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“My brain is slutty. You’d be shocked by what goes on in there.”
Lmao!
Rule 7: Success is what you decide it is, for you and you only-it’s tacky to force your idea of happiness onto someone else. So play the accordion like no one’s watching.
“Are both y’all smoking black tar heroin?” drawled Grandma Lizette from FaceTime on Audre’s phone. Her disembodied head was as glamorous as ever—CoverGirl red lipstick, shoulder-length bobbed waves, and cheekbones kissed by angels. She was sixty-five, looked forty-nine, and sounded eighty with her raspy, cigarette-inflected, Louisiana bayou drawl. In her accent, the line sounded like “Ahh both y’all smokin’ black tahh HAIR-win?”
Lmfao!
“The good news? Shane loves you regardless. You could show up naked ’cept for clown shoes and a flowerpot on your head, and he’d be happy as a clam,” said Grandma Lizette in an attempt to compliment her daughter.
Lmao!
“Mom, have you been drinking?” “That’s between me and the Holy Trinity.” “Which Holy Trinity? Tequila, lime, and ice?” “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!” snapped Grandma Lizette.
Lmfaoooo!!!
Rule 8: If you grow up around older family members (aunts, uncles, grandparents), ask questions about their past. When you don’t know your family history, you can feel like an escaped balloon-no anchor, just floating away to who-knows-where. Alone.
So true!
“So, Melba and the Mean Girls have beef? Who knew swan life was so treacherous?”
“He saw something that you don’t show anyone. It was a privilege that he ever got to be that close to you. To see you like that. Why didn’t he make you feel better? Try to help, or comfort you, whatever. Why wasn’t he good to you? You deserve that. And now you’ll always remember your prom like that. I wish I could correct all your bad memories, Audre. Erase them and give you better ones. If I see him again, I fucking promise you, if I see him…”
Rule 9: Unless your last name is Thee Stallion, there’s never a reason to rap in public.
Lmfao!
“Audre, you’re a great kid. You’re my favorite person. You’re my idol. Please don’t rebel till you go to college. My heart can’t take it.”
“But I don’t want to be your idol. That’s an impossible standard. Yes, you’re perfect. And Grandma Lizette’s perfect. And our maternal bloodline is so girlbossy, you wrote a book about them. But I just want to be normal.”
“One time, when I was your age, I had a job at a gas station. It was freezing, ice everywhere. A customer, this preppy white guy, was like, ‘Watch out for the black ice!’ I thought he said, ‘Watch out for the Black guys.’ I’m looking around like, ‘I’m the only Black guy here.’ So then I felt called to beat his ass. For what, though? It was pointless. I spent a night in jail, and to this day a confused white man is walking the earth wondering why a gas station attendant tackled him in ’05.” He paused. “Keep it a buck, that part I don’t care as much about.”
Lmfao! Shane!
Between us, I’m glad you looked out for Audre. But be safe, understand? Things can go from a tousle to jail faster than you can blink. Especially for us.”
“Do you have to be getting an A-plus in life for her to love you?”
“I like you too much to start ruining your life,”
“Please,” she whispered. “I’ve never had a friend like you.”
Audre wished she had the guts to go further, to say Please tell me you like me as much as I like you; please tell me that Clio and all the other girls don’t matter; please tell me I haven’t imagined something between us; please please please don’t move all the way to Myrtle Beach. But she wasn’t that brave. Or crazy.
“You don’t understand what I’m saying. I can’t just be friends with you. I can’t kiss you without wanting to do it all the time. I can’t talk to you without wanting you forever. And if I hurt you, I’d never forgive myself. That’s why I need to go.”
“It’s like, dude, you’re not a unicorn. Welcome to Brooklyn.”
“But here’s the thing. I’ve had other opportunities to date girls. Hello, I’m a junior park ranger. Name a gayer job.”
Lmfao!
Rule 10: You can’t un-ring a bell. And you can’t un-know the truth. So don’t chase it down if you’re not ready to face it.
Challenge #5, completed. I faced a fear: diving deep into the ocean. These sell for hundreds, so consider this payment for a job well done. —Audre
“You… you’ve been disrespecting my home?” “Regularly. I don’t even like parties. And I hate throwing them. But my life’s… nothing, it’s been blank since I moved here, so I do it to fill in the blanks, and everything’s fucked anyway, because I think I might’ve hurt a girl I really, really like… way more than like… and I… honestly, I really couldn’t give a fuck about the lost kids of color you’re using to relieve your guilt about the real-life one you abandoned.”
Rule 11: Who knew a 1980s relic would give me such confidence? Sometimes, reaching into the past helps you heal in the present. (Maybe that’s what my mom is trying to do with her book. But who knows.)
The air felt full—like the heavy stillness right before the sky opens up, sending down a crashing, thunderous storm. They sat there, hopelessly tangled in each other’s gaze. Looking at her, Bash knew that he was ready to take it all on. His sadness, her sadness, their wild attraction, this tender connection. In a way that was both certain and unexplainable, he wanted it all.
“Did I really just briefly consider losing my virginity on a tattoo chair behind a gift shop that sells ass-shaped stress balls?”
Lmfao!!!
“What was I supposed to say to you? That not being near you feels pointless, like wasted time? That every kiss I don’t give you burns a fucking hole in me?”
“Bash, you really felt—” “I’m not done,” he said. “Those were rhetorical questions. Here’s a real one. Will you be my girlfriend, A?”
“But I already liked you. You couldn’t tell?” “I wasn’t sure if you liked me or if I was just your Experiment Guy. I’m always that guy. Everyone wants to ‘try me on.’ Use me to test out their kinks or whatever. No one takes me seriously. I just… wasn’t sure.”
Audre glared at her best friend. And then she stepped closer to Bash and grabbed his hand. She was stunned at this revelation. Bash seemed golden. People wanted to know him, and he was the object of a zillion crushes. He was hot and mysterious and new. It never occurred to Audre that Bash might be insecure. Or that he’d question how she felt about him. Hadn’t she been so obvious?
“Also, I’m not a lesbian. I’m bisexy.”
Lmfao!
was terrified that if you knew the truth,” said Eva, “you’d absorb it and repeat history.”
“Most families have a sprawling family tree, with several branches. Ours isn’t like that. We don’t have branches, just a trunk.
“Your great-great-grandmother had one daughter, who had one daughter, who had one daughter, and so on. No siblings; no dads that stayed. Just women and our generational trauma. The trauma ended with me. But when I was around your age, it almost won.”
“An exorcism? You can’t be serious. There weren’t any doctors in town?” “You weren’t raised with Jesus, Audre. People get fanatical when they believe their religion is fact,”
“Lizette used to tell me that Mercier girls were cursed,” continued Eva. “And I had no reason to believe she was wrong. Lizette was a mess, and so was I. When I was your age, I had a death wish. I was in constant pain. No friends, miserable home life. That’s when I met Shane.”
“We weren’t wholesome, honey. We did drugs together, we self-harmed together, and we broke the law. When you came home the other night with Bash? And his face was bruised and cut? I saw me and Shane, and I was scared. It’s what I always try to protect you from.”
“The best thing we did was escape each other, though. We both got clean. He became a famous writer. I got into college and wrote the first Cursed book. I met your dad, and we had you. I bought this apartment in a fancy neighborhood, sent you to a fancy school. All I cared about was giving you a normal life. A life with problems, sure—but normal problems. Not ones that would land you in a mental institution.”
“In twelfth grade, Shane and I ran away together. We broke into an empty house and lived there for a week. And I overdosed. Afterward, the police ordered me to check into a facility.”
7 Days in June.
“I taught you that ‘Mercy girls do what can’t be done’ instead of ‘Mercy girls are cursed’ on purpose. To make us sound like superheroes instead of victims.” Eva reached for Audre’s hand, straightening her cameo ring. “I wanted the past to give you strength instead of weighing you down.”
“I come from a long line of melancholy outlaws. Bad girls. This is my ancestral truth! I’ve wasted so mu...
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“Life isn’t that black-and-white, though. There’s bad and good in all of us. It wasn’t till I wrote my book that I learned to embrace all of it. It’s freeing. You’re chained to the stuff you can’t get over,” she told her. “Delphine, Clothilde, and Lizette did the best they could with no resources or suppo...
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It made sense. Audre understood why she’d hidden her true self: Genevieve Mercier. Life was complicated and families weren’t perfect—...
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“You are a warrior, Mom. It’s like a flaming baton was passed down from mother to daughter, mother to daughter, and when it got to you, you blew it out. That’s your gift to me, and Baby Alice, and everyone who comes after us.”
🥹
For better or worse, i come from a long line of rule-breakers. They’d probably die laughing at the idea that the secret to life is… more rules. I think it’s more valuable to learn from your bumps in the road. Processing personal trauma. Figuring out how to survive.
Oh, and speaking of excellence? She named us after the most important Black female writers in history. I’m Audre Zora Maya Toni—for Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison. You’re Alice Maya Octavia—for Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Octavia Butler. She set the bar too high for us from the day we were born.
Baby Alice, making the ‘right’ choices doesn’t guarantee you a happy ending. So, follow your own path. Take chances, be wild, make mistakes, get messy, be colorful. Be true to whoever you are.”
How can I say that I’ve accepted my past if I’m so haunted by it that I’m keeping you from enjoying your present? Bash isn’t Shane, and you aren’t me. It’s a dangerous game, making you two pay for crimes Shane and I committed a thousand years ago.”
With that, it was official. Bash and Audre were definitely, absolutely, not just friends.
