No Place Safe by Kim Reid Page B

out loud.
    “What is this?”
    “Disco. Someone brought disco. ” It was as if I’d introduced the plague into the gym. “God, I can’t believe it. Who brought disco?”
    It didn’t take more than a quick glance around for them to conclude it must have been me, the one who least fit in and who looked most likely to spread the dreaded disco among them. The teacher tried to ignore the girls, I suppose out of kindness toward me, and let the record play,  tapping her foot to the beat until a funny look passed over her face and she lifted the arm of the record player abruptly.
    That’s when it dawned on me that I hadn’t considered the lyrics when I made my selection, so involved was I in making sure the music would get the class fired up. About the same time I thought of this, the teacher must have figured out that“Ring My Bell” didn’t have a thing to do with alerting Anita to her man’s presence at the front door. She put the record back in the sleeve and handed both albums to me, not even willing to give old Gloria Gaynor a try. On top of that, every girl in the place now knew for sure who had brought the records.
    “I’ll take these back to my locker,” I told her. It was a good ten minutes before I showed up on the gym floor again, and hoped that by then I’d pushed my anger and embarrassment down enough to get through the class without cussing out the next girl to say disco . The teacher must have said something while I was gone, because the laughs and comments had been reduced to knowing glances, the kind that only high-school girls can give, the kind that can decide and relay to the rest of the pack a girl’s social standing in an instant. I just acted like it didn’t faze me, but I decided that would be the last time I’d try to bring some of my world into theirs.
     
    *
     
    On a Saturday in October that still had the makings of a summer day—warm and sticky, the air feeling almost too heavy to breath—we kids were taking a break from playing basketball on the driveway of the boys with the hoop. Our hosts were three brothers—one a year younger than I, one a year older than Bridgette, and a third who was too young to hang with any of us. His parents made his brothers look out for him anyway, which meant he tagged along behind the older kids like an afterthought, and always seemed to have skinned knees from falling while trying to keep up. All the kids from the Beautiful Family were there, a good thing because the boys were the best players on the street, and the best-looking.
    Marie and I were the only girls the boys would take when choosing teams. We were the only girls willing to go hard to the basket and scrap for the ball without fussing about getting scratched, or worrying about our hair coming loose from our ponytails. Plus, we could shoot from the outside, a skill learned to avoid some of those under-the-basket skirmishes. Cassandra and her younger sister Latrice were there. Bridgette and Latrice were friends, and we gave them the job of chasing down a runaway ball or holding on to valuables that might get damaged in a game—eyeglasses (mine), a bracelet, loose change, a pack of Bubble Yum that would be returned to the owner soft from sitting in the sun or a pocket, and usually missing a piece. In return, they got to hang out with us older kids. Cassandra would never join a game, even if she knew how to play, because it required bumping up against sweaty boys, one of the reasons I enjoyed the game.
    Playing basketball was one of the few occasions I wasn’t nervous around boys. I loved their awe when I hit two points from the outside while being defended by a boy six inches taller. The moment my feet left the ground in the jump shot, when I felt the ball leave my fingertips, watched it arc through the air and fall into the basket, heard the whisper of leather moving through net without touching rim or backboard, I was all confidence. By the time a boy from the other team had grabbed the