Losing Romeo (13 page)

Romeo—Competition

I can't
stand Kwan. I can't stand the way he talks. The way he walks and how he's always hanging around my boys, smiling and cheesing like he belongs in my crew. He doesn't. And if he doesn't get up out of my face pretty soon, we're going to have to knuckle up.

“Romeo!” Shadiq snaps and then waves his hand in front of my face. “Damn, man. Don't you hear me talking to you?”

“What?” I pull my gaze from Kwan and Chris talking across the cafeteria.

Shadiq laughs. “Man, you need to chill out with that nonsense.”

Confused as to what we're talking about, I glance over at him.

“Kwan,” he says. “You keep mean-mugging him like that and he's gonna take it personal.”

“Puh-lease. I wish he would step sideways to me.”

“What's your beef, man? When I told you I didn't like
him you spat this whole peace-and-brotherly-love bullshit at me, and now you clocking him like a full-time job.” He leans over. “This wouldn't happen to have something to do with Anjenai, would it?”

“What?”

Shadiq shrugs. “Chris seems to think that you still have the hots for the girl.”

“Don't be retarded.” I roll my eyes, but my acting skills are failing me.

“I don't believe this. You already have the hottest chick in this place knocked up and now you can't let go of some chick you chilled with for what—a couple of weeks?”

I don't answer. There's no way I will be able to get him to see where I'm coming from. I was truly feeling Anjenai. I miss talking to her, playing ball and hanging out at the Mellow Mushroom and hogging down pizza.
Damn. How did I screw this up?

“Whatever, man. I wasn't born yesterday.”

I pick at my crappy Hamburger Helper lunch and, like a thousand times before, try to figure out a way to reboot things with Anjenai. So far I haven't come up with a single plan.

“Whatever. We can squash it. You coming out to Club Zero tomorrow night?” Shadiq asks.

I groan. “I don't know, man. I got a lot of shit I got to do.”

“I think I'm going to go up onstage,” he says, smirking.

This surprises me. “For real?”

Shadiq shrugs. “Kwan says he's going up, and I can't have him trying to outshine the kid, you know?”

“Ah, so you still don't like him, either?” I smirk. “And here you are sweating me?”

“I ain't wishing death on the brother or nothing, but I'll be damned if I'm just going to let him move here and step into the spotlight I've been creating for years. You feel me? I've been grinding and handing out mixtapes since sixth grade. People been waiting for me to break for a minute. This dude rolls down here and tries to show me up at my hangout joint? It's not going to happen.”

“All right. All right. I feel ya,” I tell him. “Yeah, I'll roll through and show you some love. Not a problem.”

“Cool. Cool.” He bobs his head and casts a glance across the cafeteria at Kwan. There's gotta be some kind of irony about both of us feeling threatened by the same dude.

Shadiq and a few teammates from the football team make their way over to our table about the same time Phoenix strolls in. The minute she's in my line of vision my head starts hurting and my lunch sours in my stomach. But I have to push all that stuff aside and try to dust off my acting skills again.

“You mind if I sit here?” she asks, fluttering a weak smile at me.

I shrug. It's hard to mask that I don't really care where she sits. I do need to go a little easier on her. I know that she and her girls Raven and Bianca are still beefing. Too much negativity probably isn't good for the baby.

Phoenix sits down, still smiling.

“I didn't know you were here today. You weren't in homeroom this morning. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Everything is fine.”

How come every time I talk to her lately, the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention? I study her. “Have you been to the doctor yet?”

“Here we go,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I thought we already agreed to leave all the prenatal stuff to me?”

That's starting to annoy me. “What? Now I can't ask anything about the baby? Is that it?”

“How about you ask about me? You ever thought about that?”

“Oookay,” Shadiq says, jumping up from his seat. “I gotta run and do something.” He waves me off. “I'll catch up with you a little later.”

On cue the other brothers on the team stand and follow, leaving me to deal with Phoenix on my own. When I look back over at her, she cuts her gaze away.

“What's going on with you?”

“What do you think?” She works her neck a bit and then folds her arms. “I've never been in this position, and here you are stressing me out and treating me like something that stuck to the bottom of your shoe. I feel like I'm all alone in this.” Her eyes start filling up with tears. “It's not fair. And to be honest, I never thought that
you
could be so cruel.”

“Me?”

“Look at what you've done to me. I'm turning into a joke in this school, all because I had the audacity to get pregnant. You want to walk away and go play house with your next bitch.”

I plant my elbows on the table and release a deep sigh. “Phoenix, we've been over this—”

“Yes. And we're going to keep going over this until you come to your senses. Yeah, maybe I was a bitch and a tease before, but now things have changed—I've changed. I'm going to have your baby now. And I think we at least owe it to our kid to try and work things out. If it doesn't work out down the line—fine.”

Her pleading eyes are getting to me, and I find myself longing for something strong to drink instead of this damn carton of milk.

Phoenix reaches for my hand. “Romeo. We've been together a long time. You can't sit there and tell me that it's always been bad. You used to be crazy about me. You're the reason I got kicked out of private school, because you used to sneak into my dorm room. We have history. We had plans. Whatever you do, don't abandon me now.”

As I stare into Phoenix's hazel eyes, old emotions start tugging on my heart. We have had some rather fun and wild times together. And there was a time when I thought that one day she'd be my wife, after college and a few years in the NFL. But things changed—my feelings changed when we started high school, a full year before Anjenai came onto the scene. Suddenly we were fighting more, and she was always pulling one outrageous stunt after another. They were all designed to get a rise out of me, and they all succeeded.

“I don't know, Phoenix.”

She squeezes my hand. “Don't you? I'm telling you that I've changed. Carrying this baby has changed me. And I know more than ever that I want us to bring this child up
in the world together. You loved me once. I know that you can love me again and
our
child.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Anjenai and her posse stroll into the cafeteria and stop in front of Kwan. She's all smiles and looking happy.
She's moved on.
Admitting that to myself is like suffering a death.

“Okay,” I whisper, returning my attention to Phoenix. “We'll give it another try.”

Phoenix lights up and pops out of her seat. Before I know it, she's throwing her arms around my neck and smothering me with kisses. “You won't regret this. I promise!”

I hope she's right.
I pull back with a smile and glance back toward Anjenai, only for our gazes to lock…but only for a brief moment.

Tyler—My Day in Court

Leon
and I are not talking.

After he embarrassed me last night trying to kill Kerosene, I pretty much decided to shut down all communication. I absolutely refuse to talk to him, so much so that I slam my bedroom door in his face. Then, two minutes later, I hear a drill. Next thing I know he's completely taken my door off by its hinges and he's shouting that I no longer have privacy privileges.

Asshole.

I didn't even want him driving me to court, but it's not like I really had a choice in the matter. During the entire drive he's trying to coax me into talking to him. When that doesn't work, he starts swearing and hitting the steering wheel. It doesn't matter what he says, I will never forgive him for what he did last night.
Never.

As far as walking into the courtroom, my nerves don't really hit me until I have to go through the security check when you first walk through the door. The tall, bulky
officers, waving metal detecting wands and searching through my personal items, irk me a bit. I don't like this sense of helplessness that comes over me.

Leon inquires where we need to go, and we follow a lady officer's directions to a tall wooden door at the end of a long corridor. I chug in a few deep breaths, but feel my knees start to buckle as I get closer to the door.

I can't do this. I can't do this.

I want to pause and wait a minute, but Leon is right behind me, and he pulls the door open and reveals this huge wood-paneled courtroom. That's when I feel the first wave of tears burn my eyes.

“Come on,” Leon says, pushing me forward. “No point in getting all scared now.”

I hate him.
Walking into the courtroom I stroll down the aisle, thrusting up my chin and feeling like I've just been cast in an episode of
Law & Order.
We're told by one of the clerks to just take a seat in one of the pews. I see Michelle and Trisha in the front row and start to head in that direction when my father grasps me by the elbow and steers me in the opposite direction.

“I don't think so, little girl,” he says grimly.

That's his problem. He still thinks of me as a little girl. Now with my butt planted firmly on a dark wooden pew, I sit ramrod straight, arms folded and doing my best to ignore Leon. I hope he can feel just how much I hate him right now.

“I can't believe I'm missing time at work for this crap,” he swears under his breath.

Work, work, work, work. That's all he cares about.

I feel his eyes shift toward me. I know that he wants to say something—probably the same lecture he gave me in the car, this morning in the kitchen and yesterday in my bedroom after he chased all my friends out of the apartment. I mean, really. How is he going to bitch about me smoking weed when he still tosses back alcohol when he thinks I'm not looking. Everybody knows that alcohol is far more worse than marijuana.

“You know, I'm halfway hoping that the judge does give you a little time in juvie. Maybe that's the only way you'd see just how good you have it.”

Good?
Maybe I should ask whether he's high. I turn in my seat and see the pews are filling up pretty fast. Will all these people hear about what I got caught doing? They just discuss everybody's business out in the open like this? My stomach starts twisting into knots.

“Psst, Tyler,” someone hisses from behind me.

I jerk around and then perk up in surprise to see Kerosene two rows back, waving and winking at me.

“What the hell is
he
doing here?” Leon demands with his face twisted in rage.

I smile and break my code of silence. “Maybe he's here to lend support. I doubt that you know much about that.”

Leon refocuses his glare on me, but I just smile smugly in his face.

The clerk stands as the bailiff moves to a corner of the court and instructs, “Everyone rise to your feet for the honorable Judge Daphne O'Connor.”

I stand and watch the porcelain-white female with fiery-
red hair piled into a bun on top of her head stroll into the courtroom draped in a black robe.

More knots twist in my gut. I don't have a good feeling about this.

“Please have a seat.” The judge's stern voice slices through the silence.

My knees fold without me thinking much about it, and for the next hour I'm left to stew in my nervousness and fear. When my case is called, Leon has to tug on my sleeve to draw my attention. I take one look over my shoulder and receive a thumbs-up signal from Kerosene and, remarkably, I feel just a tiny bit better at least until I make my way up to the defendants' table. The charges are rattled off, and I feel as if I'm standing in the center of a bright spotlight.

“Shoplifting, huh?” Judge O'Connor repeats, I guess for the people in the back row.

My court-appointed attorney enters my plea and then proceeds to inform the judge about how this is my first offense and blah, blah, blah. It turns out that the facts that I'm not some model student or have much of a do-good community service track record mean that I don't receive much leniency.

“All right, Ms. Jamison, I've heard enough. After reading both the report of the mall's security guard and the police report and taking into consideration the amount of goods that was stolen from the department store, I'm sentencing you to serve six months in juvenile hall.”

Six months!

After she bangs the gavel and then two officers start toward me.

What? Right now?
I glance over to Leon only to see him hang his head. “Aren't you going to do something?”

“I'm sorry, baby. I'm going to check and see when visiting hours are.”

Visiting hours?
One of the officers directs me to turn around, and the next second I feel the cold, hard steel of handcuffs being locked around my small wrists. Again, my gaze floats toward the back of the courtroom and I see Kerosene, pushing his chin up and reminding me to be strong. I smile, and in return he kisses two fingers and then holds them up as I'm being pulled to the side door.

“It's going to be all right, baby,” Leon says; his voice trembles with emotion. Even then, I can't help feeling anger and resentment. I really do think our relationship is broken for good.

I remain silent as the cops pull me across the threshold and then close the door. Juvenile hall, here I come.