Makes me feel better about my plans
to take a gap year.
Maybe telling them
won’t be so bad after all.
I’ll go have my grand adventure
and when I come back
they will be here.
No matter what
we always come back
to one another.
CHAPTER 5Lyric
LIP OF THE DAY:
Vampy Vibes
Mondays in December are not a vibe. After a packed weekend of work, homework, content creation, and driving Grammy Viv around on her errands, I stomp myself—half asleep at 7:45 a.m.—through the halls of Lansing High. Normally, our school’s aesthetic is pretty bland: rows of scuffed, brown metal lockers, walls painted a sickly yellow color, whitish linoleum floors, and a smattering of motivational posters on the walls that say things likeBE THE REASON SOMEONE SMILES TODAYorYOUR ATTITUDE WILL DETERMINE YOUR SUCCESSor my personal favorite:BE AWESOME, BE AMAZING, BE YOU! Kiana and I like to say this to one another in moments that call for sarcasm, which, honestly, are most moments between the two of us. Becauseit’s the holiday season, and our Winter Formal committee has goneall outwith this year’s theme—Red, Green, & Gold Gala—our halls now look like the Michaels Christmas section upchucked all over them. There are gaudy gold garlands with large red ornament balls strung over the lockers and glitter cutouts of pine trees stuck to the walls, along with signs reminding us to buy our tickets for “Lansing High’s most magical night of the year.” I roll my eyes. What kind of theme is “Red, Green & Gold”? Isn’t that just a color scheme? Also, for a public school, shouldn’t our theme be a little more inclusive of other winter holidays? We’re not even trying here.
“Good morning, boo.” Kiana appears at my side and hands me a large Biggby Coffee cup. She’s all bundled up in her faux fur hot-pink coat, black jeans, and black bodysuit, patent leather Doc Martens on her feet. She’s wearing her signature iridescent cobalt-blue eyeliner that pops against her midnight skin and has a hint of gloss on her lips. Kiana is perhaps the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. At almost six feet tall, with a short fade and cheekbones to die for, Kiana commands the attention of any room she walks into. And she’s graceful, not like a ballerina or a swan but like a plane landing, a jet engine humming with tempered speed and velocity, touching down effortlessly onto a runway, full of restrained power and delicious gravity. I haven’t had a lot of true friends, but when we met during freshman-year orientation and Kiana complimented my makeup, it was like magnets coming together. She knows almost everything about me, and I about her.
“Bless you,” I say, taking a long swig of my usual: a medium roast, with a splash of oat milk and one pump of hazelnut syrup. Kiana knows I can’t afford to buy myself coffee every morning, and I’m usually running too late to make a cup at home. It’s an unspoken tradition that most days she treats me to overpriced, over-sugared morningfuel, and in return I keep her stocked in the latest makeup that brands send me for free.
“Long weekend?” Kiana asks.
I nod. “Always.”
“And you and Jamison…?”
I grimace. “Off again.”
“Yeah… I saw that in his stories. Who is that girl, anyway?”
“No idea, and don’t care. Besides, in about five minutes he’s gonna see what my weekend was all about.”
“So, I’m guessing your holiday photo shoot went well, even without me there to help?”
“Oh yeah.” I grin with a gleam in my eye. “How wasThe Nutcracker?”
Kiana sighs and takes a sip of her black coffee. “It was perfect and magical as always.”
I laugh and put my arm around her shoulders as we head to first period. “I will never understand why you love that ballet so much. It’s extremely racist, and the plot? A snooze.”
“And you, my friend, are missing the point. It’s not about the plot. It’s about the tradition and artistry.”
Kiana used to be a pretty serious dancer—ballet mostly, with some tap and jazz thrown in—but sometime at the end of sophomore year, she quit. The pressure to “fit in” to a mostly white community, where the ideals of beauty and body type were so limited, made her feel like shit each day. “There’s a million other things I can do just as well!” she’d told me. And if it had been anyone else, I would have laughed, but Kiana is truly one of those magical beings who is multitalented. Now she runs track—the 100m and 200m—and she is so fast, she’s been scouted by some of the biggest schools there are.
I feel my phone start to vibrate in my bag. I look at the clock on the wall. “And it’s live,” I say, pulling it out…
Kiana glances over my shoulder and whistles low. “Damn, Lyric. WHO is that?!”
