We finally shook her, and we saw a house party. We decided it was safer to hide out there.
We didn’t mention Queeshaun to a single soul. On the one hand, we did kind of almost kill her and wanted deniability. On the other, she was like Beetlejuice—just saying her name could summon her.
When we left the party an hour later, there she was, sitting in her car, waiting for us. She’d spotted Paige’s car. Of course she had. Now I had to choose between the social suicide of running back into the house and having Queeshaun follow me to beat me up in a Meadows party, or take my chances with the girls. It was that same fear of being associated with someone who looked like Queeshaun. I somehow got a pass, but I couldn’t bring an agitated scary black girl to a party, because then I would be the scary black girl, too. Also, fighting was just unheard of in polite upper-middle-class suburban planned communities. It was more about emotional warfare.
“Get to the car,” I whispered to Paige.
I stood by the door to the house party as the girls ran to the car.
“Come on, bitch,” I said.
Queeshaun got out of her car and slammed the door. For a second, we stood frozen facing each other. Just as she started her charge onto the lawn, I cut left, fast, racing to Paige’s car like I was doing the one-hundred-meter for the gold. By the time Queeshaun realized she’d been tricked and ran to get back in her car, we were tearing down the road.
We drove around Pleasanton all night. Each of us refused to go to our houses, afraid that Queeshaun would be lying in wait. Paige eventually parked at Foothill High, and we watched the sun begin to rise to Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love.”
“Man,” Sook said, as if she had been thinking one single thought through the whole song. “That Queeshaun really hates you.”
Paige reenacted Queeshaun’s rise up from the ground. “That is some Freddy Krueger–level crazy,” she said to a mad chorus of laughter.
A few years later I met Freddy Washington, who is Angela’s little brother, at UCLA. I asked Freddy if Angela still blamed me for Jason Kidd breaking up with her.
“No,” he said. “Angela doesn’t care.”
“Oh, good,” I said, relieved.
“But Queeshaun?” Freddy added with a sinister chuckle. “That crazy bitch still talks about you.”
I flashed to her in a room with photos of me all over a wall. “Soon, Nickie Union,” she said. “Soon.”
MY BEING MARY JANE CASTMATES AGREED I WON THE CONTEST.
“Whatever happened to that girl?” my costar Lisa Vidal asked.
“No idea.” Everyone grabbed his or her phone again, in a race to find Queeshaun. A particularly savvy Facebooker found a woman by her name. He held up his screen.
There she was. My high school nightmare, still looking like she would kick my ass in a second. She was presenting an office look, and I imagined all the coworkers she terrorized. From my reaction, everyone could tell it was her.
Lisa grabbed the phone to get a better look and screamed. “She’s living in Atlanta!”
“Oh my God, she followed me here,” I said, only half kidding.
The door to the conference room swung open and every single one of us seasoned professionals jumped. We all expected to see Queeshaun standing there, yelling her trusty catchphrase: “I told you the next time I see you I’mma kick yo’ ass!”
“We’re all clear, guys,” said the production assistant, eyeing us with suspicion.
We were safe. For now.
seven
CODE 261
I worked there with all my friends that summer after freshman year of college. It was an easy job. You didn’t have to help anyone, that’s the beauty of Payless shoe stores. The customers help themselves and you just have to ring them up. So you can kind of fuck around all day and get paid.
It was near the end of July, the time of the big Garth Brooks concert. Everyone had tickets and they needed someone to cover. It was assumed that I didn’t like Garth. Black girls don’t want to see country music. But I would have loved to see Garth. No Fences was one of my favorite albums, and I knew every single word to “Friends in Low Places.” But of course, Nickie can work that night. The black girl and the Goth girl—they’ll cover.
I was nineteen.
Someone was hitting Payless stores that summer, but we didn’t know a thing. He was a former employee, black. The management and police