The Lipstick Clique (8 page)

Holding the pistol, she found herself back in very familiar territory. Once again, she was in a situation where she was about to do something that she didn’t want to do, influenced by a man that she was fond of. The difference between this time and the last time was as simple as daylight. What she was about to do was nothing new to her. She would kill Skye and Snowflake, without a second thought; would probably go fix a sandwich and sit back like nothing had happened. The difference between this time and the time that
Benji
had asked her to do it, was that now, her heart had turned ice cold.

Back then she cared about
Benji
enough to kill for him, but nowadays, she didn’t need too many reasons to kill a person. Life had become monotonous for her; she felt that she would need to close this chapter of her life in order to have a fresh start. Closing the last chapter completely would mean closing off the life of unorganized random crimes that her and The Lipstick Clique had been committing. It would mean turning her back on her friend the same way that her friend had turned her back on her.

 
Treasure thought about her list,
The
Fuckit
List
. It was a list of things in her life that would confuse her if she allowed them to. It was a list of things that hurt her and made her angry. There were various things on The
Fuckit
List, and she was sure that there would be plenty more things to come. In short, it was a list that was filled up with the things that made a lady say fuck it.

She grabbed Snowflake’s head and pulled it towards the ground like a pelican. Then after she instructed Meatloaf to hold her in that position, she did the same thing to Skye. Quickly and without a second thought; she fired a bullet hole into the back of both of their scalps, leaving them slumped over in the dirt.

For the first time since making his acquaintance, she saw a smile briefly caress the cheeks of Grimmer. The smile quickly faded away, and his rough exterior came back as soon as it left. She stood there staring at the bodies on the ground and felt sorry that she had to do that to her friend, but The
FuckitList
was powerful. She was sure that there would
 
be a lot more material added onto that list. She handed the gun back and grabbed Danielle’s arm lightly. “Let’s go back in the house, we were having a good ass conversation.”

__________

Milan was sitting in the car laughing at herself when she saw Lena running out of the pawn shop carrying a bag and a gun. She watched Lena run all the way up to the car door, waited until she put her hand on the door handle, and then hit the electric locks, locking all doors. Lena gave the door handle a tug, and when realizing that it was locked, she tapped the window forcefully with her fist. Milan unlocked it, waited on Lena to reach for it again, and locked it back.

“Mommy!! Stop playing!!!” Lena screamed as she continued hitting on the window.

Milan started to laugh uncontrollably. “
Hahahahahaha
!
Ahhhh
hahahahaha
!” She was on a high unlike any high that she had ever experienced. She was on PCP, weed, a line of coke, and was considering going to grab some meth after she left the robbery scene. She was beyond delusional, and her controlled recreational drugs had become uncontrollable highs.

Finally, when she saw a tear rolling down Lena’s face, she unlocked the door and opened it for her to get in. When Lena jumped into the car, Milan smiled at her briefly, and went straight to sleep.

Lena panicked. There was a huge crowd gathered outside and standing around the vehicle. She heard sirens in the distance. She knew from what her mommy told her about robbery, that if the police was to catch them; to never tell on anybody no matter what they say. She knew that if the police caught them, that they would both be going to prison for years.
She
didn’t care, as long as she got a chance to be with her mommy when she was released.

Lena knew that she could do the time in prison with no problem, but she also remembered the things that her mommy had told her about dodging prison by any means. She knew for a fact that she wouldn’t be able to just sit in that car for long. She also remembered the phrase that her mommy always told her to repeat.
I am The Lipstick Clique. I don’t need anyone else with me to become and remain that. All I have to do is get to the money.
She stared at her mommy sleeping, and thought to herself,
man my mommy is really tired
.

Milan laid there peacefully as if she was in the comfort of her own bed. She was leaning back against the seat snoring, with her lips slightly parted. There was cocaine residue on her steering wheel, and the last of the weed and PCP was burned down to a roach. Lena took the money that her mommy had told her to get and placed it in Milan’s lap. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get the guns as well, but next time I’ll make sure I have everything you ask for. For right now, I’ll let you keep my gun mommy… I love you so much!”

 
She sat her gun down in Milan’s lap next to the money and took off running. Her cheap sneakers slapped against the pavement and bounced back up like a basketball as she made an effort to escape the crime scene. As a young child, she didn’t realize how much trouble she had just caused by being naïve and ignorant. She was already having it rough; she wasn’t even fourteen yet, and already she didn’t know where she would lay her head for the night.

When she turned the corner, she saw that she had a straightaway to run, and it was about two blocks long. But once she cleared that straightaway, she would be able to duck off into the trees until she could figure out her next steps. In the distance, she heard massive commotion as the police and ambulance arrived on the crime scene. She ducked off into the trees and sat on the ground taking deeper breaths than a marathon runner. Above, she heard the helicopters whizzing by, but still she didn’t fret and didn’t worry. She believed what her mommy had told her; that she alone, was
The
Lipstick Clique
.

__________

5 was intoxicating. He was the type of man who wore his confidence around his lips, and sprinkled it across his every word and breath. He was standing at Danielle’s pool table only inches away from Treasure’s face. She was trying to ignore him, but was having the most difficult time doing so. She slid the stick across the table and made contact with the cue ball. It drifted off to the left when in her mind, she wanted it to go to the right.

“Why don’t you come home with me Treasure?”

Treasure fidgeted nervously before regaining her composure. She stood up and walked around the table away from the sexy man who was starting to soak her panties without even trying. When she made it around the table, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she saw that 5 was walking around the table himself and was almost standing right beside her. “
Damnit
5… you don’t know anything about me. I don’t understand why you’d want someone you had no information on to join you at the place where you lay your head. I guess it’s just that southern hospitality stuff, but still… you should know in your line of work that not knowing enough about a person could be your downfall.” Treasure said as she stared into his eyes.

He stared back into hers comfortably. He exuded more confidence than almost any man she’d ever met, with the exception of Malcolm Powers. She was sure that if he ever got his strength on par with his, that he could easily overtake him in that department. 5 exhaled short breaths while he invaded Treasure’s personal space. He inhaled hers and made them his own to exhale. He made absolutely no apologies about it whatsoever. He was a thief, but not like the thieves that described her former crew. He was the type of thief that only took things that were begging to be taken.

He took her breath away.

He was the type of dude that got what he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Treasure knew that she could use a confident person like that around her every now and then. She tried to glance away when his staring became a little too intense. But when she tried it, he reached over and placed his gentle hands on the crest of her jawline and pulled her stare back towards him softly.

Gently he spoke. “Treasure, you say I don’t know you, but you see… I know you very well. See, that was me who was standing outside the getaway car the night that me and my brothers went to go kill that guy. And I also know that it was
you
who was sitting in your crew’s getaway car, confused as hell. I don’t think my brothers paid any attention at all… but I did. I guess you and your crew had come to rob the guy. That was fine because my crew simply came to kill him. I’m sure that we got paid more individually than you all could have gotten collectively out of his garbage bin.”

Treasure felt her heart fall to the floor. She broke out in a light sweat, and tried to control her nervousness long enough to figure out what her next move should be. If this guy had blown her cover, then he knew about her affiliation with the girl that she had just shot. She took a deep breath and figured that the safest thing for her to do was just grab that pistol and try to take out everybody in the damn house.

5 remained calm. “Baby, there’s no need to sweat. Your secret is fine with me. Besides… you showed me which team you were really riding for when you killed your home girl. You know… that night I was curious about you all, so I followed you to the hotel. Then I followed you a little more when I saw that you and them had split up. That’s how I met you at the store that day; it was on purpose.
Haha
… I hope this doesn’t frighten you, but I was absolutely captivated by your presence and beauty. I don’t care about the bullshit. If you really want to be down with somebody, then you should be down with a nigga like me. Shit… I’m the realest nigga alive who’s still walking these streets, and I don’t know how long I have left to walk them.”

5 held his hands out palms up, gesturing for Treasure to come and embrace him. She stared into his eyes looking for deceit of any type, and when she could find none, she began to search his face for authenticity. She smiled. There was no denying his realness, because it was written all across his face from his left ear to the right one.

She gently enclosed herself in his embrace. And so it began.

Section 2

Milan was facing the death penalty, and a minimum mandatory sentence of life in federal prison. She had been locked up for 6 months already, and was going crazy every day thinking about how she would have to cope with doing life in confinement. All of the drugs had escaped her system, and she was left with a sober mind that didn’t feel too friendly. Her cellmate was a girl who had been locked up for selling fake IDs at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Her name was Vicky, and she had an extremely vibrant personality.

“Milan, I’m telling you girl! I was getting money selling those fake IDs! One day I had three pimps come in there and buy $3,000 worth of IDs. I was getting rich off of that hustle. You should try it one day!”

Milan had never told her what she was in for, but she was sick of her thinking that she was balling with her few thousand dollars a week hustle. As far as Milan was concerned, Vicky should have just gone to college and obtained a job that would pay the amounts of money she was talking about. She was sick of her running her mouth.

“Vicky! Do you know what the fuck I’m in prison for?” Milan said with an attitude.

Vicky had never heard Milan yell before, so it startled her quite a bit when she did. She sat up in her bunk bed and tuned in to Milan so she could hear what she had to say. For someone who barely speaks, to start talking… this had to be something epic.

“Bitch, I was with a group of bitches getting real money, ho! I’m talking about hitting a lick for $700,000 and it only took us 5 minutes to get that! I’m talking real shit bitch. A million dollars in a night was nothing to us. We went after whatever we wanted, and made sure we did whatever it took to
get
it! That’s what kind of shit we were on. We weren’t on no dumb and stupid shit!”

The room got silent as Vicky sat there thinking about everything that Milan had just told her. Vicky was sitting there trying to picture how her life would be if she could do one job and come back with a million dollars in one night. She smiled and grinned at the thought of it, because a thought like that had never entered her mind before, and it probably wasn’t going to happen again. Nevertheless… she was curious.