Grosse Pointe Girl by Sarah Grace McCandless

Author:Sarah Grace McCandless
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2004-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The parties I go to with Billy Crandall are not Grosse Pointe parties. They are where Detroit edges up to Grosse Pointe, just past the city limits, in houses that have already lived hard, with peeling paint and usually a broken window or two. The Grosse Pointe police can’t touch us here. The Detroit cops are usually too busy worrying about abandoned houses being lit on fire or crack deals.

Both Mom and Dad have said,“If I ever catch you in Detroit, you will be grounded for life,” but Billy’s around our house so much, Mom has stopped asking me where we’re going when he picks me up. Most nights I don’t have to lie. If I’m with my girlfriends, we just follow the procession of cars back and forth between the same three checkpoints—Schettler’s drug store, St. Paul’s parking lot, and“the Tree,” which is near a cement slope that leads down to Lake St. Clair.

But Billy takes me places I would never otherwise see, places where I’ll never come across Stephanie DeMarco and Brian Van Eden. The Detroit parties are usually thrown by one of the guys Billy went to Catholic school with back in junior high. The Catholic schools don’t care what your zip code is; they just want tuition bills paid on time. Most of the Catholic-school parents work blue-collar jobs, putting in long hours to keep their kids out of Detroit public schools. These parents do things that keep the city running—lots of cops and EMTs and firefighters, like Billy’s dad used to be. After his death, his father’s pension couldn’t keep up with the tuition. Billy’s mom had the good sense to move into her boyfriend’s house just inside the Grosse Pointe city limits right before Billy started high school.

“Hey, Emma,” a kid named Marshall says and nods to me as we walk up the front-porch steps. He’s one of three black kids from my class of over three hundred students. Three, and they are always at the parties Billy Crandall takes me to.

“Hey, Marshall,” I say, hugging him as I pass through the door.

They are only at the parties Billy Crandall takes me to.

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