The Kayla Chronicles

  Copyright © 2007 by Sherri Winston

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group USA

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.lb-teens.com

  First eBook Edition: January 2008

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  “Ego Trippin’” by Nikki Giovanni printed in Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama, 5/E © 2002 by McGraw-Hill

  Used by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-316-02837-0

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SHY GIRLS SPARKS A REVOLUTION

  HURRICANE WATCH:

  FAMILY PORTRAIT

  WHEN CHARIOTS COLLIDE:

  REBEL WITH A CARTWHEEL:

  SPEAK

  FLIPPED OUT

  PHOTO FINISH

  TWO TO TANGO?

  PRESIDENT ADDRESSES NATION

  PEARLS OF WISDOM

  GATOR BAIT

  NELLIE BLY OR BIG FLAT LIE?

  FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

  POET EMILY DICKINSON LIVED AS RECLUSE AND INTELLECTUAL; DIED IN SECLUSION

  ALERT THE MEDIA

  PART 1 (PRELUDE TO A DIS)

  BETWEEN A ROCK. . .

  DESTINY’S TRAIL

  THE DEAD ZONE

  THE JUMP OFF

  NEW YEAR, NEW YOU

  Lexicon of Kayla-isms

  To my beautiful daughters, Lauren and Kenya. Mommy loves you!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank everyone who helped me take The Kayla Chronicles from dream to reality.

  Jennifer Hunt, thanks for believing in me and being the finest editor I’ve ever worked with. And to my agent, George Nicholson, and his assistant, Thaddeus Bower, thank you guys for hanging in there with me.

  Also, a special thanks to “The Friday Group.” Without the love and support of Joyce, Norma, Dorian, Gloria, Alex, and all the other great writers in our group, Kayla might still be an idea rather than a reality.

  And finally, my deepest gratitude to my sisters and brothers. Thanks for the babysitting, the shoulders to cry on, the endless supply of confidence when mine was lacking. And thanks to my daughters, Kenya and Lauren, for helping me coin the phrase “stankalicious.” Mommy loves you!

  SHY GIRLS SPARKS A REVOLUTION

  Stankalicious!

  Allow me to define it:

  Stank-a-le-shus—derived from stank, slang for stinker; 1) the art of being stank; 2) one who behaves in a manner so overboard, so bigger-than-life outrageous, so self-deluded, well, it could only be considered stankalicious.

  And stankalicious, the newest word in my book of Kaylaisms, describes my best friend, Rosalie, to a tee.

  You won’t believe what she wants me to do. And all in the name of feminism. Hmph!

  NEWS FLASH: Feminism did not start at the home of Rosalie Renée Hunter and a feminist is not automatically a fashion-hating, man-hating, cause-spouting rebel-rouser.

  When I, Mikayla Alicia Dean, soon to be fifteen, think of feminism, I think of strong females taking action—even when that action goes against the girly-girl mold society assigns us.

  Think Xena: Warrior Princess. Amelia Earhart. Venus and Serena Williams. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And my late Grandma JoJo. Not just strong, but distinctive, too.

  And then there’s Nellie Bly, the butt-kicking, role-reversing turn-of-the-century journalist who practically invented investigative journalism. I can’t wait for my chance to be like her. To go undercover and find the real-deal lowdown on who’s doing dirt and who’s getting hurt, you know?

  Here’s what feminism is not:

  * Girls who back down

  * Girls seeking “prince charming”

  * Young women obsessed with marriage

  Oooo! When I see a girl acting all Pepto-princessy (sweet, super icky, ultra girly, guaranteed to make you sick to your stomach), I’m right there with Rosalie. I think we women need to stand together and ditch that pseudo-feminine crutch. Know what I mean?

  My goal in life is to spark a quiet, purposeful revolution. I see myself as a tastefully dressed, soft-spoken, determined young woman.

  Wearing really cool shoes.

  Meanwhile, Rosalie wants to serve as supreme ruler of an all-female encampment where men are forced to plow fields and walk dogs and must not speak unless told to.

  And cute shoes would be punishable by Rosilaw!

  Today Rosalie unleashed her most stupendous stankalicious scheme yet. Totally twisted and certain to doom my future.

  First, she announced that SPEAK—Sisters Providing Encouragement And Kindness—the club I started in middle school, has been officially sanctioned as a club/activity at our new high school thanks to her nonstop lobbying.

  That’s bad enough, but it’s not the “doom my future” part. The “doom my future” part is that she wants me to try out for the Lady Lions dance team—the It girls of our new school. She wants me to prove how they won’t let ordinary girls like me on the team. So my goal is to fail, thus supporting her theory while turning me into a huge “Who Not To Be Like” poster.

  Rosalie was all “ooo” and “ahhh” and “power to the people,” and I’m like, “hmm, you have a lot of nerve, sister-girl. A. Lot. Of. Nerve.”

  I didn’t say it out loud, though.

  I should have, but I didn’t.

  See, this was the problem. If I were a superheroine, my cape would have the letters SP stitched across the back for “Super Pathetic.” Unfortunately, my superhuman power is the ability to hold back my true thoughts and feelings.

  But I swear that’s going to end.

  Way back, Rosalie’s mom, Dr. X, told both of us we should keep a list of declarations, a short list of what we will and will not do to remind us of who we are and what we stand for. My list.

  I WILL:

  * Be more assertive and stand up for what is right for me.

  * Leave behind the shy old me and embrace the brand-new bold me.

  * Be firm but fair and loving when faced with adversity.

  * Fight to be the kind of journalist I’ve always wanted to be; one who takes risks, one who isn’t afraid, one who makes a difference.

  * Honor the memory of my Grandma JoJo by embracing all the values and strengths that she held dear—being a strong black woman and an intellectual. [That one just added.]

  I WILL NOT:

  * Get distracted by frivolity.

  * Compromise my values just to please someone else.

  * Give up on myself.

  * Allow myself to be bullied.

  * Be afraid.

  And I intend to follow my list, too. If I can just get over what happened at Rosalie’s tonight.

  HURRICANE WATCH:

  Will emotional storm blow Kayla off course?

  It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

  —Betty Friedan

  Believe it or not, my A-cup breasts are pawns in a vicious power struggle.

  At least, they would be if Rosalie gets her way.

  Last night, Rosalie revealed her secret plan. Today she is trying to set it in motion. I, on the other hand, would like to set myself on fire. I wonder if Joan of Arc started out this way.

  Rosalie’s plan goes like this:

  She wants me t
o try out for one of Florida’s most renowned dance teams, Royal Palm Academy’s Lady Lions, but undercover, like an investigative reporter, and expose their practice of choosing only girls with big, luscious breasts.

  You know, unlike mine, which are small. Microscopic.

  I wanted to cry, except crying would have played right into the popular myth of inherent female weakness.

  “They can’t get away with discriminating against girls with small breasts. No way. SPEAK won’t stand for it,” Rosalie said. We were in my bedroom. My head was pounding. Rosalie was pacing; I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed. Biting my nails.

  And practically choking on what I wanted to say but what I knew I wouldn’t say.

  She said, “SPEAK is going to crash through the present, male-driven power structure at Royal and make strong women, women with a brain, respected!”

  Translation: She was on a mission—a mission to humiliate me in front of the entire school, maybe even the world.

  See, SPEAK was a small club I started in middle school. Mainly, it was a safe haven for those of us who didn’t want to sit like lepers, shoved to the corners of the cafeteria. With some help from my grandmother and a few other parents, we became a close-knit group that discussed books, shopped together, had sleepovers, and did community service projects together.

  Then Rosalie moved to our school and soon we went from a little club to vigilantes for women’s rights. I started SPEAK, but now Rosalie had gotten us an actual club charter at our new high school, Royal Palm Academy. Yes, “the big league.”

  So now, she had a plan that would make SPEAK come out fighting. It would work like this:

  Prove dance-team tryouts were stacked in favor of, well, “the stacked.”

  How? By using my eleven years of gymnastics training and secret love of dancing to try out, then get humiliated with a resounding, “Take a hike, you flat-chested girl-boy.”

  Then, because I was majoring in journalism, I was supposed to write an exposé and reveal discrimination against girls Rosalie proudly referred to as members of the “itty-bitty club.”

  The whole scene replayed in my head like a bad hygiene film from fifth grade, but I didn’t completely shoot her down. Here’s why.

  Ambition. Crazy, blind ambition. Sometimes, I close my eyes and I see myself shiny-faced with the glow of justice, pen and paper in hand, with a legion of equally bosom-challenged girls alongside me, chanting my name. And I see the headlines:

  Kayla Dean Infiltrates Dance Team

  Senate Probes Plight of Itty-Bitties

  A-cups Get Their Due!

  Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

  Rosalie frantically plowed through my closet, pulling out one shirt or skirt after another. T-shirts with “Save the Manatees” or “Greenpeace” logos floated to the floor. I sat with my feet tucked under my butt, my hands drumming a beat on my thighs.

  She was searching for a uniform for my humiliation. Why couldn’t she leave it alone? Wasn’t she as tired of being an outcast as I was?

  Going to RPA is a big deal.

  And its journalism program— HUGE!

  “Who cares about Royal Palm’s top-ranking journalism program or award-winning women’s studies program,” she blared, as though reading my thoughts, “when the reigning symbol of school pride is those butt-shaking, midriff-baring go-go dancers from the suburbs? Think about their big fundraisers. Washing cars in cut-offs and bikini tops. It’s an insult to women everywhere! Those girls make that dance squad for one reason. Because of their big . . . big . . .”

  Her hands pulsed outward. In and out, in and out.

  “Breasts!” Rosalie snarled. “They all have really big breasts. No itty-bitties like you and me.” After that last part she actually sagged against my closet door. Her fury spent.

  Please remember: The Lady Lions are a dance team. Not militants or bank robbers. I swear, she was blowing so much hot air I was scared she might crack the windows—between all her wind and the howling tropical rainstorm outside the barometric pressure could drop and suck us through the glass. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  “Rozy, I . . .” My mouth was dry. My heart was beating fast. I would’ve given anything to be back in the old house where me and JoJo, my grandmother, lived back when the rest of the family was overseas. That was before JoJo died and Mom came back from her photography gig in Africa, bringing my Army dad and stuck-up baby sister with her.

  “Um, Rozy, I mean, Rosalie, uh, um, this won’t, I mean, work.” My face was burning. I was such a loser. Why was this so hard? I was close to passing out just thinking about it.

  Like the mighty cheetah, fast and furious, she pounced.

  “Before you say you can’t, let me remind you why you MUST do this!”

  Even the lizard clinging to the wood railing above my bathroom froze, horrified to hear Rosalie’s list yet again. Rosalie’s reasons for hating the Lady Lions, as I and the lizard well knew, went as follows:

  1. Last fall’s school newspaper, The Clarion. School board member quote: “The Lady Lions embody the best of what young womanhood is all about.”

  2. Rumors that when the dance team made it to the nationals, the principal redirected money meant for the girls’ softball team and the debate team to pay Lady Lions’ expenses.

  3. Her cousin, Giselle, didn’t make the dance team last year and she convinced Rosalie it was her cup size that killed her.

  “It is time to knock the Lady Lions off their pedestal, and SPEAK will have an immediate presence, chica, wait and see.”

  I wanted to jump off my bed and tell her how much I didn’t care about the plan. Tell her how secretly I’d always thought about trying out and now, thanks to her, I was going to do it, only I wasn’t doing it just as part of some sinister, girl-power plot.

  Wanted to—but didn’t.

  Pathetic, party of one, right this way, please.

  She looked at me, and her expression made me groan.

  “Okay, who said this? ‘We live in a world which respects power above all things’?”

  “Rozy, not the quotes.”

  Several years ago, JoJo required her college students to memorize quotes one semester, and Rosalie and I did it, too. JoJo got us hooked on an Internet site with quotes from famous women.

  That used to seem so cool to me; now it just made me feel like some über geek. I had moved on, or at least I had tried. But Rosalie pushed ahead.

  If I told her, would she even care?

  She returned her attention to my closet, calling over her shoulder, “Mary McLeod Bethune, that’s who said it. The founder of Bethune-Cookman College up in Daytona, remember now?” Then she went back to digging through my stuff and dissing my clothes.

  A Billie Holiday quote came to mind:

  Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.

  “Perfect!” Rosalie spun around, holding a black unitard with a red stripe slashed diagonally across the midsection. Mom bought it for me. I’d never worn it, though. Clung too much to my big b-o-o-t-y.

  Just so you know, I have a lot of booty.

  Rosalie tossed it and commanded, “Try it on!” When I came out of the bathroom wearing the hideous and too revealing unitard, my cutesy younger sister, Amira, stuck her head inside the bedroom. She looked from me to Rosalie and frowned.

  “I see you’re having another Sisters Who Need Makeovers meeting.”

  That Amira, only thirteen but already the funniest girl she knew. So perky and perfect. Ugh! Unlike me, with my ultra flatness on top and freakish roundness on bottom. “Mom wants to see you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She shrugged. My stomach knotted. Mom and I were like spies with the same agency but working on vastly different save-the-world scenarios. Lately, she’d been acting all let-me-be-your-best-friend and I was just not feeling her. Grandma JoJo practically raised me. She was my best friend. Sometimes . . . well, me and my mother were not that close. I wanted her to leave
me alone.

  But at the same time, I really didn’t want her to leave me alone. So I didn’t know what I wanted from her—or my father. No way to explain it.

  “K, you are it, girl,” Rosalie went on, ignoring Amira, who smirked and slammed the door. “No one can deny you’re a true member of the itty-bitty society!” She raised both arms upwards in a V like refs do when there’s a touchdown.

  Kayla is flat-chested. Score!

  Rosalie grabbed me by the shoulders. “I told Dr. X all about the plan. She thinks it’s brilliant.” Rosalie leaned closer. In a half whisper, she said, “Dr. X thinks Miss JoJo would see this as the perfect way to honor her memory on your upcoming happy fifteenth.”

  My face felt hot. She had no right acting like she or her mother could know what was in my grandmother’s heart. JoJo died almost a year ago. She merely tolerated Dr. X, calling her sanctimonious and self-righteous! How JoJo and I had planned to celebrate my turning fifteen was private and personal. I was biting the inside of my lip so hard I thought it might bleed!

  “Chica!” Rosalie snapped her fingers. Secretly, I referred to her as “the Convenient Latina.” Not since JLo, the early years, have I witnessed someone slip in and out of ethnicity with such ease.