Kendra by Coe Booth Page A

her back on Oprah .

THIRTEEN
    All through the play the next night, I can feel Darnell watching me. We’re backstage working together and everything is getting done, but as soon as we get a second to breathe, there he is looking at me again.
    At the end of the showcase, after we take our bows and we’re finished cleaning up, he comes up behind me and says, “Kendra, I, um…”
    “Yeah?” I smile a little, trying to let him know it’s okay to say what’s on his mind.
    He looks me in the eye, then looks down. Then he tries again to look me in the eye. “I, I just wanna say, um, you’re gonna be here tomorrow, right?”
    “Yeah,” I say. “Last show. Wouldn’t miss it.”
    “Okay,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And he walks away.
    I stand there for a second, now knowing that he wanted to ask me out. Definitely. And I’m thinking how hard it must be for guys to always have to do the asking. I mean, look at Adonna. She been checking out Nashawn for months now, and hestill hasn’t worked up the courage to ask her out. Or even talk to her.
    Mara comes over to tell me bye, but I don’t want her to leave too fast.
    “Come meet my grandmother and her, um, friend,” I say to her, thinking it can’t hurt for Nana to meet Mara and see that I’m hanging out with a nice girl when I’m at play practice.
    Nana and Clyde are still in the theater, sitting down in their seats and talking like they don’t even notice that hardly anybody is still there. Yesterday, when she came to pick me up from Adonna’s apartment around eleven o’clock, she never said where she was all that time. And I never asked. Because I already knew.
    Nana and Clyde get up from their seats when they see me and Mara coming over to them. After I introduce them to Mara, Clyde goes on and on about what a great job we did on the set. “What I mean is, it looked professional,” he says, and the way he talks is like every word is important or something. “That’s what we kept saying to each other, that it looked like something professionals did. Right, Valerie?”
    “It was beautiful,” she says like she really means it.
    “Thanks,” I say. “Now you see why it took us so long.”
    She nods and there’s even a little smile on her face. It’s like she’s being extra nice since she’s with Clyde.
    “I was telling your grandmother that we should go out to dinner,” Clyde says. “And why don’t you come with us, Mara?”
    Me and Mara look at each other and I nod. “Yeah, please, can you?”
    Mara whips out her cell phone. “Let me call my mom, but I’m sure she’ll say okay.”
    An hour later we’re all at IHOP and we’re actually having a good time.
    “Kendra, Mara,” Clyde says, turning his attention away from Nana for a second. “You know, you girls could probably go to college for that—what do you call it?”
    “Set design,” Mara says. “But it was Kendra’s design. Mine was rejected.” She makes a funny sad face and we all laugh.
    “No, but you girls should really think about becoming real set designers, like on Broadway and off-Broadway, because I bet them cats make some decent cash, you know?”
    Cats?
    “My mom wants me to become a teacher,” Mara says, “because that’s what I wanted to be when I was little, and I still think I’d like it, I guess.”
    Nana smiles. “When Kendra was little, all she ever talked about was one thing,” she says. “She used to walk around talking about, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a college.’ Not a college student or a college professor. No, she wanted to be a college.” She laughs, and even her laugh is nicer when Clyde’s around. “It was so cute.”
    “That don’t make any sense,” I say.
    “Well, that’s what you wanted to be.”
    Mara laughs, too. “Weird, Kendra.”
    The waitress comes over to pour coffee, and after Clyde gets his cup filled, Nana nods at the waitress and gets hers filled, too, and she starts adding cream and sugar like