Keeping It Real by Paula Chase

Author:Paula Chase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Published: 2021-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

Loyalty is funny.

Not ha ha funny. Complicated funny.

Real deal, how many people can you really be down for?

I didn’t want to tell Sammie how Justice had carried me all week. How it felt like him and Kara were talking mess about me. Shoot, I didn’t want to believe he was doing that. But there wasn’t no other way to call it.

I was desperate when I texted:

Justice tripping so hard right now

She hit right back:

What he do?

And I told her. As sweet as it was to finally tell somebody else how lonely I’d been all week, how invisible I felt—I regretted it immediately.

I managed to stop her from dragging him into our chat so she could “Let him be real about it.” I even got her to promise that she wouldn’t say anything on Saturday, unless I gave her the code word—onions.

I hated onions. But if I asked for onions on my burger, she had my permission to step to him.

My stomach was bubbly. I almost wanted to give Justice a heads-up. But that loyalty thing had me twisted. I prayed that me and Jus had a chance to talk. Maybe I was the one tripping. Maybe work-Justice was kind of wack but would be off for the weekend.

I picked out a pink puffed-sleeve cotton dress. It reminded me of the smocks we got in art class but with a fashion remix. The neck was square, the body flared and higher in the front than the back. Then the sleeves had a girly swell to them, like I had a half-inflated balloon on each arm. I hooked it up with a pair of all-white tennas and went hunting for Mommy.

She was in the sunroom, her favorite part of the house.

It looked out into our small backyard, which was surrounded by a thicket of trees that made the next block of houses feel farther away than they were. The entire room was enclosed by glass and wooden beams, and the brown tile was like fancy dirt. The glass ceiling even had real ivy around the beams to make it feel like you were in a little hideaway among the trees. Mommy called it bringing the outside in.

She was stretched out on her wicker chaise, twirling a piece of hair around her finger, head cocked quizzically at the book she was reading. I sat cross-legged in one of the chairs in the corner across from her and waited patiently for her to take a break.

I stared at the wall of trees in awe that a whole loud city was out there behind the capsule of green. No one would ever know it in the quiet sunroom.

My mother’s voice jolted me. “What are you so dressed up for?”

In public, Mommy’s clothes were always deliberate. But in the house, she was definitely an athleisure, fun-T-shirt-wearing person. Even when me and Daddy dressed down we were dressed up.

“I mean, it’s not dressed up for me,” I said, standing up to give her a model twirl.

“Are you still meeting Sammie at the Haven?” I nodded and she laughed.

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