Legally Black [COMPLETE]

2: anything they can do, i can do probably

Yves cried for three days, if you asked her. She didn't stop for the rest of the summer, if you asked her friends. She wouldn't ask her friends about it; they might tell her the truth.

It was three days after the first day back at school for senior year that Yves decided she wasn't just hurt anymore. Yves was angry and all it took was the sight of Loren Wiley, her crew (which used to be their crew), and whoever was whispering in her ear to get her there.

"Who's that?" Yves asked Sedona, her best friend since first grade and the only person left who could stand Yves in a bad mood. Sedona checked and shot Yves a look that asked if she really wanted to know. "Well?"

"That's Phoenix Belmont. Top our class. Top of the school. Mayor's kid."

"And what's Phoenix Belmont doing kissing my girlfriend?"

"They're Loren's new boo. She's been dating 'em all summer."

"She was with me during the summer." The beginning at least. The middle was muddy. The end was a mess.

Sedona didn't have an answer for that.

"So when she said she wanted somebody who was going places, she meant to the Mayor's Office." Yves sniffed back a lot of tears and a lot of snot and turned back to her locker so that when Loren and her new bae passed by, hands tucked in each other's jean pockets, and laughing up a storm, they wouldn't see her in tears. Loren didn't care about that anymore, anyway. Loren didn't care about her.

Sedona threw an arm over her shoulder and pretended to talk to her about homework till the royal couple plus entourage had turned a corner.

"She really didn't think I was worth anything, huh?"

"I don't think that, babe. Relationships just end, right? It's not personal." It must have been bad if Sedona was lying for her. Sedona hadn't liked Loren from the start. Said she thought too much of herself because of her 3c hair and her light brown skin and the townhouse where her family lived. But Sedona had hang-ups about that stuff, too—they all did. Besides, Yves didn't have any of that. Yves' natural hair hated the southern humidity and she wore sew-ins constantly to avoid hot combs and relaxers. She loved her Havana twists in as many colors as she could get away with at school. She loved her dark brown skin. She even loved her little old house and her little old granny and her overworked, underloved mama. Loren used to love all that about her. Maybe she still did; she hadn't named any of that when she dumped Yves on the seawall. She'd just said she wasn't going anywhere fast.

It's not like I am.

"Do you think if I tried harder she might come back?"

Sedona sighed. "Yvey, don't do that to yourself."

But Yves was warming to her topic. Loren had been telling Yves to make future plans since they got together. Said it was the most important thing for girls like them to do because the world wouldn't give them anything but grief and they had to be ready to fight back. "Think about it. All I have to do is try. I coast in class because it's not hard. I don't do clubs-"

"You think all the clubs are stupid."

"And they are, but they're something. She's always getting at me about how Dragon Age doesn't count as an extracurricular. So what if I join a couple of clubs. Bring up my grades a little. I could even apply to a couple of colleges." Yves had been planning to work for a few years to save up, but she figured she was going to need some loans anyway, so maybe getting them now wouldn't be so bad.

"You know damn well you don't want to go to college next year."

"Loren does. She wants a college girl, I can be her college girl."

"And when she wants a business major? An engineering major? The next Michelle Obama to her Barack? What then?"

"Then, I'll be all that."

"You'll be miserable," Sedona countered, shaking her head. "That's not who you are, and she knew that. That's why she left." The truth jabbed Yves in the chest.

"But I want her back." Yves slammed her locker shut and leaned against it. Her twists fell in her eyes, the golden clasps at the ends smacking her cheeks, stinging like insect bites.

She wanted Loren and hadn't wanted anything else since they'd gone their separate ways in June.

A week later, the sign-ups for student government were announced and to nobody's surprise, Loren Marie Wiley was planning to run for student body president. She was the immediate favorite to win.

To everybody's surprise, so was Yves.

She'd show Loren who was going places.

Maybe then she'd come back.

"You really think you can win," Sedona asked her, still side-eyeing her illegible signature on the page.

Yves nodded and hugged her textbooks to her chest, feigning bravado. "What, like it's hard?"