The Education of Kia Greer

Chapter One

I drew in a shaky breath and tried not to slip away. If I moved my foot an inch in either direction, an inky abyss would swallow me up. I would topple, knees slipping out from under me, and land with a splash and a thunk beneath the water.

I planted my feet and told my body it was being ridiculous: Everything was fine. I was not running from a bear, I was not inches from plunging into the sea. I was in Brooklyn, in a man-made tank filled with frigid water. With fourteen people star-ing at me. In $200,000 worth of borrowed designer clothing. Trying to smile and look like the stylish sea witch the editors of this magazine had envisioned. It was just another Friday morning. I was just doing my job.

I was great. I was living the dream.

Some Cassius Campbell song was playing as I posed. “Luxury,” I think. I settled into the sultry beat and refocused on making sure my eyes emoted but my lips didn’t. Fashion people didn’t like when my smile spread to my cheeks. It made my face look “bulky,” apparently. They wanted a jaw that was relaxed but not drooping, a chin jutted out and angled down. This was surprisingly hard to do at the same time.

“Up!” barked Laurent, the photographer assigned to this shoot. “Look at me. Up toward the heavens.” He sat above me on a metal rig, pointy face obscured behind a large camera. The lights shone into my eyes, but there were no heavens visible here. Only scaffolding and concrete.

This editorial spread would go in whatever C-list magazine this was--I told myself to look it up later--alongside a joint interview with me and Lark. Some journalist had spent twenty minutes with us on the phone and was writing an article about how the power duo of youngest Greer girls was “poised to take the world by storm.”

Taking the world by storm sounded hard. I focused on not falling down. If I did my job right, we’d be done soon.

I hadn’t slept well the previous night or the night before, and getting out of bed that morning felt like pulling teeth. All I had in my stomach was a protein smoothie from hours ago, and a dense fog had settled over my brain. If I did a good enough job, I could climb back into my sweats, and in a few hours, back into my Netflix queue. I could go home, to my own bed.

“Kee-aaahhh!” Lark sang from somewhere beyond. I strained to see her but was met only with the oppressive bright of the lights. “Look alive, boo,” she persisted anyway, and I could hear a playful smile in that floaty Disney princess voice of hers. She snapped perfectly nude pink nails. The editors had decided she’d be a Glinda type, and I’d be the Wicked Witch. I tried not to take that personally. “This pout is not cutting it. I’m sleepy--hurry uuup.”

A huff escaped my nostrils, a laugh stifled, and my smile spread my face twice as wide.

“Get off my dick--I’m trying!” I hollered back. The photographer grunted, dis-mayed by the interruption. Lark giggled.

“Girls, settle,” came a familiar deadpan from somewhere center left of the light void. Greta. My mother’s right-hand woman, and our boss on shoots like these when Mom couldn’t attend. I knew she was texting our dear momager between every look change, keeping her up to speed in case one little thing upset the per-fectly planned itinerary that ruled our lives. Even when Melora Greer was not around, she was still calling the shots.

I forced my face back to what Lark and I called “sleek ’n’ slack,” concentrating on pushing every ounce of emotion into my eyes and eyebrows and relaxing the lower half of my face. I pinched my shoulder blades together, a trick Sola had taught me that’s supposed to perk your whole body up in photos. It was possible I’d been drooping.

“Finally we get somewhere,” Laurent mumbled.

I blocked out the reality of the ten-by-ten water box, the dozen assistants, hairstyl-ists, makeup artists, and brand reps staring like I was some confined, gleaming betta fish. I blocked out my own lagging brain. I posed like my Netflix queue de-pended on it.

“Perfect,” Laurent barked, his voice a punctuation mark.

“Yes, honey!” Lark hollered.

Soon bright lights gave way to reality, metal scaffolding, and then our assistant Maxine’s gleaming apple cheeks. I was glad she was here. She’d been best friends with my big sister Sola for ages and was always a comforting presence on our travels. Max grasped my hands, helping to hoist me as I made my way up rickety steps, and didn’t let go until my feet were firmly on dry land.

“Grateful for you,” I whispered.

Max draped a robe over my shoulders and marched me toward the greenroom, past monitors where Greta, Laurent, and the editor lady milled, inspecting the fruits of the day’s labor: photos of me and Lark splayed out like mythical creatures lost in an ethereal swamp.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” the editor lady mumbled.

“Yes, these’ll do,” Greta asserted, hands on the hips of Brunello Cucinelli trousers. They were gray, of course; one of the many unspoken rules of Greta’s life was that she only dressed in aggressive neutrals. “Melora will be pleased.”

“Hmmph,” Laurent huffed. There was a quiet disdain to the noise. “The taller one. I tried to cover her weaknesses, but that jaw . . . it’s doughy. Soft. We’ll have to ed-it it.”

I tried not to move a muscle in case they realized I was there. I felt Max’s hands gently tugging me forward, but my feet stayed planted where they were.

“Ignore them,” Max whispered. But my stomach twisted, like I was seeing some-thing I shouldn’t . . . even though they were talking about me. About my body. There’s a thrill to hearing people talk about you without knowing you can hear them. But there’s this gross feeling that comes with it. Like something’s crawling under your skin.

“We’re aware,” Greta said, curt. “There’ve been discussions about . . . addressing the issue. In the meantime, just do your damn job.”

What did that mean? Would I need to lose more weight? This diet was already making me woozy. Or would this be like what Sola and Destiny did sometimes? Mysterious appointments with surgeons and dermatologists, lasers and needles with long names I could never remember? Max squeezed my arm as we reached the door to the greenroom. Lark was already somewhere inside, getting ready for the next slot on our agenda.

“You know how these fashion photographers are. Bitches, every one of ’em.”

“I know,” I said on autopilot. I tried to smile to make her feel better, but my at-tempt was weak. It didn’t reach my eyes, so I rolled them to cover my tracks. “Bitches every one.”

I slipped away before she could press the issue further.

Chapter Two

Comments sections had called me the ugly duckling of the Greer girls since I was eight, but most days I was in firm disagreement. I thought I was cute enough. I loved the color of my skin, a shade of brown the Lark & Kiara–branded makeup kit called Warm Deep. I liked my nose, its straight jut forward, the curved spread of my nostrils. Unlike so many people in Hollywood, I would never have to pay some-one to inject a false fullness into my lips. I had it naturally.

I didn’t quite love my “baby fat”--the stubborn circle of flesh around my middle that never seemed to go away, the moon shape my cheeks gave my face. But I didn’t hate it, either. At least most days. It was just a fact of my body, and not a de-fining one.

When it got to me the most was when Lark and I were photographed next to each other, which was a lot. We did the majority of our brand collabs and press togeth-er. I had four inches on her in height and waist circumference, and there seemed to be a consensus from the public that Lark was prettier. I couldn’t argue that she was beautiful. But why did it have to be a comparison? Why did her beauty have to mean that I was somehow less than?

Part of what felt icky about the way people talked was the fact that Lark was light-er than me. Our dad was Black and our mom white, and the four Greer sisters had come out all over the melanin spectrum. I loved my skin. Miss Carol had made sure I knew all about how colorism functioned in the world. It helped to know the context, that there was something insidious and much bigger than Lark or me at work. But that didn’t stop people’s comments from stinging.

On the whole, I felt pretty okay about myself. But there were so many ways, every single day, that I wasn’t quite . . . enough.

I buried these thoughts deep and quick. I peeled off the wavy wig they’d had me in and turned the water in the greenroom shower as hot as my skin could handle. I let it hammer my chest and loosen whatever tendons and muscles had been hold-ing tension. The shoot’s makeup artists had applied camera-ready makeup in lay-ers, and it had caked deep into my pores. I peeled off fake lashes and doused my whole body in coconut oil. Dark metallics ran down my neck, and I scrubbed until the water at my feet ran all the way clear. I scrubbed until We’re aware stopped blaring like a siren in my brain. Until Laurent and his comments swirled out of my head and down the drain along with all the other detritus of the day.

I didn’t wipe the steam off the mirror as I slicked my hair into a bun, taking extra care around my edges. Being a Black girl in the public eye came with its own set of rules, and stepping outside with my hair a mess would bring on way more trouble than it was worth. Gabby Douglas had made Olympic history, and all the while the media still questioned her about her hair. When Simone Biles got married, the headlines focused on the audacity of letting her edges sweat out in the Texas heat. They were world-class athletes who performed feats most of the world would die trying. I just did my best to stay out of the fray.

While I waited for my skincare products to soak in, I checked my email. There was something from my tutor, Mr. Hillis. The message was brief, but it made my breath hitch.

Monday 11 a.m. work for you? Amanda’s down if you are. She’ll be discreet.

The Amanda in question was Amanda Roth. She was an author of historical ro-mance, the kind that took what could have been very dreary topics like the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and added twisted, gripping love stories that kept you on the edge of your seat, unsure if they had any chance at ending happily. She was also an alum of Vassar College.

Mr. Hillis had been pushing me to meet with her. “I think you’d be happy at a place like Vassar,” he’d insisted. “It’s beautiful, and it really is this wonderful liber-al arts bubble of a place.”

“Am I putting out liberal-arts-bubble vibes?” I’d asked.

“I can’t tell you what you want,” he said with a laugh. “What I can say is there are benefits to a campus that acts as its own miniature world. Kids from all over dis-appear into them, and it can give them the space they need to find themselves.”

Mr. Hillis said that kind of school was built to teach its students how to think, in-stead of what to think. I really liked the idea of an entire place designed to make you more yourself, not just turning you into another cog in a machine. But Mr. Hil-lis was delusional if he thought it was possible for me to disappear anywhere. It sounded like a dream, in theory. But being closed in with 2,500 students who’d all come of age watching Growin’ Up Greer? That was a nightmare. Attending any kind of college was already a reach for me.

Still, I’d consider Vassar for him, even though it was a complete pipe dream. Mr. Hillis knew me better than almost anyone besides Miss Carol and my immediate family. Plus, he’d already gone to the trouble of making sure this Amanda Roth la-dy wouldn’t leak the details of our meeting to anyone outside the Vassar admis-sions office.

I’d be turning eighteen in eight months whether I liked it or not. Growing up for real. So I figured I owed it to myself to explore my options. Everyone around me had such big dreams--and then there I was, a blobby jawline, floating in a sea of insecurities and indecision.



I was in better spirits when I left the greenroom. Lark was waiting in the hall, re-clined on a chair, bobbing her head cheerfully to a beat. Tiny daisies dotted her tank top and matching jeans slung low on her hips. My eyes hit her feet and I stopped short. She was in a pair of vintage Air Jordans--taken directly from my goddamn closet.

“Um, excuse me. Are those my shoes?” They were. I just had to hear her say it.

“Oh.” She looked down with innocent brown eyes. She’d gotten Dad’s eyes, which he in turn had gotten from our grandma Millie. They were so round and expres-sive, it was no wonder they’d won Dad an Oscar. “I thought Daddy said these were a present we could share?”

The gall. “No, he did not, and you know he did not,” I volleyed. “Thief!”

“C’mon, Kee,” she whined, “we’re going to the same place. I’ll give ’em back at home.”

“We’re not even the same size!” I protested, bewildered.

She shrugged. “I wore thick socks.”

A squeak of outrage escaped me. I wound myself up to go full violent big sister on her ass--but the door slid open, light breaking in as if to illuminate the indignity. Greta’s stern figure appeared. She waved us forward, and there was no more time.

We stepped out to a wall of sound. Fans gathered in masses crowded around the door, screaming our names--Lark’s the most, as expected, but mine, too. They even screamed for Max and Greta. The supporting cast of my family had grown to a size that rivaled that of Game of Thrones. One of the more prolific Instagrams following our comings and goings dubbed the staff and friends seen on the show the “Greer family court.” After the noble courts of old. Because that went so well for the Tudors.