The Chaos Page 3

  Sigourney nodded. “Little twinge, is all. It’ll be fine.”

  “Ice it when you go home.”

  Sigourney smiled. “Yes, Mama Glory.”

  “For reals, girl. Don’t want you getting busted up on my watch.”

  Like hell. She just didn’t want to lose one of her dancers five days before the battle. Though I guess it would suck if one of us got too injured to dance.

  Then Gloria was towering over me where I was still lying flat. “See how short of breath you are?” she said.

  Yeah. Too winded to give her any backchat, in fact. I took in little sips of air and prepared not to listen to her.

  “You’ve missed the last four practices. Miss tomorrow’s, and you’re off the team.”

  As if. I’d recovered enough for, “Right. You know you need me.” Without me the team was only average, and they all knew it.

  The barest flicker of hesitation passed across Gloria’s face. Someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t have seen it. “Yeah, well,” she said. “I’ll tell you after tomorrow if you’re still part of Raw Gyals or not.”

  Damn, she looked serious. I needed to be at this battle. “Fine, fine. Whatever.” I needed my chance at the prize money from the individuals’ dance-off. I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “I’ll be good, okay?”

  “You’d better. And stop throwing Sigourney so high out of the dive.”

  Leah said, teasingly, “You’re just too strong, Scotch.”

  My heart started pounding. Was she trying to start something? I checked her face. She was smiling indulgently at me. Shakily, I laughed. “Right. And you can’t do a simple one-two step.”

  Panama sucked air through her teeth, mock disgusted. She was grinning, though. It was all right. We were all just kidding around, like we did every practice. “Koo the pot a-backchat to the kettle. After you always missing that one move.”

  I groaned to my feet. Had I really missed that many practices? “Pot and kettle, huh? You mean you agree with me that Leah have two left foot?”

  “Well, now that you mention it—”

  Gloria called out, “Okay, people. I have something cool for everyone!” She shone one of her sunshine smiles at us. Leah and Panama stuck their tongues out at me. I stuck mine back out at them. We laughed.

  Gloria ran over to the big duffel bag she’d stashed against the wall before practice had started. She unzipped it and started pulling clothing out of it. The Horseless Head Man jittered around the opening to the bag, chirping happily at her. The clothes were all the same colors. Burgundy and gold. Raw Gyals colors. Jarmilah said, “Our outfits!”

  We all ran over. Gloria, of course, had a list out with everyone’s names and sizes. “Sigourney, you get the weeniest one. Here’s yours, Ayumi. Jarmilah, Panama, Leah, these are yours. Scotch, Jen, Zoe, Khadijah; here you go. And this one is mine.”

  There was all kinds of squealing and exclaiming as we checked them out, holding them up against our bodies. Super short pleated skirts in burgundy with a gold stripe down each side, and burgundy bloomers attached. Jen said, “I thought the name of the team was going to be written on them?”

  Gloria grinned. “Flip up the back of the skirt.”

  I did so with mine. Panama, looking over my shoulder, chuckled. The words “Raw Gyals” were written in gold letters on the backsides of our bloomers. “Sweet,” I said, before I could stop myself. Didn’t want to do anything to make Glory think we could maybe be friends again. It was too late, though. She’d heard me. She gave me a hesitant smile. I pretended not to notice.

  “Our names are on the insides of the T-shirts, too!” said Khadijah. She turned up the bottom hem of hers. The words were written upside down. “But why are they the wrong way up?”

  I got it. “It’s for that one move,” I said. “This one.” I did the move where we all faced the crowd and raised our shirts just enough to show off our abs with a body wave.

  Gloria looked smug. “Exactly. I came up with the idea of printing the shirts this way, just for that move.”

  Sigourney was so delighted that she’d already thrown off her sweatshirt and wriggled into her T-shirt. Bet the flash of her in her sports bra had given the guys peeking in a thrill. She flipped the hem of the shirt, rolled her abs like a belly dancer, just like we’d practiced. “These are great, Gloria! How come you didn’t tell us you were going to do it?”

  “I wanted to surprise you guys. You’ve been working so hard.”

  Okay, so sometimes Gloria could be cool. The T-shirts were baby doll hoodies, just like we’d wanted. I thought of something, though. We’d priced our outfits down to the penny and each shared the cost. “Didn’t it cost extra to do more printing this way?”

  Gloria nodded. “Yeah. Well, it would have, but the printing shop is run by my uncle’s second wife’s cousin. She gave me a discount.”

  I was going to look so bitchin’ in this outfit, with my stomping boots and my army green socks. Except . . . I got this sick feeling in my stomach. “The sleeves are short,” I said.

  Gloria replied, “They are, just like you wanted.”

  “But I can’t wear them short like this!”

  Panama sighed. “Is you wanted the sleeves short in the first place!”

  “I guess.” I rubbed at the place on my wrist that my sleeve covered. Glory didn’t know about that new spot.

  “Okay,” she said. “Practice is over.”

  Leah joined Jen and Khadijah. Panama got her cell phone out and called somebody. In seconds, she was chatting away in a Jamaican so thick I could barely understand it. People wandered off in twos and threes, talking, stretching out sore arm and neck muscles. I headed for my knapsack that was lying against one wall of the gym. “Not you, Scotch,” said Gloria. “We’re going to work on that move you keep missing.”

  “But Ben’s coming to meet me!”

  “He’ll just have to wait for half an hour. Come on, let’s do this.” She switched the music on again. I dragged myself back to the middle of the gym floor. I was sweating and gritty, and there was a muscle twanging in my left thigh. Gloria had worked harder than all of us, but she was barely glowing and she had not a hair out of place. Black Barbie lived.

  The right part of the song came. I started dancing. And missed my mark. Gloria raised a perfectly tweezed eyebrow. “Okay, again. I’ll do it with you. I really don’t want to have to kick you off this team, Scotch. But you know I’ll do it if I have to.”

  “Yeah, yeah. From the top?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ll start the song up.” I slouched over to the player, set the song up from the beginning. I did an exaggerated hobble back to join her, but I didn’t get any sympathy.

  “Four, three, two,” she chirped.

  I hated her so much. I kinda hit my mark the next two times. But then the Horseless Head Man suddenly decided to start leaping from bleacher to bleacher, whickering softly to itself. And I missed the mark the third time. Ben had come in and was sitting against one wall of the gym, watching us. He raised his eyebrows when I messed up again.

  I threw myself down to the floor. “I can’t do it, Gloria. I can’t do anymore. Not today.”

  She stopped dancing. We looked at each other for a long moment. I couldn’t tell what the expression on her face was. “Ben,” she called, “turn that off for me, nuh?” She waited while he did it. Then she stamped her foot and said, “It’s so bloody easy for you!”

  “Uh-oh,” said Ben. “Now it starts.”

  Gloria ignored him. “That’s what makes me nuts!” she told me. “You dance like you were born dancing. I would kill to be like that, Scotch!”

  “Wait—what?” I got to my feet, still panting. I was going to stop taking that antibiotic the doctor had given me. Maybe it was making me short of breath. And it wasn’t working, anyway.

  “You don’t practice on your own, right?”

  “Girl, you know she doesn’t,” said Ben.

  It was true, I didn’t. I
shook my head.

  Glory threw her hands up. “See what I mean? You barely work on the routine, yet you usually learn the steps first time out. And you remember them.”

  “So?”

  “And every time you come to practice, you’re a little tighter than the time before. Except these past few weeks, when you’ve barely been here at all. What’s up with that?”

  I pointed at her. “You started acting all high-and-mighty, that’s what!”

  “Oh, stop it. You don’t even think that.”

  I bit my lip. I wasn’t good at lying.

  “That’s not the real reason you and me are warring.”

  It wasn’t, but I wasn’t ready to talk about the real reason yet, so I just crossed my arms and looked away.

  Ben chuckled. “And Miss Glory hits a sore spot!”

  Irritated, Gloria kissed her teeth. “Fine. So don’t answer that one. Is not what we talking about right now, anyway.”

  Grudgingly, I replied, “So what, then?”

  “Scotch, you have all this talent, but you’re such a slacker!”

  “And another hit!” said Ben.

  Glory continued, “I bet you don’t say the moves in your head while you’re doing them.”

  “Not once I know the routine.” Did she do that? Say the moves over in her head?

  “Yeah, and you know it within minutes. I bet you don’t have to count the beats.”

  “No. Well, except for this one entrance,” I said sheepishly.

  “One! Just one! I have to count off most of them to keep up. I know these damned moves in my head, like a drill! I have them sketched out on a piece of poster board up on my bedroom wall! I go over them every morning. And I still have to recite that drill in my mind every time, every practice.”

  I goggled. “Really?”

  “Really. I’m even going to have to do it during the performance. I’m putting in all this work, and what are you doing?”

  “Gloria, cut her some slack, nuh, man?” said Ben.

  She rounded on him. “Whose side you on, anyway?”

  He held both hands up, like I surrender. “Chill, girl. Don’t try and drag me into allyou man trouble.”

  Together, Glory and I blurted out, “We don’t have—”

  Ben cut in. “Is only one move, right? I will make her practice it. And her solo for the singles battle.” He smiled at me. “Every day between now and Wednesday.”

  Gloria looked from Ben to me, her perfectly straightened hair bobbing perkily as she did. “Okay,” she said. She sounded doubtful. “And she best come to every single practice between now and then.”

  “Every one,” Ben reassured her. “If I have to throw her over my shoulder and bring her myself.”

  “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here.”

  Gloria frowned at me. “For the last little while, you haven’t been. Even when you’re at practice, your mind’s not on it.”

  A second Horseless Head Man popped into the air right in front of my face, then a third. I yelped. Ben raised an eyebrow. Glory just scowled. “See what I mean?” she said. “You’re not even listening to me.”

  “But I can’t do extra practice; I have to study for next week’s bio test!”

  Glory shrugged. “Well, Miss Sojourner, I guess it sucks to be you.”

  When Gloria called me by my real name, she meant business.

  Ben said, “You can’t pull that one on Glory. She and I both know you can study and practice and not even break a sweat.”

  I made a face at him.

  “Don’t give me that look. I want you to win. I know how important this is to you.”

  He knew, all right. He and I had figured it out; if my team won, I’d get a portion of that money. If I won the singles battle on top of it, that’d be a bit more cash. Together, it’d be almost enough to make back the money I’d spent instead of saving it for my share of the rental deposit on the apartment my brother Rich and I had our eyes on.

  Gloria unplugged the boom box and picked it up. “Start acting like you want to be on the team, Scotch. Or so help me, we going to do it without you. And wear track pants next time. Nobody want to watch you dance with all your business hanging outside.” She sighed and headed out the door.

  She used to stand up for me and the clothes I wore at school, where my parents couldn’t see them. She used to go shopping with me.

  Ben laughed. “Don’t listen to her, beautiful,” he said. “You look amazing in those shorts. Wish I had an ass like that.”

  “You have a perfectly lovely ass. What? Is not like I haven’t noticed.”

  “Still,” he continued, “I think there’s too many letters in the word ‘shorts’ to describe what those are.” He cackled at his own joke. The three Horseless Head Men bobbed up and down in time with the sound of his laughter. Gave me the creeps.

  I held up my Raw Gyals skirt. “I don’t know why she’s carrying on like that. This is what we’re going to be dancing in.”

  Ben wolf-whistled. “Wow. That’s hot.”

  “Like you’re such an authority on girls looking sexy.”

  “Gyal pickney, don’t give me none of your facetiness.” He waved my smart-mouthing away with a flick of his fingers. “I know hot when I see it.”

  The skirt really was short. “What’m I going to tell my folks?”

  “About what?”

  “They think I’ve been rehearsing for some stocious modern dance recital.”

  He gaped at me, then burst into howls of laughter, staggering around the room and holding his belly. When he stopped for air, I said, “I’m serious, Ben. They want to come and see us dance on Wednesday night.”

  That only made the laughing worse. He mimed wiping tears from his face. “Girl, why you even told them what you were doing?”

  Frustrated, I threw my hands up. “I had to tell them something! You know how they are; they wouldn’t have let me stay after school to practice otherwise!”

  “Glory know about this?”

  “Lord, no.”

  “So when you going to tell her?”

  “I don’t know! What’m I going to do? They can’t come!” My parents would each bust a blood vessel if they saw me getting buck onstage in a four-inch-long skirt and bloomers. My mom kept saying that she knew the hazing at LeBrun High hadn’t been my fault, but she still wanted me to act all modest and shit anyway, “Just so you don’t present a target, Sojourner.” She didn’t know anything.

  Finally, Ben looked serious. “Lemme think about it, sweetie. We’ll come up with something, okay? Don’t fret. What’s the top look like?”

  Have I mentioned how much I love my friend Ben? I showed him the top. “I’m going to wear a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath, though.”

  Ben goggled at me. “You? Miss Sojourner Scotch Bonnet ‘nobody cyan’t make a sweater tight enough for me’ Smith? You’re going to cover up a part of your precious body?”

  For the umpteenth time, I dragged at the sleeve of my sweatshirt to make sure it was covering my arm all the way down to my wrist. Ben’s eyes followed the movement. He opened his mouth to say something. I cut him off with, “Let’s go. I gotta change.” At least I could still show off my legs. For now.

  We left the gym. I fought the impulse to look behind me to see whether the Horseless Head Men were following, to shove the door closed so they couldn’t follow. Not that that seemed to make a difference. Bloody things were everywhere nowadays. I must really be losing it.

  Ben and I headed in the direction of the girls’ change room.

  When I’d first started seeing the Horseless Head Men, they’d been almost invisible; I’d only been able to see them when the light hit them at certain angles. But every day, they got more solid, more real. Mom might say it was a ha’nt; a ghost. Actually, she’d be more likely to say I was hallucinating and book me into the nuthouse down on Queen Street so one of her colleagues could pry my brain open with a can opener, just like had happened to Auntie Mryss. What was
Dad’s word for ghosts, again? Oh, yeah; duppies. But if it was a ghost, what the rass was it a ghost of? It looked like a disembodied animal’s head, a cross between a dog’s and a sea horse’s, all covered in short fur. “Hey, Ben; are you a good dancer?”

  “Pretty good.” He snickered. “Better than Stephen, anyway. Guy dances like somebody Tasered him. Thing is, though,” he continued, “I’m good, but Glory’s right; you’re genius. You dance like . . . well, not an angel. Not with those skanky moves you got going on. But, like, I dunno, like dance is a language, and you were born speaking it.”

  I did mention that I love Ben, right? “But is it really so hard to do what I do? You just listen to the music, and you move.” To demonstrate, I did a slide step into a running man.

  “Tell that to Stephen.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  FIVE THINGS ABOUT YOU THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE DON’T KNOW

  1. I like hanging out with my dad’s crazy cousin Maryssa. Sometimes I think she sees the Horseless Head Men too, except she can’t really be seeing them, because they’re not real. They’re coming from my brain, but I don’t know what they are. Which is weird. After all, they’re my hallucination, so you’d think I’d know what my own brain’s cooking up, wouldn’t you?

  2. I actually used to think my mom and dad were kinda cool. Not anymore. Nowadays, they’re both just harsh. I’m never gonna forgive them for what they did to Rich. They may have ruined his whole life! It’s one thing making me wear those old-lady clothes and giving me a curfew, but calling the cops on your own son?

  3. I’m scared. All the time. I keep waiting for some girl who’s cooler than me to start whispering about me behind my back. Then the other girls will start it, and the boys will follow them, and then I’ll be so dead.

  4. I keep having nightmares. And they do things to me.

  5. I think I may be going crazy.

  “Pangaea,” I said to Ben as we walked down the school corridor to the girls’ change room, “sounds like it’d be a neat name for a band.”