9. Autumn
Autumn
Incessant ringing brings me out a deep sleep. Since I’m one of the few that came to do my clinicals here, eight-hour shifts are now twelve. The good news is, I’ll be done with my hours early. The bad news is I’m dog tired all the time.
Today is my first off day in what feels like forever, and I wanted to sleep in. I wanted to sleep all day, actually. But of course, someone’s disturbing me.
It could only be four people. But Deuce is at school. And Turk knows I’m sleeping. And Patience and I haven’t spoken in weeks.
So it really could only be one person.
I turn my phone off and turn over.
But that would never deter my twin sister, who barges into the guesthouse I’m staying in and jumps onto the bed.
“Wakey, wakey. I know you’re off, and you’re spending it with me!”
“Go. Away.”
The comforter is snatched from my body and I hold in a scream.
“No. Part of me being here is so we can be sisters. I know you’re tired.
I commend you, really, but besides going to dinner with Deucey two weeks ago we haven’t spent any time together.
So, get up!” She grabs my wrists and pulls me into a sitting position, making me groan.
“Get dressed. You can lay down in the studio, but you need to brush your teeth cause we won’t be alone. ”
I finally open my eyes and look at my beautiful sister grinning next to me.
Makeup covers her freckles, and a 613 bussdown forty inch wig covers her naturally rust-colored hair.
It hangs around her like a curtain, and the no baby hair look makes it look natural.
There’s one scar an inch long on her jaw from when they had to wire it shut after her accident, but the makeup covers it.
Most of her scars from the accident are on her arms, which is why she’s been getting tattoos to cover them.
A few weeks ago she got a phoenix. Before that was a rendition of herself as Sailor Moon covering the top of her right arm.
The colors are fire, and it is covering all the scars, but I want to tell her she doesn't have to do this. She doesn’t have to cover herself, like she’s always done. Always afraid to be her true self.
“We only going to the studio?”
Her grin morphs into a smirk and I immediately groan. “Wyn–”
“Just the studio then the tattoo shop. I want you to come with me to that. Please? Pretty please?”
I cringe, an unwanted flashback coming to me when she begs like that. My eyes close and I rub them furiously, trying to clear my mind of that.
“Fine,” I sigh. “Give me twenty.”
Wynter squeals. “I’ll be in the main house!” She hops off the bed and leaves me to get dressed.
This is what you wanted. I keep repeating this as I go through my morning routine.
When I first told Rico I accepted this job, and Wynter’s invitation to stay with her while she works on her album, he just sat there, and let me over explain myself for twenty minutes.
Then he lifted his shirt to show me the scar from the bullet he had removed the night Foe Dub took over the Birch.
He does that any time I mention Wyn.
You’d think, being a twin himself, he’d understand why I can never fully cut her off, even when she writes me off herself.
Even when she was off living her rapper dreams, I still sent her photos of me and Deucey. She still was the first person to tell me happy birthday, even though we’re born on different days. And I ate it up every time.
So yeah, I’m happy that she wants to spend the day with me. That she woke me up, when I’m running on maybe twenty hours for the whole week, for me to go to the studio where I know I won’t be getting any sleep. I’m happy she’s keeping her word on trying to be a better sister, and starting over.
I slide on some thick leggings and my furry boots with a maroon cropped hoodie, since Wyn complains that they keep the studio freezing.
I refresh my low slicked bun, and rebrush my baby hairs and apply some gloss.
A wig has been calling my fucking name, but it’s been easier to just keep my real hair in a bun.
I’d rather keep my real hair in a bun than fuck up one of my wigs keeping it in a ponytail like some of the other nurses I see.
The only thing about my schedule is I don’t have time to work out as much, so I’ve been really conscious of my eating. Pay is a health junkie, and four years of being up under her have rubbed off on me.
Fuck. I miss my baby.
But fuck her. She got me fucked up.
I make sure my twenty-two is in my Chanel and shoulder it.
Wyn doesn’t wait for me in the main house.
As soon as I open my front door she’s there.
“Oh, great! I’m right on time.” She grabs my hand and leads me out front where my car is parked.
She doesn’t drive, at all, but I know her boyfriend Cochise always has someone take her anywhere she needs to go.
Geyser City’s not as big as Kenton, but it’s up and coming for sure. And from what Wyn told me, their underground music scene is huge, which is why she and Cochise decided to rent the mansion to work on their respective albums. She called my assignment fate, and honestly, I think so, too.
Her GPS leads me to a nondescript building, and I park in the back parking lot. It’s already packed, and I groan inwardly. I know that most of the time studio sessions have hella people, but them East Kenton niggas are a different breed. They put the ugh in gutta.
Think, if Native Americans decided to be crips.
That’s the Get Money niggas.
Wyn gave me a crash course so I don’t say the wrong thing around her boyfriend Cochise and his friends months ago. But I work so much, besides when we all went to dinner with Deucey, I haven’t seen anyone else.
I guess that’s about the change.
We exit the car and go through the back door. Wyn opens the second door on the right, and weed immediately suffocates me. These muthafuckas are smoking straight gas.
I’m getting a contact high.
It’s five niggas in the studio, not including the nerdy looking engineer. All of them have on blue in some way.
Wyn immediately goes to Cochise, who’s sitting on a black leather couch. She gets on his lap and immediately starts making out with him.
Sheesh. Is that how me and Pay look?
“Damn, she fine. Wyn, who dis?”
I take a seat in the recliner next to Cochise and Wyn, partly because it’s the closest seat to the door, partly because I don’t know these niggas foreal.
“My bad, this is my sister Autumn. Auty you know Cochise. That’s PC, Trippy, Sheisty, and Grimey.”
I nod wassup and take all of them in. PC and Sheisty look straight Native American, from the skin tone to the long straight hair in braids. PC’s eyes are a piercing green, and Sheisty has a tribal tattoo from his bottom lip to his chin, but other than that I can tell they’re related.
Trippy’s so tall he’s probably my height still sitting. He’s by the engineer, fiddling with the knobs.
When my eyes slide to Grimey, my breath hitches.
He’s light, with a peanut butter brown complexion, with six silky braids on the top of his head.
He’s tall, like the rest, with a full beard, and broad shoulders.
He’s staring right back at me, licking those full lips of his before smiling.
But it’s not a friendly smile at all. My eyes shift down to the G$ tattoo covering the entire front of his neck.
He’s only wearing a wife beater, though it’s a little nippy, and I see through the thin material his body is littered with more tattoos.
The most striking one is of a black footed swift fox on his forearm.
“Like what you see?” he says before he smirks.
“Leave her alone, Grimey. Autumn is a lesbian.” Wyn winks at me before grabbing the blunt from Cochise.
“That don’t mean shit. My old bitch liked girls, too, and was still addicted to this pipe.” Grimey cackles but I notice PC and Cochise tense.
“Watch it, nigga,” Cochise growls.
Grimey waves him off. “Whatever nigga. You know what I mean. You ready Wyn? Trippy play that shit.”
Trippy plays the beat back and it’s fire. I watch Wyn bob her head before grabbing the composition book and a pencil off the coffee table. She scribbles some words, erases some, before writing more, still bobbing her head.
I’m kind of in awe watching her creative process.
When she first started freestyling on live, it was something fun.
She would set her phone up in her car, spark a blunt, and just go crazy.
Being known around Kenton for fucking with Set, she already had a following.
I never knew she took it seriously though.
She always downplayed it. Even when she started hanging with the Get Money niggas, and even when she dropped her mixtape.
She acted like it was no big deal, before she stopped fucking with me altogether.
So to see her now, really in the zone, I can’t help the corners of my mouth lifting. I can’t help cheering her on in my mind as she fills the page with lyrics.
The beat is about three minutes long, so it’s over kinda quick.
“What you think?” Trippy asks, twirling toward us in the chair.
“It’s fire, but you knew that. Send that to me, so I can work more on the lyrics. Gimme fifteen.”
“Fasho.” Trippy turns more knobs and Wyn’s phone dings. She grabs some industrial looking headphones and plug them into her phone.
“Ay, you know that nigga Shotta, right?”
“Grimey–”
“Nah, let her answer, cuz.”
I look between Cochise, Wyn, and Grimey, before I nod my head.
“So you be with them Foe Dub niggas then?” Sheisty asks, head still in his laptop.
“Not too much,” I smirk.
Cochise sits up, adjusting Wynter in his lap. Those headphones must be noise cancelling, because she’s completely zoned out. She told me in so many words these niggas be on that bullshit like our friends, and I’m trying to remember I’m just a girl.