24. Autumn
Autumn
“At the risk of sounding insensitive of your accident, I’ve gotta know: are you ever going to get your license?”
Wyn’s bundled up in my passenger seat with a bright green bucket hat and oversized glasses covering most of her face. I would think she’s hungover, but I smell the margarita in her thermos that she takes a sip of.
“Who says I don’t have my license?”
“Uh, the fact you never drive. You’ve never driven anywhere, ever.”
She takes another sip of her drink. “Why would I drive drunk, Auty? That’s irresponsible.”
I roll my eyes and take the exit in Hudsonville that the GPS tells me to take. “So you’re saying that was the case when we were seventeen and I got my license and you didn’t?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, sis.” She grins at me. “Getting behind the wheel drunk is just asking to die. Or worse, killing someone. And I can’t… I don’t wanna hurt anyone else.”
I glance at my sister as she takes a larger gulp. G-Pops words circle in my head, and I reach over and grab her hand.
“You said you went to rehab–”
“I’m the big sister, Auty,” she says, squeezing my hand back. “You don’t worry about me. I’m supposed to worry about you.”
“You’re six minutes older than me, Wyn.”
“And yet, my birthday’s a whole day before.” She takes one more sip before placing her thermos in the cupholder. “Turkey better not ever say I don’t fuck with him. I’ve been avoiding this nigga for I don’t know how long and now I’m willingly seeking him out.”
I pull up to our destination, a small bungalow in a quiet neighborhood. It doesn’t look rundown, but my Beamer feels out of place with all the older models of sedans and minivans.
“How do you even know he’s here?”
She unbuckles her seatbelt. “Because this is his grandparents’ house. C’mon.”
I get out the car and take the piece of gum Wyn offers while we trudge up the steps. She rings the doorbell and takes her sunglasses off, tucking them in the collar of her hoodie.
“How many times have you been here?” I ask.
The door opens before she can answer, revealing a tired Shad.
His hair’s in a knot on the top of his head and his wife beater is loose and stained. His sweats aren’t any better either.
He glances at me before narrowing his eyes at Wyn, who just smiles at him like he’s giving her a million dollars.
“Everyone’s been looking for you.” She steps over the threshold and circles her arms around him. “I’m so sorry about Raya and your mom, Shaddy.”
He looks down at her like she has three heads before shifting to me. I start to give my condolences but he gives me a single shake of the head and I close my mouth again.
He backs more into the house, taking Wyn with him since she refuses to let go, so I come in, too, and close the door behind me.
The plastic on the couches and entertainment center that takes up an entire wall tells me Wyn wasn’t lying when she said this was his grandparents’ house. Only older people have pictures covering every square inch of the wall like this.
Despite Shad looking like he needs a shower, the small living room is spotless.
He pries Wyn’s hands off him and we all take a seat, making weird noises as the plastic rubs on each other.
Shad clears his throat. “I know I gave Brina a scare, but I figured since Set hasn’t reached out no one was tripping foreal… I just needed a break to get my mind right.”
Wyn and I share a glance before she gestures for me to do the talking.
Weak ass.
“So… Set was shot.”
Shad sinks into the couch and covers his eyes with his hand.
“He’s alive, Shad,” Wyn assures, knocking her thigh into mine. “He’s recovering slowly and he went home this morning. But shit’s all fucked up, and you’re the only one who can help–”
“Of course I am,” he mumbles, but sits back up straight and grabs a half-smoked blunt off the ashtray on the coffee table. He lights it before glaring at us again. “Aight. Start from the beginning.”
He and Wyn smoke that and another blunt while I go over recent events. Shad’s eyes are low once I’m done, catching my breath from talking so much.
“I’m thinking Patience had a perm all this time, when she’s really Pocahontas,” Wyn blurts. Shad cracks a lazy smile when I slap her arm.
“That’s racially insensitive, bitch.”
Wyn bucks her eyes at me and hits me back. “I’ll have you know I can say that. We got Cherokee in us!”
Shad gets up and goes into the back while we go back and forth about her ancestry.
“Wyn, we’re Black.”
“Pfft, you’re Black. I’m a ginger.” She pulls her lips into a smug grin.
“Bitch you haven’t been a ginger since we were fourteen. Besides, Black people can be gingers. Remember Isaiah?”
Wyn looks away wistfully. “Oh yeah, huh? I wonder what he’s up to. He was so cute.”
I snort. “Yeah, he looked like the male version of you. God, you’re so narcissistic.”
She just flips her hair over her shoulder and wiggles her eyebrows at me. “You know hateful banter is my foreplay, Auty.”
“Y’all are so weird.”
We look up and see Shad, freshly showered though his clothes still aren’t stretching over his mountain of muscles like we’re used to seeing.
“I know your life is imploding, but I would think that would make you be in the gym more,” Wyn says.
Shad’s lips twitch as he walks over to stand in front of her. “Thought you said you were done drinking?”
She shrugs her shoulders and holds her hands out to him. “I’m a liar, Shad. I lied.”
He helps her up and gathers her in his arms.
I’ve never seen Shad and Wyn be like this with each other. Last I checked, they hated each other’s guts.
I feel my eyes bulging as I give them my undivided attention.
“You can’t go on like this, Wyn.” He rests the side of his face on her hat.
“Yeah, Shaddy. Well, you can’t either.” She taps his chest before twisting out of his hold and walking toward the back.
I stand and hug my baby bro. “Shad–”
“Don’t, Autumn.” He squeezes me briefly before letting go. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t know what Brina told you but–”
“Don’t you dare say you’re fine, Shad,” I hiss. “Your sister… your mom… we can table this. We don’t even have to talk about it. But don’t lie to me and say you’re fine. You’re out here hiding in the boonies off the grid! Then you had a seizure… since when do you have epilepsy?”
He averts his eyes and scratches his elbow. “I don’t… it was extreme stress. That’s why I’m here, off the grid. But clearly shit goes to hell when Shaddy’s not around.”
He tries to give me one of his panty-dropping smiles, but he should know better. That shit drops, and he rolls his eyes and gives me his back. I follow him into what I’m guessing is his old room, seeing as how there’s old Ironman posters on the wall next to a giant computer station.
Wyn’s sitting cross-legged on his twin-sized bed like she’s done it a hundred times, scrolling on her phone.
“What’s going on here?” I whisper to her.
“What?” she replies loudly, and I roll my eyes.
“Fine, bitch. Are you and Shad hunching?” I say to the room.
Wyn tries to laugh me off but that blush that’s creeping on her cheeks ain’t from the tequila she downed this morning.
“Have we fucked, Wyn?” Shad asks, fingertips still flying across his keyboard.
She cuts her eyes to the back of his head before focusing on her phone. “No, Auty. Shad’s not obsessed with me because he got a sample of Miss Snowflake.”
“Why is your–you know what, nevermind.”
“I’m not obsessed–”
“No, Auty,” she interrupts him, raising her voice.
The air in the room changes, and she sticks her phone in her pocket.
“Shad is doing what Shad always does. He’s running from all his big feelings by worrying about everyone else!
Even when they never asked him to worry.
Well guess what, Shad: I went to rehab like we said.
Have you been to therapy? Didn’t think so.
” She gets off the bed and mushes the back of his head before walking out. “I’ll be in the car.”
Shad grabs a CD and inserts it into his old school hard drive. The only sounds for a little are his computer fan.
“She really went to rehab?” he finally asks.
I glance at the screen and see that he has surveillance from the basketball game, so I get up and stand behind him.
His screen is split into four different angles.
One is facing our friends, Turk, and Pay.
One is zoomed in to face the First Nations.
One is facing the street and one is zoomed in to face the court.
He presses play and we see Turk whip his gun and aim at Grimey.
“She said she did go, but we honestly just got back cool a few months ago. Maybe she went after her accident?”
Shad hits some more buttons and the recordings slow down. We see frame by frame everyone get down. Cochise is shot first, with Set immediately after, but no one else. Shad starts typing furiously, and freezes the frame on the street perspective.
It’s blurry, from being so far away. But I still make out a dark car with a blob hanging out the window.
“Is there any way you can clean that up?”
“Yeah. But the other footage should be enough to get Nut off Turk. I’ll write a program to clean it up as much as I can then find more footage of the car now that we know what we’re looking for.
But at least we know for sure it didn’t have shit to do with Patience…
it looks like Cochise wasn’t supposed to get shot, and whoever was driving swerved so no one else could get hit.
I gotta get back to my own shit for my programs, though. Can I ride back with y’all?”
I hook my arm around his neck and kiss his temple. “Of course. But I’m taking you to Set’s. You need to put eyes on your brother, and Brina needs to do something with this hair.”
Shad ejects the CD and puts it in a case. After rummaging through his closet, he pulls out a vintage portable DVD player, puts the CD in the zipper pocket, and hands it to me.
“Does this–”
“Yes, it still works. C’mon.”