clapped, not in a corny fan-gone-crazy way, but just a few hard ones to let her know what I thought. “Whoa,” I said. “That was all that. For real.”