Ace of Spades

by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

I’m just waiting for them to break up, like I predict they will. I’m not sure how but it will happen, I’m certain. Belle is beautiful, but she’s not me. She doesn’t know Jamie like I do. He needs me just as much as I need him.

“You’re the best, Chi,” he says as we enter Mr. Calhoun’s classroom. I know, I think, even though I’m not sure how much I believe it. If I were the best, he would have chosen me first. I learned a long time ago that the key is to make others think you know you’re the best. But what happens when the cracks start to show? When those around you don’t always believe what you feed them? And how can they, when you don’t even believe it, not fully … You pretend that you don’t cry sometimes when you see your reflection, that you don’t stare at other girls and wonder what it would be like to be anyone else but yourself. The real Chiamaka. The person I’m always trying to run away from. This year I was finally meant to have the perfect boyfriend. I was supposed to leave a lasting impression, make sure everyone at Niveus never forgets me, then move on to greater things. But it’s not too late. I won’t let these small defeats get to me.

I’m a careful person, but I’m not perfect. There are things I’ve done, things that could ruin me. Blond hair. So much blood. And things I can’t remember. A disjointed memory of the night I first kissed Jamie sears my mind … What else do they have on me?

Before I came out, life was us having each other’s back, sleepovers, and video games, while Ma was away at work, when we had no one but each other. Now it’s this: Jack hating me for something I can’t change. The both of us wishing things could go back to the way they were before I said those words.

Scotty’s words hit again. He knows just how to use them. Repeating back to me the fears I fed him while lying on his bed, in his arms, vulnerable but safe. He uses his words instead of his fists—something I’m not as familiar with. Where I come from, words are nothing and actions are everything. I know hurting me is something Scotty wants to do. Because, even though we haven’t spoken properly in a while, I knew it hurt him that I stopped letting him get away with crap, like cheating on me and then lying about it. I know that because he also whispered dark monologues to me, about his fears and weaknesses. About how his family sees him as this huge fuckup who’ll never amount to anything. About how lost he constantly feels—something we had in common, despite the different worlds we come from. The difference between him and me, however, is that I would never use his words to hurt him.

I know Scotty is a terrible person, so why am I so shocked? Why am I always shocked by people and their shitty behavior?

I can’t imagine why anyone else would do this. I barely speak to people at school. But maybe there is someone else out there with a reason to want to hurt me … A good reason. I get this feeling sometimes that I’m forgetting stuff. Important stuff. It’s like there’s something in my memory that I can’t quite focus on—my brain just goes fuzzy. Maybe whoever I hurt is lost in my messy sea of thoughts and memories.

I was so stupid, not realizing Scotty was a dick way sooner. I think I’ll spend the rest of my life judging myself for ever thinking Scotty was even remotely attractive.

Everything’s good. Perfect.

I know it doesn’t seem too bad—being falsely accused of stealing, twice, and having everyone think I got rejected by Jamie—especially since the revelations about Devon feel so much more personal. But being talked about is one thing, and being mocked is another. I hate being mocked, it reminds me of middle school: being the girl everyone liked to look down on, poke at—never the girl people wanted to be friends with. Not that people want to be friends with me now—or before Aces—but they knew that they could never look down on me.

but I do know that whoever’s doing this, they’re not going to be doing it much longer. I’ll find them and make them wish they’d never started this mess in the first place.

Some mornings I sit in this half-dreamlike state, letting the cold wrap around my body and hug me like the memory of my father sometimes does, despite the fact that he never hugged me when he was around. I haven’t asked to visit him in years—Ma used to cry when I brought it up. So, I stopped asking.

I don’t know what brought me back here this morning. I guess I’m trying to hold on to my longest friendship, maybe, despite the obvious cracks in it. Or the sense of safety I get from the only face that means something to me at Niveus? I don’t know.

Even though Dre said he’d deal with it, if it could get to him, it could get to anyone.

“So listen, it’s the twenty-first century. No one hates gays no more.” I didn’t get the memo.

The invisible man whispers in my mind, Even your best friend doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t want you around; no one does. I’m alone, with no other friends at Niveus to confide in. Every day, I feel Jack pull away from me. It makes me feel like something is wrong with me. If Pa was here, he’d shut my thoughts up. Tell me things will work out with Jack. Or that I’ll get other friends—eventually.

I imagine talking to him about Aces, this anonymous bully who hates me for no reason, and he’ll know the answers because that’s what dads are for. They are meant to know all the stuff you don’

But I know dreams are dangerous; they give me too much false hope. I know, I fucking know that even if my pa wasn’t in prison, he wouldn’t be here for me anyway. I close my eyes, squeezing them shut as my heart spasms. Dreams are toxic. I know I’d still be alone.

People take advantage when you’re weak and fragile.

“… when certain chemicals are mixed together, the wrong reaction can take place. For example, we hear about celebrities overdosing all the time. But it’s not necessarily because they take too much of a particular drug…

“… Sometimes it’s a matter of mixing things that don’t react well together. One popular example is alcohol and sleeping pills, which can trigger symptoms such as extreme drowsiness, memory loss, and in some unfortunate cases, death.”

How can anyone concentrate when there’s a snake on the loose?

I slip away, Dre’s face floating in my mind, the breakup replaying in a loop. I’m not that surprised by it, just hurt. I always get a little hurt when I lose parts of Dre. Like when he first started dealing after his ma and her boyfriend chucked him out. I lost another part of him when he started beating people up for popularity and respect. I lost another part of him when he moved up the ranks in his gang. I lose parts of him constantly. This was bound to happen someday. I should have prepared better for the inevitable.

Resentment breeds contempt

“Wait,” he says, and I stop. “Yeah?” “I didn’t give you a goodbye hug.” I can’t help but smile slightly at the statement. “Goodbye hug?” “I’m not sure when I’m gonna see you next, so I at least want a hug for the road.” A hug for the road. That’s a first. “Sure,” I say, and his dimples appear again.

When you grow up like this, whether it’s in your nature or not, sometimes survival overpowers doing the right thing.

“I’m fine,” I tell her, my voice breaking, but not because of the injuries. My heart really hurts.

I go to school, I put on the costume the rich kids wear, and I pretend for a few hours. I could act all high and mighty. I could think I’m the shit, lie to myself, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is my reality.

I get to school, wishing I hadn’t rushed so much this morning. Being here today is so different from last Monday. Last week I felt in control, like this year was going to be everything I’ve wished for. And now everything feels uncertain, like there is something dangerous lurking in the corner, ready to attack at any moment. My stomach squeezes into a ball as I walk. I keep my head up, making sure my body does not give off fear. Bitches can smell fear.

I don’t straighten my hair because I hate it; I straighten it because everyone else hates it for me.

It makes me wonder if my resemblance to my mother has anything to do with this—with Aces. Whether Devon and his Blackness and myself and mine are the reason this creep is picking on us. I feel sick at the thought of it.

I grip the edge of the table, looking down, eyes blurring. I try to let the air in, but invisible hands wrap themselves around my neck, strangling me. They are cold and tough and beat at my chest, daring my heart to go faster. She shakes my head, dizzying me: the dead girl who haunts my sleep.

Once a thief, always a thief. Sorry, Belle.—

I am a horrible person. I didn’t know about Belle and Jamie, but even if I had, that probably wouldn’t have stopped anything from happening between us. I wouldn’t have cared about her feelings. I just wanted him for myself, even if it meant hurting Belle in the process. “What a bitch,” I hear. And maybe if it were another time, I would have thought of a smart comeback or walked off with my head held high or found a way to put them in their place. Instead, I turn to face the three demons again, devious smiles on their cherubic faces, and my hand suddenly comes back to life. It whacks the middle one’s face hard enough that it stings my own palm. She immediately covers her cheek, and her jaw hangs open.

“You can’t just say something and then convince someone you didn’t say it, or that it didn’t happen.” This is what Jamie does. He talks about everything that happened like it meant nothing. Rationalizes things, carves out new memories for you.

He’s acting like he didn’t tell me he liked me that night, and then every other night we slept together since. He told me before he left for camp too. How will he rationalize that? Maybe he’ll say I misinterpreted what he meant. That he didn’t mean he liked me. He meant he liked my body, my flesh, my bones—which he probably thought he could have, whether he saw us as platonic or not. Silly me for misconstruing that. Now everyone keeps looking at me like I have this giant red A embossed on my school sweatshirt like Hester in The Scarlet Letter. Jamie thinks the world is his to control. That he can tell me, convince me, how to think and how to feel, like I’m some puppet. I used to believe it—get swept up in it. But it’s getting harder and harder not to see past his lies; that he’s anything other than selfish; that he cares. “It did happen, Jamie. You can’t just make it ‘unhappen.’ Belle’s smarter than you think. She won’t believe you.” Jamie laughs. “That’s ridiculous. Of course she will.” “It’s not! And I’m so tired of you pretending things didn’t happen!” My face heats up. I hate the way he looks at me, so unbothered by everything. “Things like the accident.” His eyes darken, eyebrows knitting together. “What accident?” he asks, his tone changing, deeper than before. That shuts me up. He leans in close, whispering, “You should think before you open your mouth, Chi. People might start to think you’re making things up for attention.” His voice drips with venom.

There are moments when something happens, and puzzle pieces that didn’t connect before now fit together perfectly. Maybe the piece I’d failed to connect was the one where I thought that Jamie was any different from Ava or Ruby. That he ever really loved me or valued our friendship. Nothing he ever told me was true. I was stupid not to have realized that sooner, blinded by the idea that someone could actually love a person like me. Maybe what I thought was Jamie’s love was never love at all. They say love and hate are the same, just at different ends of the blade.

Home, lately, has been the highlight of my day. Before Aces, I used to avoid it as much as I could. Despite how much I love my ma and my brothers, I wanted to avoid the reminders of all the bad that happened within those four walls, from my dad leaving, to my ma struggling, to having to live and sleep in the box I share with my brothers, constantly wishing for an out. But now I run to the bad for comfort.

A lot of the pain and bruising from Friday has subsided. My eye still kills, but I can manage—plus I’ve been somewhat high on the pain meds Ma got from work. They numb everything. Everything but Dre. They can’t distract or make me unlive Dre breaking up with me. It doesn’t feel like we broke up—it feels like I’ve been banished. Like we can’t be friends anymore. I don’t even need to kiss him or love him if he doesn’t want me to; I just need to be his friend. But even that’s not an option. The pain meds can’t stop me from caring about what people are saying in school either. What Aces will say next about me, and what it might do to my future.

Maybe … it wasn’t him Aces wanted to get a reaction out of. What more does Aces want from me? I don’t get it. They’ve successfully pushed away my only two friends, outed me at school, and made me lose the only way I could get some extra money for Ma. And for what? Surely there’s nothing else left? I’m just going to keep my head down, concentrate on my music, and get the hell out of here.

Going to Niveus has afforded me the unwanted knowledge of what is good—expensive—and what is not.

I usually block out the bad and move on. I never really talk things through with people, just kind of hope things’ll get better on their own, which they often don’

“There’s this one I’m going to send in for the audition, but I keep getting stuck on it. It was so clear in my mind over the summer.” I think everything going on at school is blocking the flow.

“In an ideal world, I’d maybe go to college.” He shrugs. “The world’s not ideal, though.”

All I watch are kid films because of my brothers. I stopped watching movies when I realized they were a magic trick. In real life, prom isn’t the best night of your life. In real life, your first time is with a boy called Scotty in the back of his dad’s Rolls-Royce. In real life, parents aren’t together. Not even close. In real life, your dad, the only person who’d probably get your music struggles, is behind bars.

I hadn’t given it proper thought before, but now I can’t stop thinking about it: the fact that Terrell seems to be open about his sexuality and so casual about it. It’s not something you can be casual about around here.

My first everything was with Scotty, really. I don’t regret it, though. I don’t like regretting things, even things with bad endings.

“Who the fuck names their cat Bullshit?”

“I think you could grow to like him,” he tells me as the cat saunters off. I swear I see a smirk on its furry face. Bullshit.

“I think you need to be careful,” I say, and I’m not sure why. I just don’t like how trusting she is of Headmaster Ward. This is the same guy who looks like he dismembers cats for fun. “I don’t need protection. You think lies can affect me, Richards?” I think we both know they aren’t lies.