Losing Romeo

by A. J. Byrd

  thirteen

  Kierra—The Longest Two Minutes

  My period is three days late. I’m trying not to let that fact worry me, but it’s hard. All I can think about is my stomach getting big, my feet swelling, and stretch marks. I’ve heard that once you get stretch marks they never go away. One thing for sure is that I can’t tell Deborah. Yet I’m such a small person, I don’t know how I’m going to hide it. Maybe if I start wearing bulky clothes now, by the time I start to show no one will get suspicious. Of course, if I am pregnant I will have to tell my girls what happened between Chris and me at that party. I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that.

  I know that keeping secrets is against the BFF rules, and it was secrets that caused problems at the beginning of the school year, but this is different. What happened between Chris and me that night is too humiliating to even put into words. I just want to forget that it ever happened. Now that’s going to be difficult to do if I have a baby baking in my oven.

  There’s a Rite Aid pharmacy two blocks from our apartments. The place is like my second home, because I usually get all my makeup and fashion magazines from there. Today I’m going to pick up a pregnancy test. I tell Deborah I just need to go for some tampons, and she makes me take McKenya with me. Just great.

  McKenya is just as thrilled about going as I am about taking her. There are three things my little sister doesn’t like to do: wake up in the morning, be pulled away from her cartoons, and do her chores. And right now I’m interrupting her SpongeBob marathon.

  “I don’t see why I have to go!”

  “That makes two of us,” I snap.

  “Why can’t you go to the store tomorrow?”

  “What difference does it make? SpongeBob is on every day. Today, tomorrow, Deborah is still going to make you walk to the store with me. So we might as well go ahead and get it over with.”

  McKenya stomps toward the door. “Let’s hurry up. Maybe we can make it back before the cartoons go off.”

  “Go get your sweater,” I tell her.

  Deborah emerges from her bedroom decked out from head to toe in leather. I’d be lying if I said that she didn’t look good. She does. She always looks good. But once again she is running late for work and rushing through the apartment like a wild hurricane.

  “You look pretty, Deb,” McKenya says.

  “Thanks, honey.”

  “Do you think you could just give us a ride to the pharmacy? We can walk back,” I say.

  Deborah glances at her watch and makes a face. “Oh, I don’t know…”

  “Never mind. McKenya, I told you to get your sweater.”

  My older sister huffs out a long breath. “All right. Y’all just hurry up and get in the car.”

  “Yea!” McKenya jumps up and down, mainly because she thinks she’s going to get back to SpongeBob faster.

  Whatever. I just rush out to the car before she changes her mind—not that riding in my sister’s junky black Celica is some kind of luxury ride. It isn’t. In fact, I don’t think she has ever cleaned this puppy out. Not to mention that there have been plenty of times when she has forgotten to roll her windows up before a storm, and the interior has mildewed a thousand times over. Despite that I hold my breath and climb into the backseat. McKenya jumps into the front passenger seat and buckles up.

  Deborah slides in behind the wheel and starts the engine before closing the door. “Kierra, do you have your house keys?”

  I quickly check my pockets in here and my keys jingle. “Yeah, got them.”

  Deborah slams her door and peels out of her parking space like a bat out of hell. The Rite Aid is not on her way to work, but it’s just two blocks. She screeches to a stop in front of the pharmacy and then orders us to hurry out of her car. I just barely get the door slammed before she’s rocketing off to work. Shaking my head at the exhaust smoke coming out of her tailpipe, I grab McKenya’s hand and head on into the pharmacy.

  “Can I get a chocolate bar?” McKenya asks.

  “I don’t care.”

  My sister races off to the candy aisle while I head toward the back on the hunt for a pregnancy test. Wouldn’t you know it, there are like a million people milling around in front of the body lubricants, condoms and pregnancy tests. I don’t really want to draw any attention, but it seems like all eyes are on me when I inch toward the First Response and Clearblue pregnancy tests. I guess the best thing to do in this situation is just thrust up your chin and act like you know what you’re doing.

  I grab the first box I come to and nearly choke on the price tag. “Twenty dollars? They have to be kidding.” I look back now on the shelf and try to find the cheapest test they have. I quickly find a generic store brand that is about eight bucks cheaper and decide to go with that one. I glance back up. I get a lot of smirking looks, but I just wrinkle my nose at them and then go on about my business. Head on over to the candy aisle to get McKenya, but she’s not there. “Now where is she?”

  Looking around, I try to spot a short person in a pink sweater. I still don’t see her. “McKenya!” I start roaming up and down the aisles calling her name. She doesn’t answer back, and I still can’t find her. My heart drops out of my chest and my brain starts to fry. Oh, my God! What if someone snatched her?

  “McKENYA!” I’m twirling around in a panic. “Has anybody seen my little sister? She’s about four foot seven and wearing a pink sweater!” I rush from one person to another. They all are shaking their heads at me. “Somebody has to have seen her! McKENYA!”

  I race back to the candy aisle, hoping that she will materialize. No such luck. I race out the front door and glance around the parking lot. “McKENYA!” Oh, God. What am I going to do? What am I going to tell Deborah? She’s definitely going to kill me when I tell her I lost our little sister.

  “Excuse me, ma’am? But is this who you’re looking for?” Standing next to a woman in a Rite Aid smock, McKenya is frowning up at me. I nearly collapse with relief.

  “McKenya. Where were you? Didn’t you hear me call your name?” I rush over and throw my arms around her. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again!” And I hug her tighter.

  “I had to use the bathroom,” she says meekly.

  I didn’t check the bathrooms. I wipe the tears streaming from my face. “From now on, when we come to the store you don’t leave my side. You understand me?”

  “Okay.”

  I grab her by the hand and lead her back into the store so I can pay for my pregnancy test, and I even buy her two candy bars. As we march back home I damn near have a death grip on McKenya’s hand, but she doesn’t utter a single complaint. I think she knows just how much she scared me, and neither one of us finds it funny. When we reach the apartment she still has about thirty minutes of SpongeBob left. She quickly plants herself back in front of the TV, and I march back toward the bathroom.

  “Aren’t you going to start dinner?”

  “Yeah. Just give me a few minutes.”

  She makes a face but again she doesn’t say anything. Maybe I’ll have a whole evening without her complaining. In the bathroom, I shut and lock the door before tearing into my generic pregnancy test. I read the instructions four times before hopping on the toilet. A few minutes later, I’m pacing back and forth waiting for the results to show up on the stick.

  “Please don’t let me be pregnant, God. Please. I swear that from here on out I’ll be a good girl. I make all As. I’ll keep the apartment clean. And I will stay away from boys. Wait. Maybe that last one will be a little hard to do, but I’ll try to stay away from bad boys.”

  I glance at my watch. Time’s up. I reach for the pregnancy test and read my results.

  fourteen

  Anjenai—We Are Family

  “Shoplifting? Are you sure?” I ask Granny. I’m totally taken by surprise by this latest revelation. Tyler hasn’t been in school for the past couple of days, and I assumed that she was sick. However, when I went to check on her no one would come to the door. So when Gran
ny drops this news on me at the dinner table I’m left sitting here with my mouth open in shock.

  “Yes, I’m sure. I got word from Ms. Todd—Michelle Todd’s mother. Michelle, Tyler and some girl named Trisha were arrested at a strip mall not too far from the school. I know I saw Leon hot under the collar a couple days ago. I gather that he wasn’t too happy having to take time off from work to go bail her out of jail.”

  “How come you didn’t go to jail with Tyler?” Gregory, one of my ten-year-old twin brothers, asks me with a mouth full of macaroni and cheese.

  “Now, what did I tell you about talking with your mouth full?” Granny scolds, but with a soft smile hugging her lips.

  “Sorry, Granny,” Gregory mumbles, again with a full mouth.

  “Besides, Anjenai knows better than to get herself tangled up in some shoplifting scheme. Don’t you, Anje?” Granny levels a look at me that’s all the warning I need.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Uh-huh.” She keeps her eyes leveled on me to make sure that we have an understanding that she is not going to tolerate any foolishness.

  In my mind she really doesn’t have to worry, because I would never get involved in something like that. When it comes to Tyler I’m surprised but not surprised at the same time. Tyler has been on a self-destructive path for some time now, and clearly things are just getting worse. Michelle Todd, that’s that girl who used to hang around Billie Grant. The same girl whose nose we broke on the first day of school. So what Kierra told me at lunch the other day is true.

  I shake my head and wonder again what Tyler must be thinking. It’s no use because I have no idea. And something tells me that Tyler doesn’t, either.

  “How come you don’t talk about your boyfriend anymore?” Edafe, my six-year-old brother, asks, reaching for his Kool-Aid.

  “I’ve never talked to you about any boyfriend,” I remind him. “You were just always putting your nose in my business.”

  “It’s everybody’s business when you’re playing kissy face in his car in front of the apartment so the whole world can see,” Hosea, the eight-year-old, chimes in.

  The problem with living with four younger brothers is that they are always trying to eat into my business—what little I have. And they always seem to think that my life is an excellent topic of conversation for the dinner table.

  “You boys leave your sister alone,” Granny pipes up and then steals a peek at me to check if I am okay. After that disastrous party at Shadiq’s a few weeks ago, Granny was alarmed when I came home sobbing my eyes out. I told her the whole story about how Romeo had embarrassed and abandoned me in the middle of our date to go crawling back to his ex-girlfriend. I didn’t bother telling her about the pregnancy part because that would just alarm her about who was and who wasn’t having sex. That’s one big headache I would prefer to avoid.

  “Do you mind if I run over to Tyler’s after dinner?”

  Granny doesn’t look too pleased with that idea. I know that she’s already wondering if Tyler is going to start becoming a bad influence on me.

  “Come on, Granny. It’s Tyler. I need to find out what’s going on with her. She hasn’t been acting like herself lately, and I’m concerned.” Expressing concern is a shoo-in to getting her to let me go. No way Granny would suggest that I abandon a friend in need.

  “Well…I guess you can run over there for a little while.”

  “Thanks, Gran.” I quickly start shoveling the rest of my dinner into my mouth.

  “Slow down. You’re going to choke.”

  I cram in the last bite of meat loaf and then hop up from the table, taking my plate and glass to the kitchen sink. “I’ll be back in a few,” I tell everyone at the table and run out of the apartment. My mind is still reeling over this whole shoplifting thing, and I’m even more stunned that it’s my grandmother who’s delivering the news to me instead of Tyler. I rush over to the next building and pound on the door. After waiting a full minute I try again.

  “Come on, Tyler. I know you’re in there.”

  KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

  “I’m not going anywhere until you open this door!” Finally I hear someone approaching the door and feel a surge of triumph. However, after the locks are disengaged and the door swings open, I’m the one who’s surprised. “Mr. Jamison! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were home.”

  “I think that much is obvious.” He runs his hand over his head. “Come on in. I think that Tyler is in her bedroom, trying to ignore me. You’re more than welcome to see if you can get a little more out of her than I did, if you want.” He steps back and allows me to pass through.

  “Thanks.” I enter the apartment and take one glance around. The place looks like a hurricane hit it.

  “Excuse the place,” Mr. Jamison says. “I’ve been busy and Tyler has been stubborn.”

  I flash him a half smile of understanding and then make my way through the living room and then down the hallway to Tyler’s bedroom where I knock on the door.

  “She’s not going to answer,” her father says. “She’ll think it’s me, and I think she has on her iPod.”

  “Oh.” I glance at the door and then slowly turn the knob. Surprisingly, it’s not locked. “Tyler?” I push open the door and slip my head inside.

  On the bed, Tyler is propped up on a mountain of pillows and bobbing her head. When she glances up and see me, there is some relief. A smile curves across her face.

  “Hey, you,” I say, easing into her private sanctuary. “Long time no see.”

  Tyler pulls the white ear plugs from her ears and sits up. “I’m surprised that he let you in.”

  “I came by after school, but no one was here or no one answered the door.”

  “Me and my old man are sort of engaged in a little game.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. We’re trying to see who can stay mad the longest. I’m going to win this one hands down.”

  “Oookay.” I stretch my eyebrows and decide to let her just have that. I’ve never understood her and her father’s games anyway. I step over piles of clothes on the floor and then find a clean spot on the bed and sit down. “So how are you doing?”

  She shrugs. “All right—considering.”

  I nod and then fold my arms.

  “I guess that means that you’ve heard,” she says.

  “Heard about what?” If she can play dumb then so can I.

  Tyler glances away. “You know what.”

  I’m quiet for a moment because I’m both confused and disappointed in my best friend. But telling her that surely isn’t going to help matters much, and lately it is way too easy to put my foot in my mouth and land on Tyler’s bad side. It was just a month ago when I told her I understood why her mother left her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She huffs. “What is there to say? I screwed up. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time—”

  “Or you were hanging out with the wrong crowd?”

  Another huff. “Michelle and Trisha are all right.”

  “How can you say that? Look what happened!”

  “What? Like we’ve never shoplifted before?”

  “Yeah, like when we were younger.”

  “Right. We’re sooo old now.” She makes a face and then rolls her eyes.

  “We’re old enough to know better,” I tell her and then have to remind myself not to jump on her, but to offer support. “Anyway. I’m didn’t come here to lecture.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I’m getting more than I care to count with Leon out there.”

  My eyebrows jump. Since when did she start calling her dad by his first name? “Are you all right? Are you not coming back to school or something?”

  “I wish I didn’t have to. The whole thing is a waste of time anyway.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Hell yeah, I mean it. I can’t stand that damn school. I don’t belong there.”

  “Are you serious? We’ve been planning to go to high school for,
like, forever. We were supposed to all get popular, date the finest boys in school and to work our tails off to get into the best colleges.”

  “I don’t recall that last part being on my list.”

  “Okay, college was my goal. But the rest of it we talked about endlessly during sleepovers. The homecoming dances, the football games, now the basketball games and the proms. Don’t you remember Kierra is supposed to make our dresses?”

  A small smile hooks one corner of Tyler’s mouth. “God help us. She will probably dress us in fluorescent pink or lime-green siesta dresses.”

  “Come on. It won’t be that bad.”

  Tyler’s eyes narrow on me. “When was the last time you saw me in a dress?”

  “Fine. You can go in a pantsuit or a tuxedo for all I care, but you are going.”

  “Whatever.” She rolls her eyes and waves me off.

  “What, now you don’t want to go?”

  “It’s a long way off.”

  “What are you talking about? The homecoming dance is in, like, two weeks.”

  Tyler rolls her eyes. “You want to go our freshman year?”

  “We’re supposed to go every year. Come on. We’ve talked about this.”

  “Well, I’m not going. So stop hounding me about it.”

  “What about basketball?” I ask.

  “What about it?”

  “You’ve made the team. Don’t you want to play anymore?”

  “Puh-lease. How long do you think they’ll let me play once my grades come in?”

  “I don’t know. How about you do your homework and show up for class and see what happens?”

  Tyler cocks her head. “You know, this is starting to sound like a lecture.” She bounces off the side of the bed and stomps her way over to her nightstand. “I hate that school!” Tyler pulls open the top drawer and grabs a Baggie. Next she rushes over to her bedroom door and locks it.

  “What are you doing?” I ask suspiciously.