Page 29 of Call Me Mrs. Taylor

“Anyway,” I say, forcing nonchalance, “Jonetta’s doing the most, as always. I didn’t feel good, so I didn’t go in. That’s my business.”

Tori sighs like she’s sick of my shit. “Don’t burn no more bridges, Raya. I don’t know anybody else that can hire you.”

I roll my eyes and flop backwards onto my bed. “You’re doing too much right now.”

“Funny. I don’t think I’m doing enough.”

“Tori, please.”

“You ain’t got enough people in your corner to be acting all cocky like this,” she says, and there’s something in her voice that makes me pause.

She’s not being mean to me right now. She’s telling me the truth, and she’s saying it the only way she knows how—like a warning. Like she knows something I don’t.

Like she’s already seen how this story ends.

But I don’t ask her to elaborate, because I don’t want any more truth today.

Besides, the fact that I’m alone in this world isn’t all my fault. I never really learned how to make friends. I just didn’t connect to other kids.

It wasn’t something I could put a name to, but I felt it—like walking into a room mid-conversation, or like a joke I was always a beat too slow to catch. I’d speak and watch their eyes flicker to each other, quick as a camera shutter. A silent conversation I was never a part of, and never invited to.

I still kick myself for falling for it, for running over as fast as I could when I heard one of them say, “Come here, Raya!” I was so thirsty for connection, I’d answer every question they asked, having no clue they were waiting for me to say something weird. At least they always saved their giggles for after they dismissed me.

In middle school, I got kinda close to some alternative kids, and by kinda close, I mean I learned how to skateboard and spent time at the skate parks rolling around in their vicinity. But at the end of the day,theyweren’t my friends, either. Just quiet losers with no social lives who didn’t have the social capital to shun me.

I can still feel the sting of it all. But as I always say, all pain is a lesson. What I learned was to stop trying.

Fuck them all.

I hope they’re dead.

But Tori was my friend. She never let me get lonely. She never made me feel like I was too much, or not enough, or like a wayward puzzle piece forced into the wrong picture. When they pushed me away, she pulled me close. Scooped me up on the weekends when she was in town and took me for long drives with the windows down. We’d sing and rap at the top of our lungs, then she’d let me get frappuccinos and try on clothes I had no business wearing and wear lip gloss and blush when I was eight years old as long as I promised to wipe it all off before I went back inside the house.

Tori wasn’t perfect, but she loved me. She wasthere.

For the good. And the bad.

And the horrible.

“And how areyoudoing?” she asks.

I hesitate, staring up at my ceiling fan, weighing the pros and cons of telling her I have a man now. If I tell her, she’ll ask questions, and if she asks questions, I’ll have no choice but to hold back information. I’d rather tell her onceheknows he’s my man.

“I’m good,” I say cheerfully. “Same old, same old. Tell me something good about Aunt Tori.”

I can practically hear her smiling. It’s a little game I play with her, because she knows I hang on her every word. Her life might be a whirlwind of fun today, or a mundane day at work tomorrow, but I wanna hear it, because I love my auntie, and I’d listen to her read the phonebook.

“Here’s something good: I’ll be in town in a couple of weeks.”

“Yesssss!” I say like a kid who just found out school was canceled. “Oh my God, can we go to the mall? And get Starbucks? And—“

“We will do itall, baby. Clear your schedule.”

“Now you know I don’t have no plans, Auntie.”

She laughs heartily, and it warms me. “I can’t wait to see you.”

After we end the call, I lay there smiling. I’ve forgotten all about Ace, at least for a few minutes. I’m on cloud nine, now. What a treat. A departure from the hell on earth that is my life.

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