Dana was so excited about that she didn’t go through her usual wishy-washy I can–I can’t routine. She said yes when I mentioned it and on the day of, she was waiting for me at the back parking lot of Greenbriar, on time and bearing gifts — two identical tube tops that would show everyone that we were best friends. It’s what she used to do with Ronalda, she said, as we changed in the backseat of the Lincoln, trusting the tinted windows to guard our privacy.
Ninety miles isn’t so far on the odometer, but you know the old joke: “Be careful when you leave Atlanta, because you’l end up in Georgia.”
Marcus’s family had bought the house on Lake Lanier after his father, a country boy from Mobile, remarried a woman from New York, who insisted that she needed a “country home.” Egged on by a real-estate agent who insisted that Lake Lanier was going to be the Martha’s Vineyard of the south, Marcus Senior made the purchase even though my daddy personal y warned him against it. “Forsyth County ain’t nothing but a clump of sundown towns.”
Once I had cleared the city limits and the traffic cooled off, I pul ed over to a gas station to fil up and get a look at the map.
“You always get ful service?” Dana said.
“I’m putting it on my dad’s card. He doesn’t like me pumping my own gas.”
She smirked.
“It’s not up to me,” I said, unfolding the map while a thin white kid screwed off the gas cap.
“I know the way,” she said. “I’ve been out there before.”
I must have looked puzzled, because she came at me with a little bit of attitude. “You’re not the only one who knows rich people.”
“That’s not what I was thinking,” I said. “I was wondering how come you didn’t tel me earlier. We’re supposed to be friends.”
“We are friends.” Dana turned in her seat, getting on her knees, crumpling my map. “This car has a huge backseat. You ever use it for recreational purposes?” She smiled in a way that made it seem like she had spent a lot of time in parked cars.
I had only done it once, and truthful y, it wasn’t al that comfortable. “Sex in a car is one of those things that only works in the movies,” I said, hoping to sound worldly.
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew that nice-girl thing was just a front.”
I raised my eyebrows, trying again for sophisticated and mysterious, but Dana kept howling and hooting like she had won a bet. “I knew it!”
I felt my smile droop at the edges. “Not a lot of people. I mean, somebody, but nobody lately. Most of it was when I was in the tenth grade, and one time last summer.”
“Don’t get al sad,” Dana said. “You just have a history, that’s al . Who you got a history with? You don’t have to give me a ful roster. Highlights are plenty for me.”
“Jamal,” I said. “Jamal Dixon.”
“Whoa,” she said. “That big-time preacher’s son?”
“Yeah,” I said, not sure if I was bragging or confessing.
“He seems like a nice guy. Four corners, you know what I mean? I didn’t think he did statutory.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said.
“Don’t get al weird,” she said, inspecting her own cleavage. “I understand where you’re coming from. Believe you me.”
“We went to the same church,” I explained. “Jamal is a nice guy. He cares about me.”
“I know,” she said. “I met him before. Marcus, on the other hand, is not a nice guy.”
“If you don’t like Marcus,” I asked her, “then why do you want to go to his party?”
“Because I hate him so much I can’t stay away from him.” She was stil smiling, but there was a bit of wildness in her face. I’d seen it somewhere before. She smiled again, but it was just a flashing of teeth, and I knew where I had seen the fury that creased her face right between the eyes. Once when I was on a road trip with my mother on our way to visit Grandma Bunny, we passed a group of prisoners on the side of the highway. Most of them were black, some were old, and al of them were picking up trash. There was construction on the road, so we drove by slowly. One man in the group looked at me. I waved my hand at him. He gave me the same teeth-only smile, but the rest of his face and even the angle at which he held his body let me know that he wanted to kil someone.
“Let’s hit the road,” Dana said.
“No,” I said. “I want to go back to what you said about hating Marcus. What are you going to do when we get there?”
“I was just playing,” Dana said, but she stil had that chaingang tension in her jaw. “I won’t make a scene. My feelings just got hurt a little bit, that’s al .” Her voice went powdery. “I know you know what I’m going through.”
I nodded. I did know. I told her that while we stil went to Mitchel Street Baptist Church, Jamal stopped talking to me in front of people. It wasn’t like he was mad at me, it was more like he couldn’t face me and his mama at the same time.
“Lean forward,” she said.
I did and she tugged my tube top, straightening the rainbow stripes. Then she stroked my I Dream of Jeannie. “It looks real y natural,” she said, reaching behind my head to smooth out the nappy hair at my neck. “Let’s go.”
Evening turned into night quickly. We were only five miles or so up 1-75 when I flipped on the headlights as Dana cranked up the music. “Can you dance?”
I shook my head. “My whole family is uncoordinated.”
“Your mama, too? She seems like she could shake a tail feather.”
“My mama is featherless,” I said.
“You have a good sense of humor.” Dana scrol ed the dial, trying to find something else to listen to. By the time she realized that we were too far from Atlanta to pick up another R&B station, she couldn’t even get the station she had in the first place. “While we’re on the subject,” she said, “any word on col eges?”
“I didn’t get into Mount Holyoke, any of the sisters. Spelman put me on a wait list.”
“Could be a blessing in disguise,” Dana said. “You never know.”
She had returned to the lost cause of the radio when we heard the bang. Dana ducked down in her seat as though it was a gunshot, but I knew it was a blowout.
It’s hard for me to remember what happened; to this day, I keep replaying the reel in my head, zooming in on details, and in this tel ing I want so badly to say that I noticed the signs, that I felt something amiss. It’s embarrassing that I had nothing but my five dim senses to guide me.
“Hold on, hold on,” I said, keeping my elbows soft and steering into the swerve. I glanced at the speedometer and was grateful that we were going just fifty-five. The Lincoln was shaking like a washing machine. Strips of tire rubber flew around in my peripheral vision. Beside me, Dana whimpered like a stray puppy. I was breathing hard enough to bust out of my tube top, but I kept my wits, and handled it like my daddy had taught me. Final y, I was able to apply gentle pressure to the brakes until we came to a bumpy halt on the shoulder.
“What was that?” Dana said.
“Tire blew,” I said.
She sat up and took a deep breath, and then another one. “I thought we were dead.”
“The key,” I said, “is not to panic.” I turned on the hazard lights. The double arrows lit the car with regular bursts of yel ow light. We were going to have to ride the rim to the next exit. As I pul ed the car onto the roadway I told Dana, “It’s just going to be bumpy.”