Page 3

Imani stood at the fridge with a marker in her hand and her arms folded, like a surgeon about to brief her team. Across the whiteboard, in her neat block capitals, were the words OPERATION ZURI.

Beneath it, a schedule.

5:15 NAILS. 5:45 FACE. 6:15 DRESS. 6:30 LIONESS CHECK. 6:45 RIDE.

“You’re four minutes late,” she said.

“The bus—”

“Excuses are not on the schedule.”

“She’s on time,” Mika said from the sofa, without looking up from her phone. “You’re just allergic to flexibility.”

Sofia appeared from the bedroom with three dresses draped over her arms and a hanger hooked on each finger.

“I couldn’t decide,” she said. “So I brought all of them.”

“Sofia, those are all of the dresses.”

“Exactly.”

I set my overnight bag on the kitchen counter and unzipped it. Brielle’s nose twitched like a bloodhound’s.

“Is that—”

“No.”

“Is that Mama Mwende’s chapati?”

The foil was open before I had finished saying no.

Auntie’s chapati was legend among the Ride or Die Nine. The first time I had brought some to a chapter meeting, three of them had begun calling her Mama Mwende, and she had been adopted into the line before she knew she had joined. Soft in the middle, crisp at the edges, still warm from her pan. It lasted about forty seconds.

Four hands. Zero shame.

Imani took hers like she was confiscating it. Then she uncapped her marker and added a line to the whiteboard.

5:05 FOOD (MAMA MWENDE).

“It’s fuel,” she said. “It’s on the schedule.”

“Your auntie is a national treasure,” Brielle said through a mouthful. “She should be on a stamp.”

“She would also kill me,” I said, “if she knew where I really was.”

“You’re at a study group,” Mika said, finally glancing up.

“I am.”

“Studying a man.”

Sofia squeaked. Heat crawled up my neck.

“Sit,” Imani said, pulling out a kitchen chair and angling the lamp over it. “Hands.”

I sat. She spread a towel across the table and laid out the press-ons in a neat row, a dozen nude almonds, each one catching the lamplight. The glue stung my nose. My bare nails looked small beside them, bitten down by years of organic chemistry and lab gloves.

“Hold still,” she said.