“Okay,” I said. I scanned the list of projects, making mental markers next to the ones that sounded doable. I tried to ignore the sinking sensation in my gut. The current third-years looked exhausted from rotations alone. How was I supposed to study for my shelf exams,* look good on my clinical rotations, and work on research?
“Chin up, Angie,” Dr. Wallace said. “You’re a strong student. You’re going to do great things.” She leaned forward and patted my hand comfortingly. “You just have to jump through a few hoops first.”
Five
Dr. Wallace’s list sat, unaddressed, in my backpack for a week. This was by design; I had the next year and a half to jump through hoops, but only a few more days to turn up. Besides, there was still much to do. I shopped for business casual clothes for my rotations,* submitted my requests for my clerkship sites, and, most importantly, prepared myself for Beyoncé. Nia’s gift was twofold—concert tickets and a long-awaited reunion of the Sanity Circle. And now that the whole crew was getting together, every single one of us had to be on point. We had a dress code and everything. If I couldn’t be smart, goddammit was I going to be cute, and my whole squad too. We had “Partition” on. We been dranking.
“Turn around again,” I told Michelle, who had shown up at our door in leather pants and red pumps that screamed Sandy from Grease. “Look at how good your butt looks, girl!”
“Study block booty,” Michelle said, wagging her hips. She was already two shots of Patrón in, which, for Michelle, meant that she was a whiff of beer away from plastered. She turned around, grabbed her chest. “Study block titties too. All that stress eating was good for something!”
“Oh, that lil’ thang?” Nia said from her doorway. She spun into view, thick brown curls bouncing, grabbed a hold of the doorframe, and dipped backward as the bass dropped low in the song. Then she turned and dropped, jiggling her impressive bum in her black jumpsuit.
“Okay, okay, I lose,” Michelle admitted. “Though you’d better be careful. If Markus’s girl sees you do anything like that, she’s going to turn the car around.”
“Diamond gon’ have to chill,” I said. I reclined on the sofa, satisfied with our work. We looked good. Faces beat for the gods. Hair laid. Bodies right. Diamond was going to be mad regardless.
She was, of course. When we opened the door, Diamond was right behind it, her smile strained as her eyes flickered from girl to girl. I refrained from rolling my eyes and opened my arms for a hug instead.
“Hey, Diamond,” I said. “How was the drive?”
“It was good!” she said a little too cheerfully. She looked good too, dressed according to the code in a backless black dress. If she would just look in a mirror and see that she had nothing to worry about, I would like her a lot more. “Markus drove the whole way. He’s so sweet like that.”
My attention shifted to Markus, who was hanging behind his girlfriend and giving us a shy smile. I thought about holding back for Diamond’s sake, then changed my mind and threw myself into his arms. His laugh was breathless, but he squeezed just as tightly as I did.
“I am so mad at you,” I told him. “The fuck you been? You never call! You never write!”
“But I’m here, aren’t I?” he asked. It had been two years since I’d seen him in the flesh, inexcusable since he lived only a two-hour flight away. Our grainy phone cameras hadn’t done him justice. I brushed my hand over the back of his head, feeling the transition from coarse curls to stubble and skin.
“Whose idea was this fade? Had to be yours, right?” I asked Diamond, who had accepted a drink from Nia and was, bless her, trying her best not to cause a scene. “We couldn’t get this boy to a barber if we put a knife to his throat.”
“Hey!” Markus said. He was currently being enveloped by both Michelle and Nia, and the former was drunkenly kissing his neck. Sensing danger, I waltzed over and drew Michelle away to a couch, complimenting Diamond on her hair. On cue, Michelle wrapped her arms around me instead and kissed me, very tenderly, on the cheek.
We sat down, briefly caught up, and called a Lyft. I pretended not to notice Nia stuffing a flask into her cleavage, made sure everyone else had their tickets （I didn’t trust Michelle to keep track of hers, so I kept it in my bag）， and forced everyone to pose for pictures while the lighting was good. Then we were strutting out the door, looking like the hottest new hip-hop girl group featuring Omarion.