Getting Played

by Celeste O. Norfleet

  “Oh, my God,” I say.

  “What?” the detective asks.

  “One time I came home and the back door was unlocked. Then another time it was just barely closed. Then last week, I don’t remember when, I was up here in my bedroom and I heard the first floor steps creak. You know how they do,” I say to Jade. She nods. “So when I leaned over the railing up here in the hallway and called down to my grandmother, thinking it was her, all I heard was a kind of shuffle and then the door close.”

  “What happened then?” Jade asks.

  I shrug. “I went downstairs just as Grandmom was coming in the front door. I figured she made two trips with her bags. But then she only had one grocery bag.”

  Both detectives write everything down. “Do you have any idea what you and Ursula have in common, classes at school, teachers, friends, enemies?”

  “Darien.” It’s like a chorus of four. Jade, Diamond, Jalisa and I all say his name at the same time.

  “Darien Moore?” We all nod. “Bingo,” Detective Clark says. “That’s our common denominator. Did he give you anything to hold for him, maybe a bag or some luggage or a box?”

  I look at him and crinkle my face. “No, never,” I say.

  Just then Terrence comes running upstairs two at a time. We all turn and look at him. I go deathly still and look at the two cops. He hurries past everyone and grabs me. We hug. Damn this feels good, but still I know he can’t be here. When he finally releases me, he looks at me hard. “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I whisper, “but what are you doing here?”

  He looks at me strangely. “I heard about what happened. Li’l T called me.”

  “He what?” I say, getting pissed off all over again. I can’t believe Li’l T would get Terrence here knowing the police were still walking around. I swear I’ll kill that fool.

  “Uh, okay, Kenisha,” Detective Clark says, “we’re gonna need you to look around in your room. See if you can tell if anything is missing. We’ll be downstairs.”

  “Yeah, I’m a go, too,” Jade says. “There’s nothing missing in my bedroom that I can tell.”

  “We’ll be downstairs, too,” Diamond says. Jalisa nods and follows.

  As soon as they leave I grab Terrence’s hand and drag him inside. I wince again when I see my room. Everything has been trashed and my clothes are tossed everywhere. All my books on my bookshelves are knocked down, and my bed, desk and dresser are turned upside down. “What are you doing here?” I ask again. “You know how dangerous it is for you to be here with them still walking around. Are you crazy?”

  “What are you talking about?” he asks.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I say as quietly as possible. “The thing, the other night.” He looks at me completely puzzled. “Come on, I know all about it. I saw you and I know you saw me.”

  “Kenisha, did you hit your head or something? The last time I saw you was at the funeral last week.”

  “No, Saturday night,” I mouth, fearful the police are around.

  “What are you talking about?” he asks again.

  I go to my bedroom door, look down the hall and stairway and then close it quietly. I pull him into the closet. “The robbery. I saw you, your tattoo.”

  “You saw my tattoo?” he repeats. “Which tattoo—this one?” he says, pointing to his neck. I nod. “And you think I was there robbing the place.” I nod.

  “Don’t worry, nobody knows. I would never say a word. I’ll take it to the grave. I just need you to promise me that you’ll never do anything like that again. I know we’ve been having our problems, but if you need money, maybe I can ask my sister again.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, hold up. You seriously think it was me the other night who attacked you.”

  “I saw you,” I say. I reach up to touch the tattoo on his neck.

  He backs off, leaning away from me. “Girl, you trippin’, you actually think that was me. You really don’t know me, do you?”

  “I don’t know why you’re getting all pissed off. I’m just trying to protect you.”

  “Yeah, by thinking I’m some kind of street thug that goes around stealing and robbing people.”

  “It wasn’t just me. Li’l T saw you, too.”

  “What?” he says loudly.

  “Yeah, Li’l T.”

  “I don’t care what Li’l T said he saw.”

  “We talked about it. He saw the car and one of the guys who got out and pushed us all back inside.”

  “I don’t know who you think you saw, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Terrence…”

  “I don’t want to do this,” he says. “Why don’t you just look around your room like the police asked you?”

  I look around my bedroom seeing everything I guess was there. I really can’t tell. There is just too much stuff around all over the place. “Can you tell if something’s missing?” he asks coldly.

  I shrug. “I don’t know.” I look around again. It’s no use. I don’t have a clue.

  “What about your jewelry?”

  “Oh, my God, my mom’s jewelry. I forgot about that.” I run into our bathroom and check where I keep my jewelry. Like Jade suggested when I first moved in, I keep it where she keeps hers, in the bottom vanity drawer were we dump tampons and pads. That drawer wasn’t even touched. All the jewelry is still there. I feel relieved for the first time that night. “Come on,” I say, “I don’t want to do this anymore, either.”

  He nods. We go downstairs and find everybody in the living room. My grandmother is telling one of her “I remember when” family stories about my great-great aunt who traveled all over the world and made a fortune. Everybody is sitting and standing around listening like she was imparting the knowledge of the universe. Maybe she is. She has a way of doing that sometimes. Terrence and I stand in the open doorway next to Jade listening, too.

  Just as she finishes her story, the doorbell rings like crazy. The cops quickly look at each other and then nod. We are all trying to figure out what that means when the bell starts ringing like crazy again. “I’ll get it,” Jade says, heading to the door.

  “No,” Detective Wilson says. Clark nods and goes to the door. He opens it.

  “Who the hell are you?” I hear my dad demand. Shit. I forgot all about him. “Where’s my daughter?”

  Detective Clark flips out his badge and introduces himself. “What’s going on?” my dad asks, changing his tone instantly. He rushes in, seeing Jade first. “Jade, what’s going on, is your grandmother okay? Is Kenisha here?”

  I roll my eyes. This is going to be a long night.

  CHAPTER 19

  Now What?

  “Am I maturing? Am I growing up? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just tired of holding on to the old me? Still, growing up, this blows. When you know you’re going to fail a test, why even bother taking it?”

  —MySpace.com

  The next three days were uneventful. Absolutely nothing happened. It felt strange not to have to duck and dodge drama for a few minutes. Cassie hadn’t spoken to me, Troy and his stupid crew were MIA, and my dad had finally relaxed. After the police sat down and spoke to him the night of the break-in, he finally chilled, then of course, he went ballistic because I didn’t tell him about the threatening phone calls. It took him about a minute and a half to realize that’s what I came to him earlier to talk about. He offered to get me a new phone. I declined on principle. Of course I was grounded again for sneaking out. Or rather, his version of grounded. Yeah, I’m still laughing about that, too.

  I didn’t sleep in my bedroom because it was still a mess. I just went up there to grab clothes in the morning before school and that’s it. I slept in my mom’s old bedroom on the second floor. Whenever I did go upstairs, I just shook my head. I know Jalisa and Diamond volunteered to help clean with me. Even Terrence wanted to help, but I turned everybody down. I need to do this myself. But Terrence still righted the bureau, bed, desk and bookcases in both min
e and Jade’s rooms. So Saturday morning, I just needed to take care of my clothes and books and other stuff like that.

  I get up early, shower, dress and go downstairs. My grandmother left a note on the kitchen table saying she was going out to the grocery store. I grab some orange juice and go back upstairs. When I get to my bedroom it looks even worse than before, if that’s even possible. I decide to start in the walk-in closet I share with Jade. That way I can at least put my clothes away as I pick them up.

  So I am sitting on the closet floor sorting my shoes when I hear noises in the hall and in Jade’s bedroom. I know my grandmother is out, so of course I think whoever was there before had come back. I freeze and look around for something to swing. Then I hear my name called quietly. It’s Jade. “Hey,” I holler from the closet. “I’m in here.”

  She peeks inside and looks down. “Hey,” she says. “Girl, you scared me. I looked in your bedroom and nobody was there. Then, as I was walking down the hall, I heard a bumping noise.”

  I hold up a pair of my boots. “I know. You scared me, too. I’m just trying to get the closet straight so we can hang our clothes up again.”

  She comes in and leans back against one of the built-in dressers. “I guess we had the same idea—Saturday morning cleanup. Who picked up all the big furniture?” she asks, looking back into her bedroom.

  “Terrence did,” I say. “He came back up Tuesday night after you went back to the dorm and everybody else left.”

  “Thank him for me,” she says.

  “You’d better do that yourself. I don’t think he’s speaking to me anymore.”

  “Why not? What happened?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. He’s pissed at me, but I don’t know why. All I can think of is maybe it’s because he was fighting Darien and had to go to the police station that night. But the day after, we talked and he was okay. Then a few days later he wasn’t.”

  “Something happened in those few days,” she surmises.

  “I guess, but I don’t know what, and he’s not saying. Do you know some girl named Gia?”

  “Ms. Lottie’s granddaughter?” she asks.

  “Yeah, they had a thing and broke up just before mom and I came to live here. Now they’re both at Howard and I think it’s back on again. I think I’m getting played.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” she says.

  “Have you ever seen them on campus together?”

  “The campus is huge. I’ve only ever seen Terrence in the library or in the cafeteria when he’s working or maybe when his frat is doing something.”

  “The night all this happened, he got mad again, but I was only trying to protect him.”

  “What do you mean, protect him from what?”

  I look at Jade, not sure if I should tell her, but I have to tell someone. “He was there the night of the robbery at Giorgio’s. He was one of them.”

  “Terrence?” she questions. I nod. “No, that’s not possible. I know Terrence. It’s not his character. I used to babysit him years ago. He’d never do anything like that, ever.”

  “But I saw him. And also Li’l T saw him. When we talked at school, he said he recognized one of the guys, too.”

  “Then he recognized someone else,” she says.

  All of a sudden I am feeling weird. I should be the one defending Terrence unconditionally like Jade is, instead of accusing him and then trying to protect him. “One of the guys that night had his exact same tattoo in the exact same place on his neck. And don’t say I didn’t see it because I know I did.”

  “Kenisha, there are a million guys with the same tattoo in the same place. It doesn’t mean they’re all guilty. Besides, his frat had some event all Saturday night. I know he had to be there for that.”

  Everything she is saying made sense. And so now it looks like I have been jumping to the wrong conclusions again. I shrug. It’s all messed up.

  “It’ll work out,” she says, reassuringly.

  “Like you and Ty?”

  She looks away. “That’s a whole other story.”

  “Is it going to have a happy ending?”

  She looks back at me and shrugs. “I really don’t know.” Then she looks away again and her jaw drops. “Kenisha Lewis, I know you are not wearing my brand-new shoes that I haven’t even worn yet.”

  Oops. I look down at my feet. “Yeah, I tried some of your shoes on. Girl, I had no idea you had all these designer shoes and handbags and stuff in here—Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Michael Kors, Dolce & Gabbana,” I say. “You have sunglasses, belts, scarves, hats, for real, so you know we wear the same size shoe, right? I’m seriously raiding your side of the closet from now on.”

  “Not if you want to live to be seventeen,” she jokes. She looks down at her rows and rows of footwear. They are all neatly placed below where her clothes are gonna go again. “Thanks for getting them all back together.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Look, about what I said before when I snapped at you…”

  “Jade, I know you were upset about the Tyrece thing. I would be, too. So seriously, don’t worry about it.” She nods and turns to leave. “Oh, wait, guess what? I checked our jewelry from Mom,” I say. Her eyes get wide as she looks over at the bathroom vanity. Then she seems crestfallen and shakes her head. “No, that’s just it, they didn’t touch anything. I guess a drawer full of tampons and pads is like kryptonite to criminals.”

  We laugh. “So now, instead of pepper spray, I’ll carry some tampons in my bag and just throw them if someone steps up to me.”

  “Nah, definitely still carry the pepper spray,” I say.

  “I still can’t believe all this,” she says miserably.

  “I know. It’s so stupid. What the hell were they looking for? I swear I don’t have anything of Darien’s.”

  “Maybe you hit him too hard with his stupid trophies and broke more than just his arm,” Jade jokes. I stop and look up at her. “What?” she asks, seeing the expression on my face.

  “Oh, my God,” I say.

  “What?” she asks again.

  “The trophy, I forgot all about it. The police asked if he gave me a box or something, but he didn’t. Then when I talked to Ursula before, she said…oh, my God, I know what’s in it.” I jump up and run into my bedroom. Jade follows. I look under the bed. “I threw it under here.”

  “You threw what under there?” she asks. I am on my hands and knees, but can’t find it by feeling around. So I get up and shift the bed aside. Jade helps. “What are you looking for?” she asks.

  “It’s not here,” I say. “They must have taken it.”

  “Who took what?”

  “Darien’s trophy. That night, I hit him twice and each time the trophy broke. Then the last time, I grabbed another one to hit him again, but he was down on the floor. I just took it and ran. Then I remember Ursula said the police found drugs on the floor in his bedroom. He’d been hiding the drugs in the trophies. See, that’s what they were looking for. I still had one of his trophies.”

  “Well, at least they got it now and it’s out of here.”

  “No,” I say. “I remember now. I moved it from under the bed.” I stand up and walk over to the bedroom door and close it. The trophy is still sitting where I put it days ago. I pick it up and bring it back to where Jade is sitting on my bed.

  “Do you think it has drugs in it?” she asks. I nod. She reaches for it, and I move it away. “No, don’t touch it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when we give it to the police and they dust it for fingerprints, I don’t want yours on it.”

  “Yours are on it,” she says.

  “Yeah, that’s because I was gonna hit him with it. I’m sure they will expect to see that when I explain what happened and why I still have it.”

  “Do you have any gloves?”

  “Yeah, I just put my winter hats, scarves and gloves away in the closet.” I run and bring back two pairs of leather gloves. We put them o
n and search the trophy for an opening. We look for a while, but can’t find one. “Why don’t I just throw it across the room? It’ll be like the rest of the place.”

  “Except the police are going to know this is what they were looking for, so why would they break in and then leave it here.”

  “They won’t know what kind of condition it was in when I took it from Darien’s room,” I say.

  “True. Okay, do it. But don’t make it too badly broken.”

  I nod and toss it kinda hard across the room. We run over to see if it broke. It didn’t. “Maybe there’s nothing inside,” I say. Then, when I pick it up, I feel the top is loose. I wiggle and twist the silver football figure on top. It turns. I look at Jade. This is it. We sit down on the bed again as I keep untwisting until the whole top part comes loose. Jade holds the base, and I pull the top. It comes apart and all of a sudden all these big fat rolls of hundred dollar bills tumble out all over the bed and floor. The trophy is pretty big and it looks like the rolls of money had been stuffed inside all the way to the top.

  We look at each other and then down at all the money on my bed and floor. “Oh, my God, how much do you think it is,” I ask.

  “Too much,” she mutters. “We have to call the police.”

  “Wait, whoever is after this now thinks it’s not here, right?” Jade nods and picks up one of the rolls of cash. “They’re gonna have to assume that the police took this trophy with the others, right?” Jade nods again, picking up another one. “So really nobody knows we have this money, right?”

  Jade shakes her head. “No. Wrong. So don’t even think about it. This is the last thing we need in this house.”

  “But, Jade…”

  “No, Kenisha,” she insists firmly, grabbing the rest off the floor as I gather up those that fell on the bed with us.

  “Aw, man, you are just too damn honest.”

  “Believe me, it has nothing to do with me being honest and everything to do with not having this here with us. This is drug money. People got hurt for this money.”