Who Can I Trust: A Naptown Hood Drama (Trust Issues Book 1)

by Tamicka Higgins

  “Girl, that’s not all,” Kayla said, deciding to go ahead and finish with the story. “There’s more.”

  “There’s more?” Myesha asked.

  “So, I was sittin’ at the hospital, in the little waiting area outside of Marcus room with his mama, right?” Kayla said.

  “Right, right,” Myesha said.

  Just then, Kayla could hear the front door open and close downstairs. She knew that it was Latrell and Linell going outside to play in the snow. Within minutes, she could hear them talking amongst themselves out front. She focused back on her conversation with Myesha.

  “And Marcus’ boys Brandon and Juan come walking off of the elevator,” Kayla said.

  “You not cool with them anymore or something?” Myesha asked. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I mean,” Kayla said. “We cool and stuff, I mean... I don’t hang out with them like that or anything. It’s not like they be over at Marcus’s place at the same time that I be over there. The couple of times they have been, they was leaving as I was getting there so it was just a high and by sort of thing. Ain’t like we go out for drinks or anything like that.”

  “I see, I see,” Myesha said.

  “Yeah, so anyway,” Kayla said. “They was there and when they went and sat down in the other part of the waiting are, you know, more over towards the elevator door and stuff, Miss Lorna told me how she really felt about them and what she’d heard about them.”

  “Huh?” Myesha asked. “What she’d heard about them? Girl, tell me.”

  Kayla filled Myesha in on everything she could remember that Marcus’ mama Lorna had told her at the hospital. And of course, Myesha was just about as surprised as Kayla was earlier when hearing about how Brandon and Juan had had another friend who wound up getting killed back whenever.

  “Girl, I know that’s yo man and stuff,” Myesha warned, completely cutting the conversation off. “But you really need to watch yourself. Girl, you really need to be careful. You know I’m your girl and I love you like a sister. And I really do mean that. But, to me, it sounds as if that nigga done got caught up in some shit. I mean, it is so obvious. I just wonder what, and how far is whoever willing to go for whatever happened. Think about it. You said he was looking out of the window or patio door or whatever and was looking like he was waiting or looking for somebody. Then he suddenly start talkin’ about movin’ away. Now you say his mama done heard some bad shit about his friends. You know how some niggas are. They will set somebody up in a minute. Wait a second, though. Is Marcus moving like that? Is he really out there like that to where he’d be gettin’ that kind of attention?”

  Kayla took in everything that her best friend was saying to her. Another tear slid down her eye while her heart pumped lightly with fear. The very idea that whoever had shot up Marcus’ apartment could decide to come back and try again just made her tremble. She then started to think about what Marcus talked about with her about how he was doing with making his money. They spent so much time together where they talked about any and everything – that real friend bond was there – and Kayla hated the fact that she was coming up mostly blank on that particular subject. She knew that these were things she probably would not have if it was not for him.

  “I guess he doin’ good,” Kayla said. “I just wanna know who did this, Myesha. This is some scary shit. Just to think…what if they come back.”

  “Don’t think that,” Myesha said. “Don’t think that. Plus, they might have just been doin’ it to scare him or something.”

  “Girl, what the fuck you talkin’ bout?” Kayla asked. “To scare him? Are you serious? Scaring somebody is like two, maybe three or even four bullets. Whoever came up in his apartments got him with I don’t know how many. It was a lot more than four or five, I do know that.”

  “Awe,” Myesha said. “Well damn, girl, you ain’t tell me that. Like I said, though, you really need to watch out and shit with this. I don’t like this at all. Maybe you better keep your distance until somebody figure out who this is or something. Where is he gon’ stay when he get out of the hospital?”

  “Girl, I don’t know,” Kayla answered. “When I left the hospital, he was still knocked out from surgery, so I still haven’t got to talk with him. I guess he would probably go stay with his mama.”

  “I don’t know if he should do that,” Myesha said. “I mean, they might be people that he knows so they might know where his mama stay. Of course, I don’t know, but I’m just saying. He need to stay somewhere that won’t nobody be looking for him. I know that is what I would do.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Kayla said. “I’mma talk to him about all of this when I go up to the hospital later on cause I just got too much I need to know first. This has been one fucked up day for me.”

  “Yeah, it sound like it,” Myesha said. “Well, girl, I was just texting you to see what you was up to. Please, think about what I said. Watch yourself cause these niggas is crazy out here nowadays and some of them will kill any damn body.”

  “Girl, I know,” Kayla said, rubbing her forehead.

  “Alright,” Myesha said. “Make sure you hit me up later when you leave the hospital or something so I know how you feeling.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  They hung up the call. Kayla dropped her phone onto her bed and turned over onto her other side. For the next several minutes, she would try to go to sleep. She would go for long spurts of lying there, with her eyes closed, faced away from the bright light of the window. Nonetheless, it did not work. It was like she was tired, but too shaken to go to sleep. There was just too much going through her mind for it to allow itself some rest.

  Eventually, she noticed that she could still hear Latrell and Linell talking out in the front yard. Since she didn’t know how cold it was supposed to be getting out there, she went ahead and got herself out of bed. She headed downstairs so that she could tell her brother and sister to come inside. The last thing she really needed right then was two sick kids whose own mother could not be counted on to help them.

  When Kayla got downstairs to the front door, she pulled it open and cringed as the cold winter wind slammed into her body. She got Latrell and Linell’s attention.

  “Come on back inside,” she said. “Warm up a little bit.”

  Without arguing, Latrell and Linell dropped the snow they had been playing with and darted up to the front porch and into the living room. Quickly, almost as soon as Linell’s foot was over the doorway’s threshold, Kayla pushed the door closed.

  “Marcus not here, is he?” Latrell asked.

  Upon hearing those words, Kayla quickly snapped around and looked at her younger brother. He was pulling his hat off then sliding out of his big black coat. Kayla wondered why in the world Latrell would ask a question like that. It was almost scary how coincidental such a thing could be.

  “Naw, he ain’t here,” Kayla answered. “Why? Why would you ask that?”

  “Cause,” Linell said.

  “Yeah,” Latrell said. “These two guys asked and we told them no, but I wasn’t sure and we didn’t want to come all the way in and ask you.”

  Kayla felt her heart start beating so fast that it was practically thumping out of her chest. Quickly, she turned around and looked through the blinds and out toward the front yard and street. Calm is the only way to describe what she saw – no people, no cars that she did not know, and a couple of birds in the sky.

  “What two dudes?” she asked. “Who the hell were you two out there talkin’ to? What did I tell you about talkin’ to people that you don’t know?”

  “I swear, Kayla,” Latrell said. “We didn’t talk to them. They just stopped as they was goin’ down the street and asked if Marcus was here. I just told him that he wasn’t.”

  Kayla rushed passed Latrell and Linell and into the dining room, not even sure herself where she was going. She turned back around and looked at her brother and sister.

  “What they look like?” she asked. “What
kind of car they was driving?”

  Latrell shrugged. “A couple of black dudes,” he answered. “And they was in a black car.”

  “A black car?” Kayla asked, doing so loudly and with her eyes bugged out on her face.

  Linell looked at her older sister than to her twin brother. “Yeah, a black car,” she said. “Why? What’s wrong, Kayla?”

  “Yeah,” Latrell said. “What’s wrong?”

  Kayla thought about how some of the last words she had had with Marcus up to this point were about what the people looked like that pulled up in the parking lot and started to fire at his apartment. She was breathing deeply at this point, and her head was starting to shake while her own body trembled.

  “Don’t worry about it, y’all,” Kayla said to her little brother and sister. “Just chill out. You right, Marcus ain’t here. I just wanted to know who it was that would be asking if Marcus was here. If anybody ask you somethin’ like that again, I want you to tell them that you don’t know no Marcus. Okay?”

  Linell and Latrell both agreed to what their older sister was saying before one headed to the kitchen the other back into the living room and in front of the television. There Kayla stood, in the dining room leaning on a chair at the dining room table. She had never felt fear strike like this in her body for one day in her life. At that very moment she realized that whoever had shot up Marcus’ place earlier that day must know where she lived. And that was the oh so scary part.

  Chapter 4

  Kayla finally decided to head back up to the hospital around 7 o’clock. She felt like that was the right time not only because evening rush hour traffic would not be an issue, but also because her mother had woken up. Kayla had to be sure to avoid really talking to her mother before she walked out the door. Luckily, her mother had been in the kitchen cooking when she finally got her clothes on. For a split second, she thought about telling her mother about the guys asking Latrell and Linell if Marcus was there. She did not know why she was thinking to do that, but there was something in her soul telling her that maybe she should say something. Going against her gut feeling, she decided not to. Marcus was not going to be there, and she wasn’t going to be gone for long.

  Kayla looked through the living room blinds, scanning the front of her house. In so many ways, it was eerie how she had found herself looking outside in the same way that Marcus had been earlier. Once she saw everything was good, and had figured that she was probably being way too paranoid, she pulled the door open and headed out into the already-dark evening. With no cars rolling down the street and the nearest busy street being somewhat dead, Kayla could only hear her own breathing as she crunched down the walkway between the front porch and the sidewalk. She could tell that it was starting to get really cold that night. When she breathed out of her mouth, it was very evident in the air. Plus, the side of her face stung so hard, especially at the particular moments when the wind would blow. Because Paris was such a narrow street to begin with, when the wind would blow down it, it would feel and seem a lot like a tunnel. This was especially so during the wintertime.

  Kayla pulled her keys out of her coat pocket as she was making her way around the back of the car. As soon as she got inside, she immediately locked the doors. After starting he car and allowing it to warm up for a few minutes, she carefully pulled off, careful to not get stuck in a rut in the snow, and headed down to the stop sign. She rolled through and headed down to Fall Creek Place. Little did Kayla know, however, is that she was being watched at that stop sign. Soon enough, there were headlights behind her. They stayed so far back that she never even noticed them.

  ***

  “Man,” Brandon said, looking down over his boy Marcus in his hospital bed. “We gon’ find the niggas that did this shit.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said, feeling a little hazy from being out for the surgery. “This is definitely some fucked up shit. Man, I’m just happy that Kayla didn’t get hit or nothin’.”

  “Yeah, I feel you on that,” Juan said. He then glanced through the glass of the hospital room door and into the lobby. He could feel Marcus’ mama’s cold eyes on him and his boy Brandon. In fact, for as long as he could remember during the time that he had been boys with Marcus, his mama had always had this look on her face when she looked at them. Juan was not the kind of dude to sweat it, though. He rarely saw the woman to begin with. “We just glad that you made it.”

  “Yeah, nigga,” Brandon said. “When Kayla called me tellin’ me what happened, I couldn’t believe that shit. I was at the crib, chillin’, you know, and I thought it was you callin’ but it was actually her. You said you ain’t see the two niggas in the black car all that well.”

  “I mean, I did,” Marcus said. “But I can’t describe’em or nothin’. It wasn’t like they had blue hair or anything like that. They were just a couple of niggas. I was standing at the window, looking out and that’s when they came pullin’ up.”

  “Nigga, you betta be glad that you was watchin’ your back,” Brandon said. “Just think if you hadn’t have been checking out the window and shit, like a real nigga do, think about how this would have ended.”

  “Man, I know,” Marcus said, really taking a couple of moments to think about such a scenario. Ever since he had woken up after the surgery, he could feel a little tense. Slowly but surely, whatever numbing stuff the hospital had given him was going to wear off. He could only wonder how he was going to feel once that happen. Plus, on top of all that, as soon as he woke up, the doctor was there to give him even more news: he wouldn’t be able to use his arm for a while and he would have to go to physical therapy. He felt lucky that he was still on his mother’s health insurance. If he had not be, this really could have turned out to be a really bad situation. Nonetheless, he was happy that he made it another day. However, he could not help but to feel a little rage. The moment his eyes opened, he knew deep down that as soon as he got back to being 100 percent, he was going whoever pulled the trigger.

  The elevator door pinged in the distance. Stepping off of it was Kayla. At first, Marcus did not notice, but once he heard his mama talking, he automatically looked out into the hallway. Now more than ever, he wanted to lay up with his woman and just talk to her. He remembered the very moment that he got hit. When he fell to the ground, the last thing on his mind was Kayla. She had just gone into the bathroom, right before the car pulled up and bullets started flying into the windows. He went back to focusing on Brandon and Juan, letting Kayla chat with his mama because he knew how worried she probably would have to have been with finding out that her son was in the hospital with a bullet in the shoulder.

  Kayla walked up to Lorna, kneeled down, and hugged her. She glanced at Marcus’ room, seeing that Brandon and Juan were standing on either side of it and obviously engaged in conversation.

  “So, what’s the latest?” Kayla asked, as she was still deciding whether or not to bring up the guys in the black car that had rolled by her place. “Anything?”

  Lorna looked at her son’s hospital room then back to Kayla. “Well,” she started. “The police came up here, or detectives or whatever. They went asking questions, you know how they always do. Marcus answered, but I don’t think they got much to go on from him. It sound like he don’t know who did this or why.” Lorna shrugged. “I don’t know. He a man now, so he gotta make his own choices. I can’t make’em for him. I just wish these couple of niggas would leave. Whew, I just don’t trust.”

  “I was thinkin’ bout what you said,” Kayla said, not really sure of where she was going and how far she was going to go. “And I feel you on what you was saying about Brandon and Juan.”

  “Hmm, hmm,” Lorna said.

  “But I just don’t know if I think that they did it,” Kayla said. “I just don’t know if I think that they were the ones that shot up Marcus’ apartment.”

  Lorna grinned, hating that she had to be the mature person in the entire situation and have the wherewithal to give some benefit of the doubt.

>   “Maybe they didn’t,” she said, reluctantly. “But, still. They might not have been the ones to actually pull the trigger. I give them that. Maybe they did not do that part. But I bet you this…I bet you them niggas had something to do with whoever did. There are just one too many coincidences going on with them for me to not think there is some connection, if you know what I mean. I text my girlfriend earlier and asked her if she knew some more about whatever friend they used to have that got killed too, but she ain’t text me back yet. I wanna know what she got to say and what she maybe know about what all happened. I wish I could remember more from the first time people told me, but shit, I forget now.”

  Just then, Brandon and Juan came walking down the hall. Immediately, Lorna noticed and looked up as the two of them approached the chairs.

  “Well we gon’ go ahead and leave now,” Brandon said while Juan nodded.

  “Oh, okay,” Lorna said, in a voice that was clearly being forced to sound nice. “Well, y’all just make sure y’all be careful out there. And see what you hear and make sure you let me know.”

  “We will,” Juan said.

  Brandon looked at Kayla. “He saw you when you came in,” he said. “You know he waitin’ to see you.”

  Kayla looked passed Brandon and Juan. There, her eyes met with Marcus’ eyes, as he was smiling at her. She smiled back as she stood up, knowing that soon enough her smile would turn into a serious tone because she needed answers to make sense of some things. Now that she knew that Juan and Brandon had been up at the hospital all of this time, she knew that they were not the two dudes that Latrell and Linell had said they’d seen when they were playing out in the snow. Still, however, Miss Lorna had a good point. Brandon and Juan may not have pulled the trigger but they may have had something to do with whoever did. What and why that could be, Kayla still did not know.