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Glitz Page 4


  Other girls looked over, I noticed, but most just appeared bothered and whispered their annoyance. Jewel, Georgina, Deanna, and Yan were all bent over in laughter, burying their heads in their laps as they cracked up.

  “Thanks, chica.” Raq smiled.

  She added, “And you see all these haters?”

  I nodded. “For sure.”

  “That means I did something right. They can’t hate if they don’t see something they know others will appreciate.” She took a long gulp of soda. “Gotta let your haters be your motivators. Jealous chicks always tryna mess with me, but you watch. . . . These here pipes are gonna make me be a star. . . .”

  And though she laughed, from the determination in her eyes, I knew Raq was straight-on serious.

  “We should hang out,” she’d said, jotting down her phone number and email address on a napkin, dotting the “i” in her last name, with a star.

  Now here it was, Halloween night, and we were doing more than hanging out. We were going to see Piper! I reached over and turned the music back up. We’d been driving for a while and we were almost at the concert.

  Raq had a raggedy spiral notebook full of pictures she’d collected over the years, her makeshift portfolio. She’d showed it to me when I went to her room at Judge and Kitty’s one time. They’d done her bedroom all up in pink and ruffles like they’d been expecting a six-year-old. To know Raq was to laugh at that ridiculousness. At the last detention center she’d stayed in, Raq told me she’d had one of the girls in her quad take a few pictures of her onstage during the talent show. In the pictures, she’d worn black leggings and a gray off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, brick-red lipstick, and a white rose tucked behind her ear, a look that crossed between Billie Holliday and that lady from this old movie Flashdance. It was my favorite picture of them all and said so much about who Raq was. Stunning and glamorous, even in just a sweatshirt with a flower in her hair.

  She said she’d won the contest that night, the prize being a check for fifty dollars. It was the best night of her stay at that particular youth center. And then it was over.

  Raq said she’d awoken to the annoying sound of paper shredding. Who was up so late? Who was making all that noise? Raq told me she had wondered. Then she saw that it was one of her roommates, the quiet one with strawlike blonde hair, glaring at her from across the room. And with every tear of Raq’s check, she would laugh. Raq said she didn’t even remember getting up out of bed but that she’d never forget that girl’s screams as Raq whooped her ass. Her other two roommates joined in and helped beat the girl up, too. Raq, though, was the only one ordered to what they called “the pit”—basically a moldy, dark room in the basement reserved for solitary confinement.

  “She was just jealous of me,” Raq said. “Like everyone.”

  Judge and Kitty had a future star in their home and they didn’t have a clue. Raq said she’d never told them about her singing because she knew they wouldn’t care. She said one day she just wanted them to look up, see a familiar face singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and have to say, “Hey! Isn’t that . . . ?” Raq turned left on Byrne Road and slowed down as we approached the parking lot. “No matter what,” she said, “we’re going to be BFFs—no, BHFs, ‘H’ for hermanas,” she corrected herself, “forever.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “Forever.”

  “Hey! You’re gonna be famous, too,” she said. “Those phony chicks? The Phony Four? Let them see us one day, chica. They go around actin’ and frontin’ and wishin’ they had flava. But money don’t buy you flava. You gotta be born with it. Like us. I clocked them, chica. You’re better. We both are.”

  Then she added, “Real true people offer the new girl that everybody else hates a pencil to color with.” She winked. “Right? ”

  I didn’t want to be famous, never had. But the stars don’t exist without the sky to hold ’em up, you know? And Raq was gonna be a star. Maybe I just wanted to be up there with her.

  We pulled up in the parking lot of the VFW and something inside of me knew that somehow, Raq was gonna get us all the way inside. Just then I thought of Gramma. It was as if she was still over my shoulder and I had to resist the urge to look over and make sure she hadn’t followed us.

  Okay, Gramma, to answer your question, I don’t think Raq is a person who does everything right. No, I don’t. But yes, I do happen to believe she’s going places.

  And I know it doesn’t seem like it, because all you ever see me do is listen to hip-hop music and run off with Raq, but maybe I’m going places, too. Maybe we both are. . . .

  I believe in her.

  And more important, she believes in me, too.

  We rolled along past all the parked cars in search of a spot, Raq going on out loud about her goals and Piper’s music playing in the background. Once we found a place, Raq turned in, shifted into park, and whipped a tube from the silver purse hanging across her chest. She touched up her lip gloss—purple tinted with shimmer—and then flicked her hair. She’d sprayed it with silver glitter, only I hadn’t noticed it until then, when it moved.

  Raq turned to me and posed, her unspoken request for a quick check. With eyelids glossed in plum shimmer and dazzling metallic hoop earrings, she looked—as she did on most days—like a Latin rock star. Anyone would easily notice her and want to know her name.

  “Mega fly,” I said. “Better recognize my girl.”

  “Muchas gracias.” Raq thanked me and playfully waved to an imaginary crowd.

  Then she tossed the gloss over into my lap. I took the hint and pulled down my mirror.

  I studied my lips, plain and dismissible. My eyes, unremarkable. My hair, too fine to give my ponytail much of a punch. All the shiny lip gloss in the world wouldn’t get me noticed physically, and there was nothing I could do about it. Still, I put on some gloss, blotted my lips, and swallowed. Raq nodded as Piper’s voice danced from the speakers, going on and on about his white-on-white Pumas. Raq turned it up.

  On my own, it would have seemed impossible trying to figure out a way to get into that concert. If it were just me alone, I’d have probably just been happy clicking through pictures online the next day and imagining what it would have been like to be there. But with Raq’s “Nobody’s gonna stop me from doing what I want to do” attitude, I started believing anything really was possible.

  She shouted, “Piper’s not gonna know what hit him tonight!”

  Yeah . . .

  I believed that, too.

  4

  Gramma used to tell me stories about Motown. About Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson, about the famous songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. She had a library of books about people in the music industry—To Be Loved by Berry Gordy; Secrets of a Sparrow by Diana Ross; Dreamgirl and Supreme Faith: My Life as a Supreme by Mary Wilson; and countless others—and I’d read every one of them, fascinated with music, the glamour of the industry, the Bob Mackie gowns. . . . Those things I could only read about. But at the Halloween Jam I was actually going to experience something.

  Me and Raq stood in the lobby of the VFW 14 Hall as girls—stuffed into excessive hoochie mama gear—paraded by with heads high and shoulders back, trying to walk in heels and looking stupid instead. I rolled my eyes and Raq feigned choking.

  She said, “Seeing chicks who try too hard is so disgusting.”

  I nodded.

  And the costumes were laughable.

  “If I see one more weaved-out mermaid, I’m gonna need a bucket to throw up,” Raq added.

  “I know, right,” I said. Then I happened to look down, regretting for a moment my stubby fingernails. I tugged at my ponytail. Oh, well. At least I’m here.

  We glanced up at the bold sign on the wall: COSTUMES REQUIRED.

  As if reading my mind, Raq suggested, “You’re a B-girl from the Bronx, yo! A graffiti artist.” She tapped my backpack. “That’s, like, your bag full of spray paint or something.”

  Latching on to Raq’s vivid imagination, I f
elt a slow rise of a smile. I laughed to myself at the thought of what was really inside my bag. A word search. Some Blow Pops and some Starbursts. Twenty dollars in cash. My camera. My cell—

  I screamed. “My phone!”

  “What?”

  “Raq,” I announced as I rummaged through my bag, “I left my phone at home. I think it’s still on my bed. I put it down there when I went to change. Gramma started—”

  “Chica!” She yelled, and with a smile, she said, “Forget about it, all right? You’re with me. Who else could you possibly need to call?”

  But I remembered Gramma’s rule about having my phone with me at all times when I was out with Raq.

  “Plus,” she added, “if you need to, you can use mine.”

  “Right,” I said. She had a good point. And why would Gramma need to call me anyway? “Okay,” I said, deciding to just be over it.

  And then, as we waited in line to get into the concert, Raq whipped a tube of glitter from her purse and stretched her arm toward my face. I felt the sticky wetness on my cheek while she worked the tube like a wand, depositing cold and gooey glitter onto my face. When finished, Raq stood behind me and adjusted my shoulders in front of the ticket office. Windows at night turn to mirrors, so my image reflected in silver shiny letters on the side of my face. ARTIST, Raq had scrolled.

  It was just like her, always knowing just what to do.

  “For your costume,” she said.

  “Sweet.” I stared at myself, pleased. “Thank you.”

  “Of course, chica. Anything for my bestie.”

  Raq, the fearless Latina singing sensation, a costume so fitting.

  Me, her forgettable sidekick.

  I whispered, “Um, by the way, how are we gonna get in?”

  She nudged me. “We will,” she said. “Trust.”

  There were probably still at least twenty people ahead of us in the lobby waiting to get patted down by security. Raq nudged me. “Yo. Look.”

  My eyes followed her gaze. Offering dap to every person he passed was DJ Hitz from FLAVA 104. He hosted Saturday mornings, “From cartoons till lunch,” and had been promoting the Halloween Jam for weeks. To hear him sounding all deep and masculine on the radio and then see him in person was a jolting experience. I had seen him once before when he’d come to career week at school, but I’d been pretty high up in the bleachers in the auditorium that day, so no way would he remember me.

  Hitz had a voice deep and heavy, but he was straight-up lanky and thin-faced, a real crispy-looking string bean. Tonight, to make it worse, he was clad in a striped prison costume and rockin’ a drawn-on six-o’clock shadow. If it weren’t for his status, he’d have definitely been categorized lame. But Hitz had ends. Plus, he’d brought Piper to town. He knew what real hip-hop heads wanted to see, and he had helped make tonight possible.

  Raq leaned in real close and whispered then, a wicked grin in her voice, “Right there, playa ... That’s money.” She slipped her cell phone in my hand and nudged me again. This was her way of telling me not to ask any questions, to just follow her lead. Cool.

  Hitz was nodding, smiling, laughing out loud, and chatting as he mingled. He was totally oblivious to Raq’s calculated radar. Big—no, enormous—mistake. Poor Hitz.

  Once we were up close enough to Hitz, Raq tugged at his arm. His plastic smile still intact, he reacted with a “what up” nod.

  Raq feigned excitement and squealed. “Aren’t you Hitz?” Her voice was so over-the-top innocent, so giddy and completely unlike her, that it shocked me for a moment. That girl was a natural.

  Hitz looked proud. “In the flesh . . .”

  “Yo! I thought that was you!” Raq jumped up and down a couple of times, then offered an animated head roll, like she could hardly believe her luck. “Ooh whee! You don’t understand . . . I’m, like, your biggest fan!”

  Hitz reminded me of a skinny chicken when he laughed.

  Real quick, Raq offered me a wink. My cue.

  “Yes,” I said, “my girl loves you!”

  She asked him, “Mind if she snaps our picture?”

  “My pleasure, mami,” Hitz said, his accent sounding straight-up stupid. He stepped in and put his arm around a grinning Raq. I tried hard not to laugh, but I had to as I whipped out her cell phone and clicked a picture. He probably thought I was just excited, too. Ha!

  “I listen to your show, like, all the time!” Raq told Hitz.

  “Right on . . .”

  “You crack me up!”

  “That’s what I do, baby.”

  “104 is my favorite station, too.”

  “Well, you know what it is . . . Keep it locked.”

  “Oh my goodness. I just can’t believe it. It’s really you. Mira . . . One day I’m gonna be a famous singer. You’re gonna be playing my songs.”

  That’s when Hitz’s smile faded. This had to be the side of the groupie attention that annoyed him. Loved the ego stroking. Hated the coattail riders. Was Raq fan or fake? For real or just tryin’ to get on? Hitz’s face changed and his jaw bone clenched as he tried to figure it out. He said, “Oh yeah?”

  Knowing she’d tripped a bit, Raq went in for the kill. She eyed the poster on the wall and waited for Hitz’s gaze to follow. Red, black, white, and glossy, the design showed a giant fist bursting through a brick wall, the words demanding WHO ROCKS THE MIC? At the bottom was a montage of pictures of talent slated to perform that night. Piper and all his braids were bottom left.

  “It’s the hottest night in the city,” she said. “And you’re the hottest deejay. You gotta have the 411 on the after party. Yo, don’t front. I know y’all are having one.”

  Hitz took a moment to really study who he was talking to. If she wanted to be down, what was he gonna get in return? He replied, “You ’bout what, sixteen, seventeen?”

  “Yeah, right!” Raq shook her head and proceeded to lie. “Twenty. Well, next week I’ll be. I’m actually nineteen.”

  He relaxed his face, no more silly chicken, and in all seriousness leaned in to Raq. They whispered back and forth to each other, their voices now muted to my ears. With Raq focused on her mission, I slipped her phone back in my pocket and diverted my attention to watching the crowd.

  I noticed a group of girls glaring at Raq. Who is that? I imagined them pondering. And why is she all up on Hitz? One girl, dressed like Queen Hoochie—I hope that was a costume—and her crew of bees stood posted up against the wall, looking annoyed, making comments back and forth, offering occasional dry chuckles as they did. I just shook my head and looked away. None of them would ever be as fly as Raq. Must have sucked for them to stand there recognizing that. I laughed to myself, wishing Georgina and Jewel could see me now, Yan and Deanna, too. I was fine without them. Better than fine.

  Raq had completely lured in Hitz, her mouth pressed in close to his cheek as she whispered things that made him laugh a lot and then nod. Must have been working. No way would she have wasted this much time if it weren’t.

  And just like that, we ditched the line and walked into the party with Hitz. No one, of course, asked for his ID, and so no one therefore asked for ours, either. We didn’t even have to get searched like all the others. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even have to pay.

  Once inside the party, Raq called over to me, “Chica, you got my phone?”

  Hitz was grinning, no doubt looking forward to whatever Raq had promised him in exchange for getting us into the concert. I gave Raq back her phone and she programmed Hitz’s number in.

  “All right then, love,” I heard him say as he held his hand to his face as if it were a phone. “I got business now. Just hit me up later. Tonight.”

  Raq’s nod was so mellow. “Okay,” she said. “That’s what’s up.”

  With Hitz gone, Raq linked her eyes with mine. She gestured toward the belly of the party and off we went. We settled on a spot behind a Miss Piggy and a Frankenstein, an area where a bunch of people were passing out free CDs. Raq checked over her s
houlder before raising her voice above the music, loud enough for just me to hear.

  “Yo, chica!” she said. “You know I swallowed that fool whole, kicking and still breathing, right? Tell you like this ... The world ain’t ready for us!” She whipped something from her pocket and pressed weight into the palm of my hand.

  I looked down. With hologram effects, three magic letters screamed up at me: VIP. And underneath that was the word PASS. There was also a picture of Piper, iced out in jewels, his wild braids dancing atop his head, landing occasionally onto his shoulders. I couldn’t believe it! Raq had clipped Hitz of his backstage credentials. That poor fool was walking around exchanging dap and posing for pictures with nothing but an empty plastic case hanging from string around his neck. He was gonna be livid.

  Part of me felt bad. She had actually just stolen something. Whoa. Not cool at all.

  But then another part of me just brushed it off as I imagined her words.

  It’s just a backstage pass, chica. It’s not that serious.

  “She’s with me!” Raq spat a warning to the overweight and overworked-looking security guard manning backstage. He’d waved her through, sure. But Raq had the pass. He’d stopped me with a glare and a tsk-tsk-tsk sound as he shook his head.

  “One pass. One person,” he’d said.

  Then Raq negotiated. “How much says she can come, too?”

  He looked me over. “Half a bill.”

  Raq smacked her lips. “Fool, pa-leeze! Lean back.”

  “Look,” he was annoyed. “I’m gonna need y’all to clear this area. You’re either backstage or in the house. What’s it gonna be?”

  Raq rolled her eyes. “Thirty,” she countered. “Don’t trip.”

  I could tell he was a bit impressed with Raq, his reluctant smirk said it all. Still, he shrugged. “Forty-five,” he said. “Or keep steppin’.”

  Raq was holding a knot in her hand and I wondered where she’d gotten so much money from. If she was stacking ends like that at the grocery store, maybe I needed to ask Gramma if I could work part-time, too. Raq counted out forty-five dollars and the security guard snatched the money she presented before waving me in.