Courtney's Secrets (The Clandestine Series)

Admit Two

I collected the pieces of hair that had been diced like a salad. The tips now fell under my earlobes.

The voice of my teacher came to my mind, call social services if your parent lays a finger on you. That idea was useless, now that the damage to my hair was irreversible. What would social services do for me now? I had short hair once in second grade and I was teased relentlessly by classmates referring to me as a boy. I swore I would never cut my hair above my shoulders again, and now it was gone. My hopes of Peyton noticing me—dashed.

Courtney pointed the scissors at my chest. Her eyebrows scrunched together. "This serves you right, trying to look like an escort. I didn't raise you to be vain."

Her anger made my heart shrivel.

I wanted to tell her she was a bitch, but I was listless. I ran to my room. I stared at myself in the full-length mirror. Tears welled in my eyes, and I saw my reflection through a watery blur. She had stolen my dignity. My anger rose inside me like a wild animal bred in captivity. I was trapped inside this unnatural habitat where passerby didn't even notice me. I'm not sure how long I cried—it must have been hours, and then—I stopped when I came to a decision: my days of crying were over. I will take action and put this childishness to rest. There was nothing else she could take from me that mattered. I wiped my face.

My room seemed to pull in around me. It was decorated the way she designed it with pink walls, and kitten and puppy posters I had long grown tired of. When I had replaced them with posters of rock stars and rap artists she protested saying:

You can't hang those.

Why not?

You have no business looking at men, and the black one—definitely not.

What's wrong with him?

I can't have you getting interested in black guys, and she ripped it off the wall.

Her comment pissed me off. First of all, I was hanging them because I liked their music, and secondly what would it matter if I thought a black guy was hot? As far as I was concerned, it was what was inside that mattered.

I thought back to last spring when my friend, Davianté—who lives down the street, and is also our African American paperboy, rang our doorbell.

I wasn't allowed to open the door, especially when Courtney was home. She said it could be a "bad person" on the other side, and even when I turned sixteen the rule never changed, so I waited at the top of the stairs where I could see who it was over the railing. Courtney peeped through the peephole, then unfastened the five locks and one deadbolt. She opened the door to where the chain caught. Daviante said something I couldn't hear and then she unfastened the chain. She stood like a statue at a wax museum—with an indifferent expression. She didn't like him.

Davianté's father was a sheriff, and Courtney had a thing about cops. She didn't like them. She never actually said so, but I could tell her brain emptied every time a police car drove by. Once, when she was pulled over, she almost hyperventilated.

Davianté asked her if she was happy with his paper delivery, and she said yes. Then Davianté noticed me watching. He waved and called me by name. He mentioned he had seen me walking to the bus and wanted to know if I would like a ride with him to school in the mornings. Courtney glared at me, and before I could answer she told him I wasn't allowed to take rides and closed the door in his face. The memory made my gut churn like a bowl full of wet noodles.

I glared at the childish posters on my walls. It was time to redecorate. I ripped them off, leaving the triangular corners stuck behind in my haste. Then there were the stuffed animals she laid on my pillows every morning after she made my bed. I told her time and again that I didn't want them, but every day when I came home, there they were.