DIO PRESS PLAY
DIO
PRESS PLAY
“Ahh!” I grunted after carrying Joshua’s brick body ass on my back.
The Big Brothers paced back and forth, taunting, laughing, and screaming at us. “Number Four, who are the founders!?” Stay Fly yelled.
Brian stuttered and stumbled before he began to speak.
“Taking too fucking long!” Spitta hissed before chucking a tennis ball at his stomach. “Down, Slimes!” he then shouted.
More push-ups. It wasn’t that we didn’t know the information because we did. It was the torture that threw us off. It was fucking up how our brains functioned under pressure, and they knew that.
“Chain Two!” Freaky Zekey shouted.
We hopped up and locked arms. My chest heaved in and out because I knew this nigga Thick Neck had been itching to ask me a question.
My eyes focused straight ahead to see two people lurking in the woods not too far from us.
I blew hot air through my nose as Thick Neck stood in front of me.
He sucked his teeth, then smiled. Every time he did that fucked-up grin, I wanted to rip his face off.
Every time I thought about him with his arms around Samara, I wanted to cut a hole in his throat and rip his fucking vocal cords out.
I wanted to stomp on the nigga’s head and watch that bitch flatten with each pound of a steel boot. Leader, my ass, I thought.
“Number Seven, give me the Greek Alphabet in fucking order!”
I sucked in a deep breath and let that shit go, “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi.” I paused. “Chi, Chi, Chi!” I shouted and continued. “Psi, and Omega!”
I watched as the other Big Brothers nodded in approval. “Whew, shit! Number Seven saved y’all niggas!” Stay Fly yelled.
I could tell it bothered Thick Neck. He rolled his eyes as he stood back. “Remember, no excuses. You are responsible for your brother! We are one!”
As he rambled on, Freaky Zekey and Spitta began to blindfold us.
“Man, come on,” Quan whined.
Suddenly, I felt the wind being knocked out of me as one of those balls flew into my stomach. It hit me so hard, I threw up.
“Get it together, Number Seven!” Thick Neck yelled. “We’re coming up on Hell Week, and it will be hell! Let’s play Catch a Slime. Y’all have five minutes to find your way back to the road. We will be watching, and those fucking blindfolds better not come off. Your time starts now!” he shouted.
I started to move. “Where are y’all niggas at!” I yelled.
They began calling out, but it sounded like they were all over the place. I began clapping my hands, signaling them to follow the sound. “Keep talking so I can find y’all!” I told them.
“I’m over here!” I heard Jeremiah.
I moved toward his voice but then felt a splash of ice-cold fucking water hit my back. “Oh shit!” I howled.
The sound of Brian’s whining caught my attention, too. These niggas were torturing us as we went through the woods.
“Principles! Let me hear it,” I heard one of the Big Brothers who started sounding faint as I moved through quickly with my hands out, trying to guide myself.
“Dio,” I heard a familiar voice whispering.
I knew I had to be tripping because there was no way I heard Mars. “Dio, it’s me, Samara.”
I stopped because hearing her sweet voice did something to me. Then I began to think about her hugging up with that nigga.
“Mars, get the fuck out of here, now,” I tried to whisper.
“But I need—”
I shook my head. “Samara, listen to me. Get out of here. Whatever you want to say needs to wait.”
That’s when I felt her soft hand touch me. A nigga wanted to break. I went to remove the blindfold when her hand felt as if it had been snatched away.
“Mars,” I whispered.
Moments later, I felt my body being snatched back and dragged like the very first day on the line, only this time, I didn’t fight back. My body was tossed onto the ground.
“You worried about a bitch, when your brothers are waiting on you. Gods don’t leave their people hanging,” Thick Neck grumbled in my ear.
“Like you did with your best friend Percy?” I muttered.
Kick! Kick! Kick!
His foot met my stomach, making it hard for me to even speak. It took me a while to get up, but when I did, I snatched the blindfold off. The nigga was right there in my face. “Drop the line, Slime. Drop, drop, drop, drop.”
“I’m a Chi man!” I shouted. “If it ain’t about Chi, then why?! We’re strong, we’re solid, and we’re dogs!”
Nose to nose.
He wanted me to drop, but I wasn’t. I knew he was the problem.
He was the reason fraternities had a bad name.
It wasn’t the organization as a whole, but the ones who now had voices, the ones who went from being the unseen to being sought after.
The nerds to being the popular. The quiet to the loudest, and the broken to the partially whole.
These were the ones who snatched titles and destroyed those they thought looked down on them.
But what Jesaiah failed to realize was that I was the loudest and the most popular, and I’d never been whole.
I was broken with a tortured soul but had the heart of a demon.
When you unleash something like that in a nigga that isn’t wrapped too tight, it doesn’t matter what is achieved, what is morally right, or what’s ethical because all I saw was orange.
***
I rushed toward Avery Hall. When I got to Street’s door, I banged on that muhfucka like my life depended on it. He swung the door open as if he had just woken up.
“Where that nigga at?” I barked.
He held his hand out. “Ayo, nigga, stop the yelling, and who the fuck are you talking about?”
I glanced around the room to see the empty bed across from Streets. “Percy. Where is he?”
Streets shrugged. “Shit, I came in here one day, and the nigga was gone. Who told you that nigga was my roommate because I never told you?”
I cut my eyes at him. “Niggas talk. You know where I can find him?”
“No, what’s good? We’re riding out or what?” he asked.
I glanced down at his foot. “You can’t help me, peg leg. I just need to find him.”
That was when an idea struck me. I didn’t trust Jesaiah at all. I knew he was watching me. If I left campus to go try to talk to Samara, he was going to be on my ass.
“Get Samara here. Don’t tell anybody why she’s here. Just bring her ass to your room. When she’s inside, call me.”
He looked confused. “Oh, so you want to use my shit to fuck in. Hell nah!”
I ran my hand over my face. “Streets, nigga, for once, can you listen to somebody? Stop thinking about yourself and do what I asked. Get her here and call me,” I repeated.
It was time for us to have another talk, but this time, without the yelling. If I had to guess, he saw her, and I needed her to stay the fuck away. I knew she wouldn’t listen to anybody else, but if I told her, she would.