Actually, No

Claudia was a mule. You didn't need to go to gangster school to know the roles in a drug business. A mule had to look like anybody—not too uptight, not too street, nothing that made you look twice. Claudia had the profile: a Black girl, a little round, with glasses that made her look like the top of the class. She wasn't. She fooled the teachers so well they thought I was the one dragging her down. I should have caught on at her birthday, when she took us all to a club and ordered a bottle of champagne nobody drank. Sometimes she paid for our food or the movies. She could be very generous. I felt jealous of all that money, and sad, because her mother, in remission, didn't see the mess her daughter was in. "Come with me next time. We leave in the morning, come back the next day. We take the train, it's less obvious. Nineteen hours round trip." "Who put you on?" "P. My ex." Everybody went to the same clubs. Somebody was always the friend of the cousin of the sister of the next-door neighbor, so I knew the story: P. had asked Claudia if she'd mind him having another girlfriend, since they weren't sleeping together. She'd said yes, not believing he was serious. "Your first trip is a test. Nothing in the bag, but you won't know it. They'll pay you six or seven hundred." "Why less than you?" "I take my cut. I put you on. Everybody does it. And when you bring people in, you'll take a cut too." Excuse me, Madame Escobar. She talked like she was building a network. In my head, I was already counting. One trip, driving lessons. Three, a car. Five, a vacation. "Let me get back to you. I have to figure out my parents." "Are you crazy? You tell them nothing. You say you're sleeping at your sister's. You tell no one but me, and never on the phone. Your phone can be tapped. This isn't a game. The drugs belong to people in P.'s projects, and you know what goes on over there." "You're not scared?" "The first time, yes. The second time, less. By the third, I was just thinking about the money." In front of my building, she said, "You swore on your mother's head. She'll die if you tell anyone." "Don't say that! I told you I won't." Upstairs, my mom waved my phone bill in my face: fifty dollars over the plan. I didn't even fight her. My sister Victoria reminded me I owed her seventy. In the shower, then in bed, I dreamed about what I'd do with the money. I knew the first trip would be scary. But after what I'd escaped that November night, nothing scared me anymore.