DEBB IE RIGAUD

SCHOLASTIC PRESS
NEW YORK
 PROLOGUE
(four years ago)

“Psst . . . Anne,” I whispered out the side of my mouth as our car

pulled up to Madame Honoré’s house. “Make a run for it.”
My older sister shot me an exasperated look. “That’s not funny,
Simone.”
“I’m dead serious,” I declared. “Would I joke at a time like this?”
Of course, both Anne and I had to admit that it was too late to
fight this battle. Our bridge-and-tunnel journey over, we had
arrived in Queens to meet Anne’s arranged prom date.
Our mother set up the whole thing without Anne’s involve-
ment. She must have cast a wide net for this catch, no doubt
activating her entire tristate-area network of Haitian mamas with
teenaged sons.
I wished I could say that nothing in my sister’s seventeen years
had prepared her for this embarrassment. But the truth was, by
then, Anne already held titles in the Overprotected Olympics. And
at thirteen, I was being groomed as her successor.

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 “Ssssshhhhh,” Mummy hissed from the passenger seat. She
was in full arrival mode. Hushing folks was to my mom what get-
ting seats and tray tables in their upright positions was to flight
attendants.
My seat belt’s metal clasp ka-klowed as I unlatched it. Anne
flinched at the sound, and that was it for me.
Anne was usually as composed as Beethoven. If the flouncy
Sunday dress she wore came with auto-flip sequins, she’d still seem
low-key. The girl was that unfussy—in personality, not in looks,
for Anne was the pretty one. I was always flattered when people
mistook us for twins. Our personalities, though, could not have
been more different.
My mom once joked she should’ve named us Push and Pull.
Anne, like her long, straightened hair, was pulled together. And
every time she started to inch a toe over to the wild side, she’d pull
herself back behind the line. Meanwhile, I subtly pushed bound-
aries the same as I pushed back on my parents’ rules. Today, for
instance, I had opted not to flat-iron my unyielding coils or to wear
the corny outfit my mom had picked out for me.
“Are we seriously going through with this?” I asked my par-
ents, leaning forward for urgency’s sake. They both pouted in that
intense way only Creole-and-French-forged lips can. “Isn’t that
famous Haitian restaurant nearby?” I continued. “We can order
dinner to go and be back in Jersey before the food gets cold. The
traffic going the other way is light—”
“That’s enough, Simone!” Mummy whisper-screamed without

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looking away from her sun-visor mirror as she freshened up her
makeup.
“Eh bien, I’ll wait outside,” Papi said with one foot already out
the car door. Poor guy. He was so overpowered by all the estrogen
in his life.
After another minute of grooming (Mummy) and stalling
(Anne and me), the three of us got out of the car and headed to the
house with Papi.
Our host, Madame Honoré Fils-Aimé, met us at her front door
with her cheek angled toward us, ready to receive our greetings.
This was a cultural gesture she’d earned. To be sure, the kisser is
of lesser status than the kissee. Madame Honoré was the senior
woman as well as the host—not to mention (if you ask my mom)
the lifesaver of the day—so it was all cheek out for her.
“Constance, Gérard, comment ça va?” She greeted my parents
with a broad grin, setting a formal tone by speaking French instead
of Haitian Creole.
“Allo, Madame Honoré,” my mother answered, half an octave
higher than normal. Her top row of teeth was so overexposed, I
imagined them drying up.
The spicy aroma tickling my nose from the front stoop and
the beads of sweat on Madame Honoré’s penciled brow conjured
an image of our host whipping up a tasty dish over the hot stove. It
was enough to put me in a better mood.
“Allons, allons.” My mother coaxed me and Anne to step
inside. Her public voice and trained personality reported to duty in

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all their Francophone glory. “Ah, Simone, l’as-tu laissé dans la
voiture?” she asked me.
“Non,” I answered, stepping from behind Anne and showing
my mom that I had not in fact forgotten the macaroni au gratin
that stole my window seat.
After handing over the pan of food, Anne and I offered
Madame Honoré the obligatory cheek-kiss greeting. We instinc-
tively walked single file, following the foot indentations in the plush
beige carpeting, to an ornate sofa that looked like a double-wide
throne. We were careful not to bump the gilded coffee table that
was mobbed with tiny figurines of white women in hoopskirts.
I felt so tense for my sister that my scalp throbbed, as if I were
wearing too-tight braids. Our hands rested side by side on the vel-
vety seat cushion, so I gave Anne’s a poke and flashed her a
grimace, minus the gross eyelid flip I’d learned from Gabby. Our
cousin Gabrielle was the buckwildest person we knew. She was
only eleven, but her talent for telling the world to shove off with a
bawdy grimace, a well-timed belch, or the choicest Creole cuss
word was the stuff of legend. Gabby would wreak the best kind of
havoc if she were here right now. And Anne’s lip curl told me she
was thinking the same hilarious thought.
“Jude! Vini’m pale’w,” Madame Honoré abruptly called out in
Creole.
A tall, broad-shouldered teen boy barreled down the stairs and
paused when he saw the small crowd in his living room.
Madame Honoré rattled off names in our seating order. “You

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remember Madame Gérard, Gérard, and their daughters, Anne
and Simone,” she told the boy. “They came to your brother’s com-
munion party when you were eleven.”
“H-hello,” Jude reluctantly said without much eye contact.
Shockingly, he didn’t make the rounds planting kisses on every-
one’s cheeks as my sister and I would’ve been obligated to do had
we been in his shoes. Nor did his mother reprimand him for not
doing so. He just stood there nodding in greeting.
When Jude turned to take a seat, he exposed the one wireless
earbud he had plugged in his ear. The shiny silver phone that
peeked out of his front jeans pocket was probably cycling through
a playlist. That would explain Jude’s head nods.
Papi couldn’t stop glaring at him. It was all he could do not to
leapfrog the coffee table and scare some respect into the kid.
Anne’s expression stayed neutral, like she was in a Vulcan mind
meld with one of the hoopskirt-wearing figurines. I wondered
how she could be so still, so outwardly quiet when her fate was
being decided by everyone but her. I squirmed in my seat to shake
off the secondhand embarrassment. Mummy kept her feet crossed
at her ankles and laced her fingers together in her lap. She spoke
with a tight smile and a singsong voice in crisp Creole, as if she were
being graded on etiquette.
“As we discussed over the phone, my daughter Anne needs to
attend senior prom with an escort, and the good Lord pointed me
to you,” she told Madame Honoré. “Jude would make the perfect
companion for this event. We would love for him to attend prom

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with Anne. If you agree to this, that would be a grand gesture on
your part, and we would be very grateful.” She smoothed down
her skirt with splayed fingers to signal the end of her proposition.
I wondered if Madame Honoré would jump to her feet
and kick us out, scolding us for perpetuating an old-fashioned
immigrant stereotype and imploring us to get with the times.
No such luck.
Madame Honoré beamed, nodding in an I-agree-I-have-been-
a-huge-blessing fashion rather than the general I’m-following-
what-you’re-saying one. She obviously delighted in her good standing.
A properly vetted son to our family’s dateless daughter was a gold
mine to parents like Constance and Gérard Thibodeaux of East
Orange, New Jersey.
Anne’s shoulders were high and tense. She finally coughed up
some flippant words. “Great, thanks.”
“Of course, Anne,” Madame Honoré said tenderly. “You two
will make a gorgeous prom couple. Just let us know what color
you’d like to wear and my boy will make sure his cummerbund
matches.”
Mummy gasped excitedly. “Oh, can’t you just see her in some-
thing bright and eye-catching?”
“Mais oui,” agreed Madame Honoré. “I was just about to
suggest that—like a peach or even yellow—”
“Black,” Anne interrupted with a confident nod. She leaned
forward to look around Papi at Mummy. “I’m wearing black.”
Battle line drawn, she momentarily froze in an eye lock with

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Mummy. Anne was giving off such Old-West-outlaw energy, a
tumbleweed might have blown by. The only motion in this still-
ness was Jude’s head bob. Dude wasn’t fooling anyone that he was
paying attention.
“Eh bien, black it is, chérie,” Madame Honoré murmured.
Anne blinked in slow motion and then wedged back into her spot
on the crowded sofa.
The particulars were then discussed—the date of the prom,
transportation arrangements. It was agreed that after prom, Jude
would sleep at a cousin’s nearby house in East Orange.
The room relaxed after everything had been decided. Both
mothers appeared happy. Anne looked resigned. All went as was
expected.
That is, until a boy my age tore through the front door, reek-
ing of grass and sweat. He was shadowed by an older man I
assumed was Madame Honoré’s husband, Honoré. The boy was
gnashing on some gum and wearing a dirt-stained baseball
uniform.
I sat up, because baseball’s my favorite sport.
“We won!” the boy exclaimed to Madame Honoré, who raised
her proud chin and smiled.
He scanned the room for another reaction, and his eyes landed
on mine.
“You play?” he interrogated me as my parents greeted the
older man, our host’s husband.
The nerve. I felt exposed at a time when I was trying to fly

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under the radar. The neck swivel was a reflex I couldn’t rein in
when I spit out the only comeback I could think of. “Do you?”
Confusion crumpled every corner of the boy’s brown face.
The sight of our interaction prompted Madame Honoré to
break out in a gleeful chortle. “And when it is Simone’s turn,” she
squawked, gesturing to Baseball Boy, “my younger son Ben will
be ready.”
Nope. Not gonna happen. No way was I ever going through
with an arranged prom like Anne. With this vow ringing in my
heart like a fire alarm, I glared at Ben. And the weirdo he was, he
pleasantly smiled back.