The Queen Bee of Bridgeton (4 page)

"I don't need you to take care of me," I snapped. I turned my back to her and did a heel stretch.

"Like hell, you don't.  Who do you think got you into Bridgeton?"

"I got in on an arts scholarship, thank you very much."

"They wouldn't have even looked at your application if I hadn't already built up the reputation I have as a quality student.  And here you come just ruining it."  Sasha sat on her bed and pulled out that God awful daily planner of hers or, as I like to call it, 'her left hand'. It was probably more important to her than her left hand. "You know you got an 82% on your last English test? That's practically failing in my book. According to my calculations, you need at least a 95% on this paper to bring your grade into the respectable range."

I put my head in my hands.  She gave me such a headache when she went on her grade rampages. I just wished I could think of something to say to get her off my back.  But there was nothing. She was right.  If it wasn't for her meticulous organization habits, I probably would've flunked out of Bridgeton after only a week.

Sasha reached for my backpack and I winced.  She'd flip once she saw how disorganized I'd let it get. She'd probably spend half an hour just organizing everything before we even started on the paper.  It's not like I was messy or anything, okay, my papers were a bit cluttered. I didn't even have separate folders for classes.   In my world, everything fell into two categories; dance and not dance.

"What is this, a banana?" She shrieked in disgust as she pulled out a black slimy banana peel from the front pocket of my backpack and held it between two fingers.

"Sasha, please, I have this really cool idea for my third audition piece.  Just let me spend 30 minutes working it out then I promise I'll work on the stupid paper." 

"A, it's not stupid. B, your 30 minutes will morph into three hours and you won't even crack open a book. I know you."  She grabbed my backpack and dumped out the contents on to the floor
a.k.a
my dance space.  "This is insane," she murmured staring at the mess of papers, magazines, tights, etc. escaping my backpack.

I inhaled sharply and bit my tongue.  I couldn't win this argument.  I wanted to be angry with her, but looking into her eyes, all I saw was the heartbroken little girl being rejected from Bridgeton time after time.  It was nothing but her love for me and her overwhelming desire to get out of the ghetto motivating her to be so…so aggravating sometimes.

Sasha's hatred for
Venton
Heights was ten times stronger than mine.  She hated everything about it. She hated the suffocating stench of urine permeating the halls of all the apartment buildings.  She hated looking at a brick wall when she opened her bedroom window.  She said that brick wall symbolized how her life would go nowhere as long as she lived in this place.  She hated going to sleep to the sound of gunshots.  She hated the alley she had to walk through to get home where she had to step over the not quite dead bodies of homeless people and crack addicts.  But I think most of all, Sasha hated the roaches. 

She could shut everything else out if she just closed our bedroom door and turned up her music, but those pesky roaches would still come through the fortress she put around herself.  They crawled under our bedroom door and out of power outlets and through air vents.  No matter how much Sasha cleaned, they kept coming back.  She spent hours on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor, the refrigerator, the bathroom, the stove, everywhere she thought the critters would congregate and it didn't matter.  They kept coming back promising to embarrass us one day.  Sasha had already had a close call at Bridgeton once.  A roach crawled out of her backpack while she was sitting in class. She told me she froze and almost stopped breathing.  Someone screamed; the entire class went into hysterics. Fortunately, no one else saw where it came from.

If Sasha ever became President of the United States one day, which was possible because she was just that determined and brilliant, she would probably mark off the city block containing
Venton
Heights and, with the strongest military weapon in the world, she'd blow it off the face of the Earth.

We stayed up so late working on my English paper that we both groaned when the alarm went off at five the next morning.

"This is
all your
fault," I mumbled with my pillow over my face after hitting snooze twice. "I'm exhausted." 

"I'm sorry, Sweetie."  Sasha sat up and stretched her arms.  "I just want the best for you. I want you to be all you can be."

"You want me to join the army?"  Sasha threw her pillow at me and laughed.

I fished around my night stand for my favorite ballet pink
scrunchie
with the tutus on it while Sasha sat up and started brushing her long black hair and staring at her planner. "Oh crap! Is today the third?"

"Yeah, why?

"
Desi
wants to take me out to breakfast today to celebrate our anniversary."

Desmond Long, Sasha's boyfriend was one of the most eligible black boys in New Jersey. He was smart, well-read, had impeccable manners and was very wealthy. Desmond's father was a civil rights attorney who sued Cracker Barrel for discrimination and got a huge settlement.  The Long family was loaded.  Desmond drove a classic 1968 Mustang convertible in pristine condition.  He offered to pick her up for school every day, but Sasha was too embarrassed to show him where we lived. 

"Oh, how sweet," I said. Sasha rolled her eyes. 

"We've been celebrating our anniversary for two weeks now. 
Desi
goes a little overboard sometimes."

"Well, a year is a long time for a high school relationship.  He just wants you to know he loves you." 

Sasha sighed. I guess all was not well in paradise.

"Yeah, I know. Look, I have to hurry to meet him at the restaurant or else he'll try to pick me up or something." Sasha ran into the bathroom and got ready in record time. 

"So how is it he still doesn't know where we live after dating you for a year? Doesn't he get curious?" I asked her when she came back in the bedroom.

Sasha shrugged. "Desmond does what I tell him. I told him a year ago to never ask to see where I live and he hasn't." She slipped on her stylish black pumps which I thought were way too dressy for school and said, "I'll see you in school. Don't be late! I love you!" as she dashed out the door.

"I love you, too."  And I
did
love my annoyingly perfect, hazel-eyed beauty of a sister.  I didn't have a tinge of jealousy toward her. 
Especially not in her choice of men.
While Desmond was kind of cute, he really wasn't my type.  He was a little too clean cut and well mannered for me.  Desmond and Sasha kind of reminded me of a black Barbie and Ken.

My dream guy was David Winthrop, the thespian of Bridgeton.  He usually got the lead part in every play or musical put on by Bridgeton Academy.  His chiseled movie star good looks even landed him a role in a shampoo commercial. Whenever I had a little extra money, I bought that brand of shampoo and pretended it was him lathering…never mind. 

Anyway, he was also the lead singer of the all boys a
capella
group. His sweet baritone voice made me melt. I loved everything about him. Even the way his dark wavy hair flopped over his forehead nearly covering his gorgeous green eyes screamed slovenly perfection.

I dreamed that one day David and I would get married, move to New York and live enveloped in the most artistic and culturally rich society the world had to offer. He could star in a show on Broadway while I danced as principal for any of the billion famous dance companies in New York.  Eventually, I would take a couple of years off and pop out a few kids just as David was discovered by Jerry Bruckheimer who was in the audience for one of his shows.  Mr. Bruckheimer would be so impressed by his performance he would ask David to star in his next movie.  So then, David and I and the kids would be whisked off to Los Angeles and thrown into the Hollywood scene.  After David won his first Oscar, I would be ready to start dancing again so we would need to move back to New York. But by this time, David would be so famous that he's asked to star in a TV show based there so we could both work again.

We would have such a glamorous and romantic life.  I had it so well planned out I almost forgot the one minor hitch. David literally had no idea I existed.  The only time he had ever spoken to me, he thought I was Sasha.  Actually, a lot of people thought I was Sasha.  I guess we looked more alike than I thought.  I took it as a compliment since she was absolutely gorgeous.  Anyway, I was too awestruck by David to correct his mistake.  I just smiled and nodded and relayed the message to Sasha while we ate lunch.

"By the way, David Winthrop wants to meet you at 4:15 in the Physics lab."

"When did you talk to David?" Sasha asked, looking up from her planner for the first time since we sat down under our favorite tree on the West Lawn.

"Well, I didn't really talk to him. He talked and I smiled and nodded like an idiot.  The whole time he thought I was you."

"Look," Sasha said as she closed her book, "I know you have this thing for him, but he's really not for you.  He's a rather unsavory character and you should stay away from him."

"What do you mean?"

"Just trust me, Sweetie.  I'm looking out for you. I know what's best."  Sasha looked at her watch and said, "I
gotta
go, I have an honor council meeting."

It didn't surprise me that Sasha was trying to tell me who I should or shouldn't date.  She always took care of me.

But Sasha forbidding me to pursue David made me want him even more. It did make me wonder, however, if David was such an unsavory character, as she put it, why was she meeting him at 4:15 in the Physics
lab?

"Late again, Ms. Garrison?"
  Headmaster Collins said as I tried to sneak in the side door of the McIntyre Building. Okay, really he didn't
say
it as much as he
barked
it making me nearly jump right out of my skin.

"Um…I…," I really didn't know how to respond to this.  I mean, if I said 'no', well, that would just be a lie. The bell rang like ten minutes ago.  And if I said 'yes', well I was pretty sure Headmaster Collins had learned many ways to kill a person and I didn't want him to try one of them on me.

"That's the fourth time this week," he added as he crossed his arms over his huge chest.  I think he grew three inches just in the last five seconds. 

"Um…I…,"

"Would you like to explain yourself?"

"Um…yeah…I," I looked down at my untied laces.  I hoped he didn't notice the sneakers.  They were against the dress code.  Ladies had to wear dress shoes with their uniform.  But it wasn't very comfortable to wear dress shoes when your mornings were as hectic as mine.  Every morning, I woke at five, threw on some sweats and caught a bus to Ms. Alexander's studio.  It was a half hour ride, but at least it was on the way to school.  I spent about an hour cleaning the place from top to bottom. I swept the floors, organized Ms. Alexander's office, took out the trash and cleaned all the mirrors.  And there were a ton of mirrors.

Anyway, when I finished cleaning each morning, I took advantage of having the place to myself and I did what I loved.  I danced.  I turned up the Chopin or the Tchaikovsky so loud I couldn't even hear myself think.  Then I closed my eyes and imagined I was Natalia
Karleskaya
of the Russian Ballet.   When I was eight, I saw a video of the Russian Ballet performing Romeo and Juliet.  The video was like twenty years old and the quality was crappy, but one thing was quite clear: Natalia
Karleskaya
was the best ballerina I had ever seen or would ever see. I fell in love with her dancing. To see her dance was like having an exquisite ocean wave of loveliness pound against the walls of my heart.
Simply breathtaking.
  It made me want to weep. I knew I'd never be able to dance like her.  Ms. Alexander believed I had the potential and that I should never give up trying.  She thought that one day I'd be able to dance right alongside of Natalia
Karleskaya
or maybe even replace her.  I didn't agree.  But it was fun to dream.