Blackout Page 7

  “My Nan died a couple of years ago,” Joss says quietly. “She was a show dog trainer. Like, those women who run with the dogs across the blue carpet while they do tricks?”

  I smile a little and nod. “You don’t see many Black people doing that,” I say.

  “I know,” Joss agrees. “But she was real good at it. Every dog she ever trained was Best in Show at some point. Then, when she got older, she started training therapy dogs. It was a little less physically demanding, but she still got to be around animals all day.”

  I think about Ziggy and ask, “Did she train your dog?”

  Joss shakes her head and pushes her glasses up her nose. “I did. But she taught me everything I know.”

  “How long did it take?” I ask her. I pull out the last of Pop’s drawers and push everything inside around.

  “A few months. I adopted Zigs when he was like one-ish. He was this buck wild puppy. But he was so sweet and cute. I could tell, from seeing the dogs my Nan had worked with, that he had the right temperament to be a therapy dog. I couldn’t understand why no one had adopted him sooner.”

  “A lot of people think pitties are scary,” I say. “There’s a lot of dumb stuff on the internet.”

  “Oh, I know. It makes me so mad. Did you know that pitbulls are the most euthanized breed? And that black dogs, regardless of breed, are the least likely to get adopted?”

  I shut the drawer and turn to look at her. “Really? Damn,” I say. “I didn’t know that. It’s almost like . . . dog racism.”

  Joss shakes her head. “That’s exactly what it is. But anyway, Ziggy took to the training right away. Very eager to please. Very gentle. Very stranger-friendly. We started out visiting kids at the hospital and then started going to old people’s homes. I make hospice visits once a month with him, but I can’t do those too often for my own mental health.”

  Joss stands up and lifts a stack of books on Pop’s bedside table. Then she flips through them all one at a time, which I hadn’t thought to do. Photos do make great bookmarks.

  “This her?” Joss says, and for a second I think she’s found the missing picture. But when I look up, I see that she’s pointing to Sadie’s painting of Granny Zora that’s hanging by the bedroom door. I smile a little.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  In the portrait, like in the photo, Granny has all her long gray hair pressed straight, but it’s falling over her shoulders in fat waves because she always pinned it up before bed. She’s wearing an emerald-green dress and sitting at her kitchen table with her elbow resting on the tabletop, and she’s holding a cigarette, the very reason she ended up with the lung cancer that took her from us. She looks beautiful and badass and too much like Mom. I turn away.

  I feel panicky sometimes when I stare at pictures of her for too long, because I realize that one day my mom’s gonna be gone too.

  “She’s gorgeous,” Joss says, and something about the fact that she says it that way, in the present tense, makes my heart slow down, my breath even out.

  “Yeah,” I say again. “She is.”

  “You look like her,” Joss says. And I blink a few times too quickly.

  “I do?” I ask.

  “Yep,” she says, but she isn’t looking at me anymore. She’s leaning over, checking under Pop’s bed. Still, her voice rings as loud and clear as a pair of her bracelets chiming when she adds, “You’re gorgeous too.”

  I want to tell her that I’ve been thinking the same thing about her since she first stepped foot in Althea House, but I can’t find my voice.

  So I don’t say anything back.

  We search around for a while longer. I shine my flashlight under the dresser and into his closet, and Joss pulls the cushion out of Pop’s chair to check the back and the sides of the lounger. But we don’t find the photo.

  “Did Ike go anywhere else in the house? I mean besides, like, the bathroom and stuff. Oh, what about Queenie’s room?”

  “Oh yeah,” I say, glancing at Pop’s saxophone where it sits on the floor in its case. “They’re always playing music together.”

  “I know,” Joss says, grinning. I want to ask how she knows, but I don’t.

  A minute later we’re back in the hall, heading to the opposite end of the floor.

  “Why were you sad?” Joss asks as we pass the bathroom. I poke my head in and glance at the tile floor, but nothing’s there.

  “Huh?” I say.

  “You said Ike told you to bring reinforcements because you were sad. That’s why you had the picnic?”

  “Oh, right,” I say, remembering.

  “What were you sad about?”

  I fluff my puffy hair.

  “Honestly, I’ve been pretty bummed since the last day of school,” I say. “My girlfriend went to Haiti for the summer, but she didn’t tell me until the day before she was leaving.”

  “Yikes,” Joss says. “Long distance is hard.”

  “What?” I ask, and then I realize my mistake. “Sorry. My girl space friend.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I . . . actually had a pretty intense crush on her. And when she told me she was going, it was very much like, ‘You’re needy as hell. I’m going to a foreign country to get away from you. Bye.’”

  “Ouch,” Joss says. She looks uncomfortable and I’m worried I’ve said too much.

  “I mean, that’s an oversimplification, but we were just different, you know?” I yank at my skirt again—a bad habit I haven’t added to my list of vices simply because, as Pop has no trouble telling me, I could just get longer skirts.

  “Different can be killer,” Joss says, and she reaches for Queenie’s bedroom door.

  I feel a little weird stepping into Queenie’s room without permission. I pause, backtrack, and shout down the stairs. “Queenie, you mind if we check your room for the picture? Maybe Pop dropped it in there?”

  She hollers back a second later, “Knock yourself out, sweetie. But don’t touch my top drawer.”

  Joss giggles. “I bet she’s got porn in there,” she whispers, and a second later Aida yells, “That’s where she keeps her vintage Playgirls!” Joss and I look at each other and burst out laughing.

  “Shut the hell up,” I hear Queenie say. We step inside so we can’t hear Aida’s reply, but I’m certain they’re still arguing.

  I glance around Queenie’s room. I take in the patterned floor pillows and lacy curtains, the patchwork quilt on the bed and the stacks and stacks of books about astrology and gemstones and tarot. “It . . . looks like a hippie-ish catalog threw up in here. Except, you know, with less boho white girl energy and more realness.”

  “Oh my God,” Joss says, nodding, “that is the perfect way to describe it.”

  We scan the floor with our flashlights, and then check behind Queenie’s drum set. The old lady rocks out with my grandpa a couple days a week and they’ve been talking about forming a band, but I doubt anything will really come of it.

  “I play the piano with them sometimes,” Joss says after we’ve been quietly looking around Queenie’s room for a while. “I bring my keyboard so Queenie doesn’t have to carry her drums downstairs. I told them we should form a band, play gigs at the little soul food restaurant on the corner. They have live music sometimes.”

  “So that’s how you knew to check in here. And you’re where they got the idea,” I say. I nudge her a little with my elbow and she laughs.

  “Guilty,” she says, then she gets this look on her face that I can’t quite read. “Different can be killer,” she says, repeating what she’d mentioned in the hall when I told her about Bree. “But I think, no matter how different you are from someone, if you want to make it work and both people are willing to try, you can usually figure stuff out. I mean, look at Ike and Queenie. They’re like polar opposites—your grandpa is this super logical, very straight-laced dude and Queenie’s room is full of . . .” Joss picks up a big piece of rose quartz from a small shelf and widens her eyes. “But they have this, like,
undeniable musical chemistry. Enough that they really want to play together. They argue constantly, but they make it work.”

  I shrug. “I guess that’s true. Aida and Mordy too.”

  “Exactly. What I’m saying,” Joss continues, “is that different usually isn’t the real reason a relationship doesn’t work out. It’s more about what people really want. And how badly they want it. If someone didn’t want you?” She gestures at me with the rose quartz, like something about me is just as precious, just as imperfectly beautiful. “They missed out.”

  I swallow hard and walk over to Queenie’s dresser. “You’re . . . sweet,” I say.

  The part of the Bree story I didn’t tell Joss? Days before she left the country, I’d leaned against a fence beside her, held her hand, tucked a lock of her curly hair behind her ear, and whispered, “I don’t know if you know this, but I think I love you.”

  She let go of my hand and took a step away from me. She said, “But Nella . . . you know I’m straight, right?” and I felt my chest collapsing in on itself.

  “But we hang out all the time and hold hands,” I’d said. “We go to movies together and get ice cream late at night.”

  “Yeah,” Bree agreed. “But I do that with all my friends.”

  “But . . . Twig saw you kissing girls at all those house parties? That’s the only reason he introduced us.”

  Bree bit her lip. “Oh. Damn. Well, that’s just something I do when I’m drinking.”

  I didn’t buy that she was straight. But more important than my issues with how she identified, was my embarrassment: I thought I’d been dating someone who didn’t think they were dating me.

  Three days later she told me she was leaving. Just like that. On top of the humiliation, I got to add heartbreak—I’d been dumped by someone I’d never even kissed.

  So I collect Joss’s compliments like shiny pennies found on the ground: pocketed for safekeeping. They’re pretty, and nice to have, but worth very little. Because if someone I’d hung out with for months could toss me away as easily as Bree did, why should I care if a cute girl who just met me thinks I’m a catch?

  Joss can tell.

  “You don’t believe me?” she asks. And I shrug.

  “Bad things are easier to believe than the good stuff.”

  She looks thoughtful for a second, then she says, “I just try my best to always say true things. My ex was really different from me too—into metal more than pop. Wore more black than pink. They liked cats. . . . Cats, Nella. More than dogs. That bitch missed out too.”

  I laugh. I’ve only known her for an hour (if I don’t count all the stories Pop’s told me about her), but I still can’t imagine Joss with someone like that.

  She reaches for a tube of Queenie’s lipstick and keeps talking. “Taylor was their name. Went by Tay-Tay. Tay was my first, so I’ll probably love them forever. But while I wanted Tay just as they were, Tay wanted someone they had more in common with. And you can’t make someone want you back.”

  I knew that all too well.

  Joss leaned toward Queenie’s mirror and smoothed the color, a deep indigo, over her lips.

  “She’s let me try this color before,” Joss’s reflection says when I give her a look. “I swear. I wouldn’t use it if I thought she’d mind.”

  And now, in addition to Joss being very cute and very confident and very kind . . . her mouth is suddenly very, very distracting.

  I turn away and remind myself I’m supposed to be looking for a picture, not staring at Joss’s lips. I scan the floor and Queenie’s bed, her shelf with all the books and stones, and then her side table. There’s a jar of butterscotch candies and I reach my hand in and grab a few. Queenie is always handing these out, so like with the lipstick, I know she won’t mind us taking some.

  I toss one to Joss and sit down on Queenie’s bed. “I freaking love these things,” she says. She sits on one of the floor pillows, unwraps the candy, and pops it into her perfect, purplish mouth. Joss picks up a book from one of the stacks closest to her and asks me my sign.

  “Pisces,” I say, and then, because she seems so sure of herself, so unapologetically exactly who she is, I ask, “Did you know, before Taylor I mean, that you were queer?”

  “Nope,” she says without hesitation. Then she shines her phone light on the page and reads me my horoscope from the heavy book in her hands. It says a few vague things about ambition and transition and leaning on loved ones during difficult times, but I don’t really pay much attention to it. I’m watching Joss.

  When she finally looks back up at me, I smile. “When did you know?”

  “I met Tay-Tay when we were twelve. But we didn’t start hanging out a lot until we were in high school. I felt this, like, heat, whenever we were together. We were like magnets. We couldn’t keep our hands to ourselves. So you know, we linked pinkies a lot and played with each other’s hair and cuddled when we watched movies and were best friends. I didn’t really think about it. Then, last year, they came out to me one night. Told me they were nonbinary and queer, and said that they liked me. Tay seemed so sure about everything. I could tell so much thought had gone into everything they said. And I think they could tell I was still questioning. I told Tay I wasn’t sure about my identity, and they looked really disappointed. But then I said, ‘I don’t know if I can tell you which boxes I check. But I know I like you too.’”

  I nod. “It was kind of like that with me too. One of the most popular guys in school, this kid Tristán, gave me a love letter freshman year and when I showed it to my best friend thinking she’d laugh, she told me to go for it. She couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t at least talk to the guy. But I wasn’t interested in him because I had a crush on her. Long story short: she didn’t like me back. She got weird about it. I got clingy. We stopped being friends.”

  “That sucks,” Joss says. And we’re quiet for a while. I slide off the bed and onto the floor pillow beside Joss. I take the astrology book from her and she angles the phone’s light toward me so I can find her horoscope. She’s a Taurus and hers is all about opportunity and being open to what the universe sends her way. Her eyes sparkle a little in the dark.

  “I don’t think the photo is in here,” I say, even though part of me wants to stay here beside her for a while longer.

  “Nope,” she says, but she doesn’t move either.

  “Maybe we need some help,” Joss suggests a few minutes later. She pushes herself up and reaches down. Her outstretched hand is soft when I reach up and grab it. She pulls me up, but doesn’t let go right away, and I love the way the cold metal of her rings is such a sharp contrast to the warmth of her palm. We head to the door and Joss’s bracelets jangle as she opens it.

  “Help?” I ask, following behind her.

  She bounces down the stairs and reenters the living room, and Mimi and all the old people look up hopefully at us.

  “Sorry, Pop. No luck,” I say, and Grandpop Ike says, “Well, shit.”

  “I have an idea, though,” Joss says. “Ike, can I see your wallet?”

  “Umm, okay.” He pulls it out of his pocket and Joss calls Ziggy over. She holds the wallet out and Ziggy dutifully sniffs it.

  “I don’t know if this will work,” Joss says. “But I’m guessing the photo must smell like the wallet, right? Since it was usually in the wallet? Maybe it smells like the leather. Maybe Zigs can help us search more efficiently.”

  I bite my bottom lip to keep from smiling too hard. This girl.

  “That’s brilliant,” Birdie says.

  “Genius,” Mordechai mutters.

  “The girl could fight crime,” Mimi agrees, without looking away from her phone.

  The Costas and Montgomery-Allens all laugh.

  “Not without my faithful sidekick. Lead the way, Ziggy,” Joss says, then she looks over at me. I’m staring again. “What?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “Just . . . you,” I say. And I start behind Ziggy. When I don’t hear her bracelets, I tur
n back and Joss is still standing in the same place. “Just me, huh?” she says, smirking.

  “Oh my God,” I say. I cover my mouth, realizing what I let slip. But when our eyes meet, I decide to go with it. I grab her hand again because it felt so normal to do it upstairs. So natural. “Come on.”

  Ziggy trots down the long hall that leads to the kitchen, so we follow him through the dim passageway. There are battery-powered tea light candles along the floor in the hall so the residents can make their way to the bathroom if they need to. But the kitchen is bright since there are so many windows.

  Ziggy walks over to the sliding glass doors that lead out to a small balcony set at the back of the house. He nudges the bottom corner of the door and leaves a small heart-shaped nose print on the glass.

  “I . . . don’t think he’s leading us to the photo,” I say. I slide open the door and Ziggy hops over the threshold, sniffs around, and lifts his leg before peeing a perfect arc through the railing and off the side of the balcony.

  “Ziggy, no!” Joss shouts, but it’s too late and I’m cracking up laughing.

  “Hopefully no one’s down there?” I say. I walk to the ledge and peer over. Lucky for us, there’s just a spattering of wetness on the concrete.

  “Good boy,” I say. I pat his soft head and stroke his velvety ears. His floppy pink tongue hangs out and it looks like he’s smiling.

  Joss says, “That was most certainly not good!”

  “At least he didn’t pee on the balcony,” I say. I flop down in one of the Adirondack chairs and Ziggy pushes his head against my hand until I pet him more.

  “They had the right idea,” Joss says. She sits in the chair across from me and looks at the building across the alley. The people have pulled out a charcoal grill and they’re blasting music from a Bluetooth speaker. Two older men are dancing together and their friends are clapping.

  It’s weird sitting in the light knowing there are only a few hours of brightness left. I wonder what we’ll do, and how everyone will feel, once the sun goes down.