Losing Romeo (3 page)

Tyler—Bad Girl

I don't
like English class, so at the last second I decide to ditch it and play hooky. There's no point in hanging out by the bleachers. Coaches and teachers are cracking down on kids skipping class over there. Loitering in the girls' bathrooms is no fun because Nance, the security guard, patrols this place like it's a prison which I guess it is. No. I think I'll just take a hike down the road a bit and hang out at the strip mall a few blocks down the way. Besides, the walk would probably go a long way toward clearing my mind. Don't get me wrong, I'm relieved that Anje and I have been able to squash that silly-ass beef between us. Looking back on it, knowing what I know, I can't believe that we were ever fighting over that loser or that I even made that whack-ass attempt to steal him.

Hindsight is always
twenty-twenty
.

As boldly as you please, I trek across school property, not giving a damn if the powers that be see me or not, and then head on down the road toward the strip mall. All the
while, I keep replaying that one kiss I laid on Romeo. It was even more humiliating when I realized that he wasn't kissing me back. I really put myself on the line only to have him tell me how sorry he was but that he was really into Anje instead of me. Just goes to prove that you can't believe anything anyone says anymore. It also didn't help that Phoenix's high-yella hoes, Bianca and Raven, rolled up on us and blabbed to the whole school what they saw. It got around to Anjenai, and for a few weeks, we went from being friends to enemies. It was the first time in our fourteen-year history.

I have to be honest with myself—that was one of the lowest times in my life. And that's saying something. With my mom walking out on my dad and me and my dad working so much that half the time I think he forgets that I even exist, the last thing I needed was to lose the friendship that had always been the one constant in my life. And the whole damn thing would have been my fault.

Honestly, sometimes I think I can't help the dumb stuff I do. My biggest problem is my temper. But knowing that and being able to control it seem to be two
very
different things. I can't help it that everything annoys me—people in particular, and my damn school coming in a close second. I should just drop out. Sure, I'm happy that I made the basketball team. But how long will that last, since I have to maintain a C average and my ass don't even like going to class? I swear to God, this place is just trying to bore me to death. It takes everything I have to not put toothpicks in my eyelids to prop them open just to stay awake.

Maybe things would have been different if Oak Hill kids
hadn't been rezoned to come out to this suburban nightmare and instead we went to Riverwood High like Anje, Kierra and I had been planning since we were in grade school. I can't stand being around these black bourgie sellouts.

I should drop out.

I want to drop out.

Hell. It's not like my father would ever know. He doesn't know half of what I do. If he did, it would probably give him a heart attack. I can't help chuckling at that. Then I draw in a deep breath and exhale slowly. There's a part of me that knows that I shouldn't be so hard on my dad. After all, he did come to my rescue that night at Shadiq's party and pick me up from that lone dark road. That was cool. But after that, he went right back to being an MIA dad and I went back to feeling like a ghost in our apartment. We hardly speak, talk or even remain in the same room together when he's home.

Yeah, I know that jobs are tight and he has to hold on to whatever piece of job that he has at all costs, but most of the time I just feel like…the world has forgotten about me. My damn mother definitely did. She just packed up and left like we suddenly didn't matter anymore. I know that was hard on my dad, too. For a long time after she left, there wasn't a liquor bottle he didn't like. That's when I started to feel like he'd walked out on me, as well.

It still feels that way. To this day, he's never really sat down and tried to explain to me what happened. Sure, they fought all the time. She'd scream. He'd yell. Things were thrown, and in the end a door was slammed with the words, “I'll be back in a minute.”

I didn't get it.

I still don't.

For a long time I was in denial, thinking that she just left to teach him a lesson and that she was going to come back. He was going to apologize, and we could go back to being the dysfunctional family that we'd always been. When that didn't happen, I thought that I was really the cause of her leaving and no one had the guts to tell me. Eventually, she mailed my father a letter, but he never let me read it. I want to know what it said, but now I lack the guts to ask my dad to see it.

After the sadness and then the depression, I started to feel resentment and then anger. I seem to be stuck on angry.

My dad's drinking eventually subsided. He slips up every now and then. But I do recognize that he's trying to reconnect. But honestly? I still feel like it's a little too late.

“Ayo, Tyler! Wait up!” a voice yells out to me. “Where you goin'?”

I jerk around to see Michelle and Trisha plodding their way toward me. Looks like I'm not the only one that decided to skip class. “Nowhere,” I holler back and then shrug my shoulders when they catch up with me. “I was just kickin' it.”

Michelle and Trisha are also Oak Hill girls, aka hood rats, according to our bourgie classmates. I guess you can say we're sort of friends, even though I broke their onetime leader, Billie Grant's, nose on the first day of school. At first I thought that made me enemy number one, but it turned out that Billie wasn't all that well liked within her own clique. That or there's just no loyalty nowadays.

Anyway, I started hanging with Michelle and Trisha during the time Anje and I were beefing. I guess they are all right. They introduced me to a few things—nothing too serious—experimenting with marijuana and stuff. But I don't trust them any farther than I can throw them.

“What are y'all doing out here?”

“We saw you sneaking off the school grounds, so we figured we'd just catch up and hang with you.”

I nod even though I'm not really in the mood for company. My annoyance disappears when I see Michelle reach into her jean jacket and pull out a fat blunt and a lighter right here in the open. She's bold like that.

“Want a hit?” she asks, lighting up and taking a couple of tokes.

“Hell, why not?” I say. I'm bold like that, too. I take a few puffs and then pass it over to Trisha. I hold the smoke in my lungs for as long as I possibly can, and as I exhale, the thick smoke clouds take away all the stress I was feeling a few minutes ago.

Michelle and Trisha start talking a bunch of trash that I'm not a bit interested in, so I end up just nodding my head through most of it. All that matters is that they keep the rotation going. By the time we reach the strip mall we are all high and giggling like a group of six-year-olds.

Once we reach the mall, we start perusing one of the department stores. I start wondering why the hell I even bothered coming here. It's not like I have any money or anything. Not that I would have anywhere near what it costs for even a T-shirt. Still, I sift through the stuff with a mix of disgust and longing. I can easily picture the Redbones
strutting in here and plopping down one of their parents' stupid credit cards to buy whatever the hell their hearts want.

For a few minutes I drift away from Michelle and Trisha. But when I circle back, I'm stunned to see them stuffing clothes in their bags, down their pants and under their jackets.

“What are y'all doing?” I hiss.

“Shh,” Michelle says. “Just keep an eye out.”

Oh, shit.
My high is instantly blown. They are straight jacking the place, I realize. My nervous gaze skitters about. I see two salespeople helping out customers and one lady checking someone out at the cash register. “Hurry up,” I say.

I gotta hand it to Michelle and Trisha—they clearly look like professionals: snipping off price tags and security tags with impressive precision. Five minutes later, we're strolling out the joint, smiling like three little angels. I ain't gonna lie: my heart is racing like crazy. The blunt we smoked is probably adding to my paranoia. Not until we make it outside the mall do I relax, but even then I half expect a security guard to jump out of nowhere and haul our asses to jail.

When the coast is clear, I look at them. “Damn. You two might want to warn a bitch before you pull a stunt like that.”

“I thought that was a given,” Trisha says, laughing. “What else are you supposed to do at a mall?”

Michelle laughs and then smacks her lips. “I already got the munchies.”

Across the way is a Taco Bell. With just one glance at the place, my stomach starts growling. “Yeah. I can eat. We ain't going to steal tacos, too, are we?”

“HEY, YOU GIRLS! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

My head jerks back to the front of the mall to see a team of security guards charging toward us.

Michelle yells, “RUN!”

Hell, she doesn't have to say it twice.

Kierra—Regret

It's
what I see and feel whenever I see Christopher Hunter, one of Romeo's road dawgs. I regret that I ever met him, talked to him, kissed him and I definitely regret that I ever had sex with him if you want to call what we did sex. Hell, it all happened so fast, I can't be too sure. I just know there was a lot of pain and tears. After that, the asshole was running out of the bedroom door so fast he left skid marks. Judging by the way he's acting, I'd say that he feels the same way about me. If you ask me, Romeo and Chris are definitely two birds of a feather.

I haven't told anybody about what happened, and I don't plan to, either. So far it looks like he's kept his big mouth shut, too. In a strange way, I'm both relieved and hurt at the same time. But with all this talk about Phoenix being pregnant I'm starting to worry that that pathetic performance might turn me into a baby mama, too. God, I hope not.

More than anything, I'm mad at myself. Now, I'm not going to sit here and claim to be so self-righteous that I was
waiting for my wedding night to lose my virginity, but I was hoping that my first time would be with someone special. I'm not saying that I believe Christopher was that guy…I mean, I think I was more or less overwhelmed that someone from the cool set was paying me any attention. After all, Anjenai had Romeo, so why couldn't I attract his best boy? In truth, the whole evening went so fast. We were kissing, his tongue was down my throat and the next thing I knew he was taking me to a bedroom where the lights were out. I don't know how I lost control of the situation. In the end, I can't claim that Chris forced himself on me or anything like that. The bottom line is that everything happened too fast. Afterwards he treated me like trash.

I sniff, and Nicole, who I forgot was walking beside me, glances over at me. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I'm fine,” I lie and glance over. “So where's your sister today?”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “Half sister,” she reminds me. “I don't know. I don't keep tabs on what the hell she does.”

There's no question that Nicole and Phoenix have no love lost between them. In a lot of ways it's kind of hard to believe that they're even related. Whereas Phoenix is this ultra-evil skinny bitch, Nicole is an overly sweet, plus-size klutz just struggling to fit in somewhere—anywhere. Sure, she can be a little annoying from time to time with her overeagerness, but you can't help but like her. She gets mad respect for jumping into that fight at the party. It takes a lot to go against your own sister. Since that time the BFFs have adopted her. She's officially a part of our group. We've never done that before. Sure, we have other friends outside
of our group, but we've never invited any of them into our close circle. Loyalty means a lot to us.

“Why are you asking about Phoenix?”

“I don't know. I guess I was just wondering if having the whole school gossip about her situation was getting to her.”

“Oh, please. Phoenix loves being the center of attention. I wouldn't put it past her if this was part of some huge master plan to sink her claws back into Romeo.”

“What? You think she's faking a pregnancy to get him back? Wouldn't that be a little—”

“Extreme?”

“I was going to say crazy.”

“It could be either or both,” Nicole laughs.

“You know her better than I do, but I don't see it. The type of gossip going around isn't what I imagine her risking her spot on the varsity cheerleading squad over.”

Nicole shrugged. “Good point. I hadn't thought about that.”

“You hadn't?”

“Nope.”

“When was the last time you saw a pregnant cheerleader bouncing around, yelling, ‘Give me an
R!
'?” Nicole laughs.

I can tell that the idea of Phoenix losing her spot on the varsity squad is tickling her fancy. Her smile is stretching wider than her face. We enter the cafeteria as I remember how disastrous it was for Nicole when she tried out with me for the freshman cheerleading squad. Let's just say grace
and coordination aren't exactly my girl's strong suits. She landed on the pep squad instead.

“Has she told her parents?” I ask. “About the pregnancy, I mean.”

“I doubt it. I'm not aware of my father having a heart attack—which he will when he finds out.”

“And you haven't been tempted to drop a dime on her yourself?” I'm not advocating that she try to induce a heart attack in her father, but given how much Phoenix has made her life a living hell, I'd figure that Nicole would leap at the chance to kick Phoenix off that high-ass pedestal their father has her perched on.

“Believe me. I thought about it. And if it wasn't for people's tendency to shoot the messenger I would have called him that night after we were kicked out the party. Nah. This is Phoenix's mess, and I want no part of it. Besides,” she adds after thinking about it for a second, “I think my father would force them to get married, and
that
would be just up Phoenix's alley.”

“Really?”

“Either that or tell her to get an abortion. I can't decide which.”

My heart drops. “What? You really think that he would do that?”

“If she's not too far along. Maybe. He wouldn't like the idea of having a pregnant teenage daughter. It would reflect badly on him.”

“Even if it was you?”

“What—the bastard child? That's a horse of a different color.”

It's right on the tip of my tongue to ask whether that means she believes that her father campaigned for her mother to terminate her pregnancy with her, but I manage to catch myself and not go there. Still, the idea of being forced to have an abortion is appalling to me and has me hating her father over a hypothetical situation. Go figure.

“That still leaves open the possibility that Phoenix got pregnant on purpose,” Nicole says.

Now, that blows my mind. “You think she would really do something like that?”

“I wouldn't put
anything
past Phoenix. I mean. C'mon. Every idiot knows that it just takes one time to get pregnant. Right? Why didn't they have any protection?”

My heart sinks. “Right.”