“Pancakes.”
“Cool. I make a mean chocolate chip.” Natice smiles and leaves the room.
I wait until I hear the bathroom door close and the water running before I slip out of bed and pad over to Natice’s desk. Lying on top is a research paper titled, The Impact of Government Spending On Economic Growth. I pull open the desk drawer and shuffle through the junk. I find random items but nothing of importance. Then I hear a creak at the door.
Standing in the doorway is a man whose large body fills the frame. His eyes are dark, bloodshot, and tired. Startled, I realize this must be Natice’s stepfather.
“Hi. I’m a friend of Natice’s.” I take a step away from her desk.
He stares at me coldly. It’s unnerving. Finally, without a word, he walks off.
By the time Natice is done with her shower and back in the room, she knows her stepfather is home. “Fuck, he wasn’t supposed to get home until the end of the week.” She changes into clothes.
“It’s okay. I should go anyway. My grandmother called when you were in the shower. I need to get back to help her out.”
“You can’t stay?”
“I’d love to, but I have to go.” And I would stay. I’d never leave her house if her stepfather weren’t home. I’m uncomfortable being in the house with him, especially with the way he was looking at me. “Thanks for bandaging me up.”
“No problem, Ally.”
As I walk out the door, I get an overwhelming sense that Natice is also afraid to be home alone with her stepfather.
Chapter 40
“Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?” Lori digs a small, razor-like instrument into my skin. I am sitting in her kitchen, surrounded by the girls.
“Not as much as my ass-kicking,” I say.
She digs the needle in deeper.
A minute later, Mark enters the kitchen without seeing me and goes straight for the refrigerator.
Natice slaps his ass. “What up, Romeo?”
He searches for something inside. “Don’t you all have a home?”
Ronnie steps next to him. “Nope. We’re moving in. Cracker’s gonna share your bed with you.”
“I think that spot’s already taken,” Natice says.
Mark turns and finally sees me. He watches his sister tattoo my skin, and I know he is disappointed. I think back to the last text I got from him: Is it true? I knew without asking he wanted to know if I got jumped in.
I wrote back: Yes.
I hadn’t heard from Mark since, but it doesn’t surprise me. He obviously meant what he said the night we watched Rocky together, when he told me he could never date a girl who was part of Lori’s gang. “It’s a rule of mine,” he’d said. I broke his rule, and it’s either his pride that has kept him from calling me—or maybe it’s how he protects himself.
“Come on, Romeo. Have a drink with us,” Natice says.
“No, thanks.” Mark slams the refrigerator door closed and walks out of the kitchen without a word to me.
“What’d you do to him, Ally?” Natice asks.
“Nothing,” I say, but I’m just as disappointed as Mark. I was hoping to use him against his sister. And I did like him. It feels weird to be ignored. But I don’t fault Mark. I made a choice, and there was no way I wasn’t going to join Lori’s gang, with or without his dating me.
Lori finishes. “What do you think?”
I stare down at my right hand. On it is a small black diamond tattoo. It’s reddened around the sides.
I smile and instantly forget about Mark. “I like it.”
Ronnie dances in front of me. “Go, Cheerleader! Go, Cheerleader! Go, Cheerleader!”
I stand, and each one of them hugs me. Lori, then Ronnie, and Cracker, who barely touches me.
Natice slaps a wet kiss on my cheek.
“Ahhhhh.” I laugh.
Lori hands everyone a beer, and we drink. “Welcome to the family!”
If anyone had told me that one day I would become a member of this gang or that I would become friends with my sister’s killers, I would’ve thought they were crazier than I am. But it happened. I’ve become friends with these girls.
“A’right, Cheerleader!” Ronnie yells, making the rolls on her stomach move in rhythm to her repeating, “Go, Cheerleader. Go, Cheerleader!”
We bust up.
I genuinely like Ronnie. I think if she had gone to my high school, we would’ve been friends. She’s funny and childlike and innocent and silly. And I love her giant laugh. In some ways, she reminds me of Jenny. She’s always happy. A bit unpredictable, which makes me nervous, but overall, I dig her.
“You need to go on a diet!” Cracker tells her.
“Shut up, Cracker!” Ronnie pushes her away.
Cracker laughs.
I still fantasize about Cracker losing that game of Russian roulette. In the time I’ve spent with her, she is only ever happy when she’s being spiteful. It brings her extreme pleasure to see someone else hurt or miserable like herself. The thing that is most difficult about being around Cracker and Lori is acting as though I like them when I hate their guts. I suppose with Lori, her sadistic nature is a product of her childhood. As I watch her enjoy herself, I can’t help thinking about what Natice shared with me when I stayed at her house. Some of the stories were difficult to hear—Lori’s mother prostituting Lori for drugs when she was barely twelve, or her being repeatedly raped by one of the mother’s boyfriends until Lori finally stabbed him with a knife when he was passed out drunk. It makes sense that Mark is much different from Lori. He wasn’t subjected to most of what she endured as a child. But regardless of Lori’s awful childhood, it doesn’t make me any less determined to see her punished for my sister’s murder.
“Black Diamonds are forever!” Lori raises her forty-ounce bottle of beer.
I force a smile and tap my bottle against hers. “Legit.”
“That’s right!” Natice joins.
A few hours later, we leave Lori’s house, fully wasted. Natice happily clings to me.
“Ally, what up!” She grins at me before hopping into the backseat of the Olds with Ronnie and Cracker. I wish Natice would ride shotgun, but of course, that seat’s always reserved for Lori. It’s reassuring that Natice at least refuses to carry a gun. Both she and Ronnie have repeatedly made comments to Lori and Cracker to keep their guns at home, which makes me wonder where exactly they hide them.
“Cheerleader, how you feeling?” Lori asks.
“I’m feelin’ sexy,” I say, causing Lori to smile.
“Yo, Fathead, raise that shit!” Natice says to me from the backseat, laughing.
“Someone’s in a good mood.” Lori turns around.
“Damn straight!” Natice answers.
I think my joining the gang has made Natice happier—that or the cocaine she snorted at Lori’s.
I raise the volume and aimlessly drive us around Cantor as the Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha” blasts from the speakers.
“I haven’t heard this song in years! Damn, it brings me back!” Natice says as she and Ronnie sing along.
Ronnie shakes her boobs when the song comes to an end. We all crack up. Ronnie’s either shaking her boobs, ass, or stomach. She has a special gift of making her body parts move in ways that no one else can imitate.
“I tell you all about that boy in my history class?” Natice says.
“You ain’t hooked up with him yet?” Lori asks.
“Shit, girl. That boy is shy. And he goes to church every Sunday. But I don’t care. I’m gonna find out where he goes, and I’m gonna be sittin’ in the front pew, honey!”
“Amen to that!” Ronnie adds.
“Yo, Natty, what I gotta do to get into community?” Cracker stuffs a handful of Cracker Jacks into her mouth. “I was thinkin’ of maybe gettin’ a degree like y
ou. Learn how to run my own business or something.”
“Community would never take you, Cracker,” Lori says.
“How do you know?” Cracker shoots back.
“Because you didn’t even graduate! Shit, you need to get your GED. Then you gotta take the SAT.”
“What’s an SAT?” Cracker asks.
“A test you can’t pass, dummy!” Ronnie says.
“You don’t need it for community. You just have to apply,” I say.
Cracker thinks about it. “Yeah. All right. So Natty, what you get on that test?”
“My girl got over an eighteen hundred on her SAT!” Lori high-fives Natice.
“You cheat?” Ronnie asks.
“No! I got skills,” Natice says.
“How could someone get an eighteen hundred on a test?” Cracker asks, confused.
“It ain’t like a normal test, Cracker. It’s different parts of one big test. Math. Reading. Writing. And they all add up to twenty-four hundred,” Ronnie explains.
“How the hell can a test add up to two thousand and four hundred? That don’t make sense. Why don’t it just add up to a hundred?” Cracker literally scratches her head.
“Forget it, Cracker. Just go into the army or something,” Lori says.
“Yeah. Go be all you can be!” Natice jokes.
We laugh, and Cracker’s face burns red with embarrassment. She flips us the middle finger. “Why don’t you all sit on this and be all you can fuckin’ be?”
I’m still laughing when Lori yells, “Ally, pull in here!”
I look up and see that she is pointing to the store where Jenny was shot and killed. My smile vanishes, and I feel sick to my stomach. I hadn’t even noticed my surroundings until that moment. I see Cantor High School East on the right.
I turn off the road and park in front of the store.
“Man, I hate this place,” Ronnie says as the car goes silent.
I stare at the glass door wishing I were dead. It triggers a wave of intense sadness that I have to fight back to keep from crying. Everything looks exactly the same as it did on the night Jenny died. In all the time I have been in Cantor, I haven’t once driven past this store. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too afraid. And now, here I am with the girls responsible for her death.
“Natty, you want anything?” Lori asks.
“Nah.”
Lori and Cracker get out.
“Cracker, get me some Slim Jims!” Ronnie yells.
“Get ‘em yourself, fat-ass. I ain’t your bitch.”
“You suck, Cracker. You know that?” Ronnie hops out of the car. She grabs Cracker from behind, and the two playfully fight as they enter the store having a great time.
My eyes grow wet, and the time passes slowly and painfully. I hear a familiar sound. I look in the rearview mirror and see Natice wiping white powder from her nose.
“Want some?” she holds up a small vial.
I shake my head no. “Why does Ronnie hate this place?”
Natice shrugs. “There was a robbery earlier in the year. A girl died. The store just sucks.”
“What happened?”
“She was shot.”
“Somebody you knew?”
“No.” Natice glances out the window, sad.
Suddenly, Lori, Cracker, and Ronnie emerge from the store. Seconds later, they’re back in the car.
“Let’s hit Pop’s!” Lori slides a cigarette in her mouth and sets it ablaze.
I force back the tears and speed out of the parking lot. My hatred of Lori grows to epidemic proportions. I want her dead. I want to rip that lighter out of her hand and set her on fire. I want to watch her scream. I want her to feel unbearable pain. I no longer want to be in the car with any of them, including Natice. If I had a gun in my hand right now, I’d use it.
We cruise past Tray’s house on the way to the pizzeria, and I am still spinning with fury and grief, barely keeping it together, when Ronnie yells, “Oh snap! This fat-ass bitch is crazy!”
I look out the window and see Tonya, the purple-bandana-wearing girl from the Locust Park gang, straddling Vince’s legs as he leans up against his Mercedes. Surrounding Tonya and Vince are the other girls from Tonya’s gang.
“Oh fuck,” Natice says.
“That lyin’ mothafucker! Ally, stop the fuckin’ car!” Lori demands.
I hit the brakes, and before the car even comes to a complete stop, Lori, Cracker, Ronnie, and Natice jump out.
Vince sees Lori heading his way and promptly pushes Tonya away from his crotch.
“Yo, Tonya!” Ronnie shouts.
Tonya turns, and Ronnie throws the forty-ounce bottle she is holding right in Tonya’s face. It lands with a gnarly thud, sending Tonya to eat the asphalt. Two of Tonya’s girls double-team Ronnie, who manages to get one good punch in before she is pummeled to the ground by their fists. Cracker and Natice run to help, pulling the girls off Ronnie and landing a stream of punches. Cracker gets clawed in the face by one girl and then turns into a beast, punching the girl in her head, throat, neck, anywhere her fists will land. Lori grabs another Locust Park girl from behind and slams her to the ground. A switchblade falls from the girl’s hand, and Lori kicks her in the face.
Vince, Tray, and two other buddies holler and crack jokes, while one of Tonya’s girls and another guy help Tonya to sit up. Blood runs down her face, and she looks stunned and disoriented. In her hand, she clutches her purple bandana.
Why did Jenny have to die? And why did one of these girls have to kill her? Anger boils inside me. Tears roll down my face. Unable to take another second of the pain, I throw open the car door and step onto the street. I stalk one of Tonya’s girls from behind, and with my forearm leading the way, I level her. I put my knee against her chest and pin her to the ground as my fist hammers away on her face in a homicidal rage. I punch her again and again and again.
“Ally! Ally!” Natice yanks me off the girl, whose face, along with my fist, is now covered in blood. “Let’s go!”
I stand over the girl’s body, breathing heavily, wondering if she is even alive, until I see her take in a breath and choke on blood.
“Now!” Natice shoves me into the backseat of the Olds, which appears next to us. Ronnie is behind the wheel and speeds away as soon as Natice slams the door.
“Look what the bitch did to me!” Cracker examines her scratched-up face in the side-view mirror.
“Ronnie!” Natice yells. “What the hell?”
“Hey, I can’t help it. I got good aim.”
“From two fuckin’ feet away? How could you miss?” Cracker says.
Then all at once, Ronnie, Lori, and Cracker bust up laughing.
“Shit, y’all crazy!” Natice says, smiling. She looks over at me. “Damn girl, I thought you were gonna kill her.” Her smile vanishes.
I arrive in my motel room and go straight to the bathroom. I click on the light and wash the girl’s dried blood off my throbbing and swollen hand. I’m trembling so badly I can’t stop. Little bursts of air pass my quivering lips. A choked sound emerges from my throat. If it weren’t for Natice, would I have beaten that girl to death? I look up in the mirror. Who am I becoming?
Chapter 41
Ronnie is braiding Cracker’s hair when I arrive at the basketball courts in the park. It’s been two days since I’ve seen the girls, and I haven’t done much with myself other than sleep and ice my hand. The day after the fight, however, I did spend the entire morning calling all the hospitals in Cantor to see if any seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girls had been admitted to the emergency room as a result of a gang fight. Unfortunately, the hospitals were unable to give out any information, although one woman said, “Several young females have visited our emergency room this week.”
“Where the hell you been, hooker?” Natice holds a shoppi
ng bag.
“Grandmother duty.”
“What up, Cheerleader?” Ronnie says.
Lori tries to peek inside the shopping bag, but Natice quickly pulls it away. “Hold up. Not yet!”
They seem to have forgotten the fight with Tonya’s girls, but I can still see it vividly—the blood, the fists, the bottle busting open Tonya’s face.
“Jesus, show us what’s in the bag already,” Cracker says.
Natice swings the bag in front of us. “I got a little something for my girls. Figured we need to be lookin’ good out here.”
“Shit, I already look good.” Ronnie sucks in her stomach and stands tall.
“Now, you’re gonna look better.” Natice pulls a handful of white tank tops out of the bag. They’re numbered with a black diamond on the front of each.
“Come on. Don’t be shy. One for everyone.”
Cracker greedily grabs the Number 1 shirt. “Look at you, being all generous.”
“Ally, what number you want?” Natice asks.
“Number 2,” I say, selecting Jenny’s number.
We clobber the other girls, and I have one of my best games. No one talks about the fight with Tonya and her girls, except for Cracker, who asks Ronnie how the scratch is healing on her face. As it turns out, Cracker is incredibly vain about her looks.
After the game, Lori is off talking with Vince while Cracker, Ronnie, and I sit around drinking water and watching Natice imitate my play. Natice moves her hips quickly from side to side then spins around. “Ally shook the shit outta that girl!”
I laugh at her impression of me. I feel my arm being nudged.
It’s Cracker. “Yo, Cheerleader, how many points you have today?”
“I don’t know… eighteen?”
Cracker takes the number in, aware that I scored more than she did. “Where’d you learn that move?”
“My dad taught me.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. I can teach you if you want.”
“A’right. One of these days, I’m gonna beat you on points.”
“Well, hurry up, already.”
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