The Scammer - 3

With one last look, I close the photo album on my computer and slip it into my bag. So many memories, so much history, so

much a part of me hidden and tucked away. At least for now.

Packed and ready, I check the time. One hour before my first day as a college student. Feels like I’ve been preparing for

this since middle school. All my parents ever talked about was how every decision that I made, from how I wore my hair to

my GPA, was going to lead to college. This is the first day of the life they’ve been warning me about.

While Vanessa and Kammy went for high-fashion looks for their first-day ’fits, I settled on my typical uniform—a black tee,

straight dark denim jeans, and flats. I comb my hair perfectly in place, listening to the girls giggling in the kitchen over

bowls of cereal. I’m too nervous to eat.

I’m really doing this, Kev . . .

Just the thought of him makes me slump on my bed. I check the time again and dare myself to dial the number.

“Yes.”

The moment I hear her voice, my heart leans toward it.

“Hi Mom,” I say, my tone desperate.

There’s a brief pause on the line before she sighs. “Hello Jordyn.”

Her voice is icy. Not the usual Jordy or JoJo. She is using my full name.

“How are you?” I ask, remaining cheerful.

“I’m well. Thanks.”

I wait for her to ask some questions, Like, how’s it going, how’s my room, how are my roommates . . . but nothing.

“Um, so I was just calling because today is my first day of classes. Intro to Ethics.”

“Okay.”

“And . . . I guess that’s it.”

“Okay.”

The “okays” were in the same inflection. Dad must be standing by, listening. The silence stretches.

“Well, we got a letter from Yale yesterday,” Mom states. “Confirming your deferral.”

I swallow. “Oh. I . . .”

“Guess you’ll see if this year will all be worth it.”

It’s as if she etched the underlying meaning of her words on the walls of my dorm.

“Okay. Talk to you later then. Bye.” I hang up quick so I won’t hear her hang up on me first. I’m too tender for that.

According to the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I read about it in her book On Death and Dying. Right now, I can’t tell if my parents are in the anger phase or the depression phase with my decision to go to Frazier U.

I held a proverbial gun to their heads in order for them to agree to pay for college. If they didn’t, all of Westport would

have known. It would make them look bad. And after Kevin . . . that’s the last thing they would want: more attention. Outside

of tuition, room, board, and a small stipend, they made it clear that I wouldn’t get a single dime from them otherwise.

I take a deep breath and scroll down my meager address book, daring myself to call him. It’s selfish, but I just want to hear

a familiar voice. Everything is so new, exciting yet nerve-racking.

“Yeah what?” he snaps, answering on almost the last possible ring.

“Hi! How’s it going?”

He scoffs. “Do you really wanna know?”

“Jack, I just thought we could—”

“Jordyn, did you expect me to be happy to hear from you? You pull this last-minute stunt to go to that ghetto school when

we’ve been planning for YEARS to go to Yale. I worked my ass off to get into the school. You barely broke a sweat. And now

we’re . . . well, I don’t even know what we are anymore.”

“Friends?” I offer.

“Friends?” he spits. “Right. Well, FRIEND. I have to go.”

Click.

Clearly Jack is still in the anger phase.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my boyfriend of the last four years doesn’t want to hear from me. Not after just telling

him two weeks ago that no, I wasn’t going to college with him. I shouldn’t have even been surprised that he immediately dumped

me. I wasn’t even surprised when he showed up the night before my train, begging, pleading with me to change my mind.

There’s not a single person back home that is happy that I chose Frazier. Shock and disgust was the typical response, the

question always being why? Why would I give up Yale for some “‘Black school”?

And I don’t have an answer for them. Or at least an answer that I can tell them right now.

I ’ve always loved the balance beam. It requires flexibility, grace, poise, strength, and, of course, balance. Mom said when

I was younger, I would find anything to tight rope across—curbs, benches, logs, walls, random lines of chalk. By the time

I was seven, she enrolled me in gymnastics, hoping it would help me wean off the habit, with hard work and a few hard falls.

Instead, just made me hungry for more.

That’s how I feel, walking through Frazier’s campus. Hoping that if I just go for it . . . it would put an end to my curiosity. This plan of mine was going to call for a delicate dance on a beam. The issue becomes when I eventually fall in front of a crowd, how hard it might hurt.

Frazier’s main campus is a quadrangle, known as the Quad. It’s a rhombus-shaped yard, flanked by vine-choked academic halls,

with a flat grassy expanse and network of paved walkways painted a dull gold. Students follow the yellow brick road to classes.

I rush toward the stairs in Baker Hall, taking two steps at a time. First day, and I’m already going to be late to class.

The trek to campus from our dorm up steep hills was a bit more intense than I thought.

My schedule says it’s in room 2012 but these room numbers are not in order. Soon as I round the corner, I bump right into

him.

“Ooff!” Nick grunts, stepping back. “Bambi?”

I straighten my hair. He’s the last person I want to see right now. “That’s not my name. It’s Jordyn.”

He grins with a bored sigh. “Same thing. You lost?”

“No,” I shoot back defiantly.

He rolls his eyes and snatches my phone, scanning my schedule. “Oh. You have Hammond. I had his class last year.”

“You’re prelaw?”

“Ummm yeah.” He scans my schedule. “Huh. Looks like we have Ethics together. How’d you get in that without the prerequisite?”

I snatch my phone back, slipping it into my pocket. “I took pre-college courses over the summer.”

“Figures you’d be an overachiever. Come on, walk this way or we’ll both be late.”

Begrudgingly, I follow. It’s my fault. Instead of partying and hanging with the girls, I should have been doing a practice

run-through of my day. I should have looked up my professors, read their syllabuses, ordered their materials.

That’s what old Jordyn would do. Because old Jordyn couldn’t just be herself. She had to work ten times as hard to get half

the recognition. New Jordyn can just . . . exist. At least without the same fire under her feet. A new drive is here.

Nick walks into class first, sitting in the back row, garnering stares from the other classmates. Wanting to create a canyon-size

distance between us, I sit in the front but notice a few girls peek over their shoulders at him.

On second glance, Nick is cute, in a preppy white boy kind of way. Baby-faced, but his blue eyes twinkle with mischief, which

only makes me wonder . . . why is he here?

The conversation around going to Frazier went a little something like this . . .

Dad: What kind of education are you going to get there? It’s not going to help you get a job! A Black school doesn’t even

represent the real world. There’s no place in this country where the predominant is Black. Certainly not successful places.

Mom: Colleges like Yale can offer you better opportunities, guaranteed job security, and career prospects. True success can only be found at elite institutions. Not at a Black school.

Dad: How can you embarrass us like this? After everything we’ve been through!

Despite the resounding evidence that going to an HBCU has the opposite effect of their assumptions, it doesn’t matter. They’ve

already been conditioned to think that white spaces equal white success.

But sitting here among my peers . . . it all feels so worth their belittling.

“That’s what I’m saying!” Kareem shouts, his arms around Vanessa’s shoulders. “You putting Lil Wayne in the same box as Lil

Baby is wild crazy, bruh!”

“Baby, be easy on him,” Vanessa coos. “He don’t know no better.”

It’s been just a week, yet Vanessa and Kareem already look like the perfect couple. The two ooze chocolatey sex appeal. When

they walk across campus, heads turn. They don’t even hold hands, but their energy speaks volumes. When they’re not in classes,

Kareem just about lives on our love seat, staring at Vanessa.

Beside me, Loren is trying not to have a meltdown over a sophomore boy she met last week.

“But he said he’d call, then he just texted. Now I see him walking around with some other girl. I can’t believe he ghosted

me like that.”

“Girl, he ain’t worth it.” That’s Kerry, Loren’s friend from her Intro to Comms class. Kerry is from Atlanta, with long golden locs and cute apple cheeks.

“Tell her!” That’s Legacy, Kareem’s old roommate. I think he has a bit of a crush on Loren, who pretends not to notice.

“Anyone need more ice?” Kammy asks from the stove, as she turns over some chicken legs with one hand, popping open the fridge

with the other. She always flutters about like the perfect host. “You got ten more minutes until I finish this chicken. Corn

bread almost done too.”

“Girl, I ain’t trying to gain that freshman fifteen in a month,” Loren chides with a grin. “But add some extra honey to my

butter please!”

Loren is equal parts silly as she is no-nonsense. Kammy is a warm hug, a bowl full of southern sunshine. She feels like home,

which, for a school full of homesick kids, makes her a beacon to our kitchen.

Almost every other day, Vanessa is inviting new friends to our suite. We’ve become the cool hangout spot, the place others

in the dorm come to kick it.

There are always people around, but I don’t mind. I love that I’m friends with the popular girls. People want to talk to me

and not in a perfunctory manner. For once in my life, I’m just Jordyn. Not “Jordyn, the Black girl in my AP Chem class.”

Some would also confuse me with Google, the way I’m used to fact-checking just about anything we talk about. That and tech

support.

“Hey Jordyn, why can’t I send this file?” Kammy asks, tapping her laptop. “I swear. Oh! Now I’ve deleted it. Great.”

I laugh, pulling the computer onto my lap. “I keep telling you, you have to compress these big files before you try to send

them. And it’s not deleted, it’s in your cloud. Kammy! How many files do you have in here? And have you ever emptied your

trash?”

“Girl, you speaking French,” Kammy laughs.

I wave her off. “Just let me handle it.”

“Jordyn, could you clean up my computer too?” Vanessa asks. “It’s slow as hell. And I definitely can’t afford another.”

I grin. “Of course!”

I can’t believe it took leaving home to find friends like this. Ones who I’d do anything for and the same for me. As I look

around the room, all I want to do is start taking pictures, so I never forget this feeling and post my new life for everyone

back home to see and think, maybe I was wrong about her. My classes are great, my friends are amazing, I have a life worth

being jealous of. Maybe I won’t need to transfer to Yale. Maybe I can really make it work here.

“My brother could tell you some stories about YG,” I hear Vanessa say and tune back in, straightening. “They used to party

together. They’re still real tight. He’ll tell you all about him when you meet him.”

Vanessa is the closest thing we got to a music historian, thanks mostly to her brother.

“So wait, did your brother really roll with Snoop Dogg back in the day?” Legacy asks.

Vanessa whips out her phone. “Check this!”

She shows us a few photos. Everyone oohs and aahs. Her brother looks young, maybe fifteen. But he’s really there.

“Damn! Your brother been everywhere!”

“Come on, y’all,” Kammy calls, wiping her hands. “Let’s say grace and thank the Lord for this food. Amen, amen!”

Vanessa goes on to talk more about her brother’s music industry dealings. Everything I know about hip-hop I learned from rich

white boys who used it as fodder in their privileged lives. They’d come to school, rattling off one-hit wonder artists as

proof that I had the personality of dry bread.

“You don’t know XYZ? HA! See, that why I’m blacker than you.”

But here at Frazier, no one knows that version of Jordyn. Just assumes we’ve all had the same Black experience when really,

I’m here to learn and feel everything I didn’t at home.

“Hey hey! Hold up, y’all. Listen!” Legacy stands, plays a news clip on Twitter from his phone.

“‘Tonight, we have shocking news out of Southeast DC. Footage of an unarmed man shot by an off-duty police officer last spring

has been released. The officer claimed he was—’”

“Damn, not again,” Kareem mumbles. “I swear, shit like this happens every day.”

“You think there’re gonna be riots and stuff?” Kammy asks.

“Why you ask like that?” Vanessa snaps.

“It’s just . . . you know how folks get and I’ve lived through enough of these,” Kammy says. “They burned down my auntie’s hair shop after a kid got killed in our neighborhood.”

“Pfff! Who you telling,” Vanessa says. “Not one of us are in here without a story.”

“Breonna Taylor in my city,” Legacy agrees. “They did her so dirty. I remember the curfew.”

“Ahmaud Arbery in mine,” Kerry says, shaking her head. “They burned down a CVS around the corner from my house.”

“I was in kindergarten when Trayvon Martin happened,” Loren adds. “New York was on fire. I’ll never forget it.”

Everyone looks at me and I don’t have a specific story to share.

“Uhhh, George Floyd,” I whisper.

The room nods. Not one person in the room doesn’t remember those days during COVID.

“Damn. It’s like nothing ever changes,” Kareem grumbles, taking a sip of his drink, his eyes hard. “Can’t ever get a break.

Even at school.”

JOIN THE FRAZIER U STUDENT ASSOCIATION

First Town Hall of the School Year

Meet Your Student Executive Leaders

The large yellow flyer is pinned on a bulletin board in the lobby outside the Rec Center. It’s been just shy a month of classes

and between keeping up with assignments and bouncing from party to party with the girls, I haven’t had time for much else.

But I’ve been a part of student government in one way or another since middle school. Freshman year I lobbied to have more snacks added in our school’s vending machines. By junior year, I was being invited to school board meetings and was already planning a presidential run.

Of course, I abandoned most of my extracurricular activities once Kevin happened. Maybe this is a chance to start over. Something

to ground me in reality. It’ll also look perfect on my law school résumé. That’s what my parents would say. Every step I’m

supposed to take should be toward their ultimate goal.

Lost in my own thoughts, I don’t hear Loren sneak up beside me.

“Helllllloooo?! What you doing? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“Oh . . . uh, my bad. I was in my own world,” I say, shouldering my backpack.

“Sure was. Ready to go?” she asks but her breath seems a little labored.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” she croaks with a staggered step.

I hold out my arms. “Whoa, Loren! You don’t look so good.”

“No I’m . . .” She trails off, her eyes widening, as if she realizes what is happening to her, before they roll back. Then,

she tips over, collapsing right into my arms, and we fall backward to the ground.

“LOREN!”