Lady Luney
Wyn, age 15
To this day, I don’t know where my parents went.
They just showed up a week after our eighth grade culmination, like nothing ever happened.
We were back to our scheduled programming. Dad being gone all the time, out gambling. Mom ignoring Auty, and mistaking me for Summer. And Auty ignoring me, too, getting more and more into dance… and rock music.
Mom never asked me about the money she left, and I never gave it back to her.
It was like those seven months didn’t happen.
Sometimes, it felt like I’d been hallucinating. I’d wake up sweating, or check the mail to make sure the bills were paid. Most nights, I couldn’t go to sleep without taking a double shot of whiskey, or smoking some of Turkey’s sisters’ weed they let me buy off them.
I was a mess my whole freshman year of high school.
My only saving grace was Rico.
The next time he came over after his mother’s funeral, I was proud for not bringing up him fighting his whole family.
Instead, we talked about a safe middleground; music.
We talked all night about our favorite verses of songs, from the many CDs I had in my room, and then at the end of the night, he left me whatever money was in his pocket, before walking out the front door.
Every time he left, even after my parents came back and he had to sneak out my window, he left me money.
If I couldn’t see him for days, he was texting me at night to continue our conversations.
He made me think, picking my brain on the most minute details of harmonies, rhyme scheme, and samples I could and couldn’t catch.
He kept me sane, and I think I was doing the same for him.
Peanut and Rahshad, Set’s cousin and brother, had begun to come over and go camping with Pops on the weekends, taking Auty’s place. I wanted to tell him it was a bad idea, more so for Peanut than little Rahshad.
I’d been camping with Pops before, so I knew the things they were doing up there. It wasn’t normal pitching tents and telling ghost stories.
Pops would time you on how to assemble rifles to shoot predators. Sometimes, we’d wake up with no food, and have to actually catch our own food, or decide which berries weren’t poisonous. Once, for Turkey’s ninth birthday, we assembled a homemade bear trap.
And the last time I went, Pops had dropped us off deep into the park, and monitored us as we had to make our way back to his cabin.
He was teaching us survival skills, no doubt about it. But who knows how that would have affected a hardened gang member like Peanut, or an impressionable little nerd like Rahshad.
I knew that part of the reason Auty got so heavily into dance was because, for whatever reason, Turkey didn’t want her going camping with them anymore.
There was a nagging feeling that it also had to do with why Rico was adamant about me not coming to the neighborhoods where he lived anymore.
These streets, all named after types of trees from A to Z, called the Tree Streets.
Kids at school said there was a gang war happening, but Rico wouldn’t elaborate.
He just made me promise I wouldn’t go near them.
And I fully intended to keep my promise. I really did.
I didn’t know Porscha’s cousin lived off Kilpatrick Avenue and Nettletree Street. I just knew she was cooler, older, and told her she could have a couple friends over so she wouldn’t snitch about having a party while their parents went out of town.
I packed my bag and told myself to be excited.
Porscha and I had drifted apart. After she saw Peanut pick Turkey, Autumn and me up from school one day, she kept trying to come over.
I tried to tell her she didn’t need to know a boy like Peanut, but she thought I was cockblocking, and became a frenemy of sorts.
Looking back, I should have known there was a reason she was so adamant about this particular kickback, and adamant about me going. But I was just trying to get back to normal, to be a carefree teenager like it seemed she was, and only worry about kickbacks and boys.
“Ugh, I wish I had your figure,” she complained, as she kept turning to the side to see if her ass looked fat in her cousin’s mirror.
I sighed before taking a bigger sip of the Hennessy and coke we swiped from the kitchen.
Porscha always did that. She was short, with big ass titties but nothing else. She wasn’t big, and actually had abs; something that I didn’t. But she hated that she had such big bazukas and no ass to go with it.
She wanted me to complain about my lack of titties, like I used to. And I probably would have, if I didn’t have a crazy, cute guy with hair almost as long as mine telling me I was perfect the way I was.
It didn’t matter that my chest was nearly flat in my bandeau, or my legs were so long in my skinnies that I wore high top vans so they didn’t look like they were flooding.
Rico made it impossible for me to think I was anything less than the shit.
Which made everyone else seem so fucking annoying and unbearable.
“Bitch, you look good. Come drink this.”
She rolled her eyes but grabbed the drink I made for her and downed it, screwing up her face.
“I don’t know how you can drink this shit. It’s so nasty,” she spat.
I shrugged, stood and ran my fingers through my new weave. “You get used to it.”
I pulled her back toward the mirror and got out my phone to take some pictures to loosen her ass up. Porscha had only gotten more boy crazy as we got older, determined to get with a guy that could do nothing for her but have her in a neighborhood she had no business being in, like now.
When we finally left her cousin’s bedroom and entered the living room, the whole house smelled like swishers, body odor, and weak weed, not the good stuff.
The lights were dim and Porscha plopped onto the lap of some guy in the recliner, while I parked myself on the arm.
I felt eyes on me, especially as more and more people piled into the house, but I saw one too many red pairs of shoes and started feeling uneasy.
The music was good though, so I focused on that, bopping my head to the local songs that were gaining traction on the internet. Someone got onto the coffee table and started jerking, and another person began to record as he started throwing up signs that made me pause.
It was clear as day in my mind. Rico had just posted the picture the week before. Him and Peanut throwing up the same sign.
With his left hand flipping it off, dissing it.
Where the hell am I?
I leaned over to Porscha’s ear, as the guy was whispering in her other one.
“Where these niggas from?” I whispered high enough over the music, but low enough the guy couldn’t hear.
Porscha’s eyebrows dented before she whispered, “Tree something, I think. They’re bloods though, for sure.”
I nodded, combing my bottom lip with my teeth as my heart dropped to my ass.
Rico kept me out of his gang shit, but that didn’t mean it didn’t spill over to social media.
As more and more local groups and rappers gained traction, different gangs began to make their own versions of popular songs, bragging on their own or dissing others.
Tree something or another were definitely bloods.
And definitely beefing with the Birch Babies.
I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Porscha wasn’t paying attention to me, the boy in the chair easing his hand up her skirt. I got up and started making my way to the door.
A guy stepped in front of me and bumped into me. His hands went to my arms, but I couldn’t see his face since he had his hoodie up.
Until he lifted his face enough.
His permanent scowl twitched just a little, as he stared into my soul.
Peanut scared the absolute shit out of me. It was all in his eyes.
Thick black hair he’d let grow until he got it cut to a buzz. Red pimples dotted his forehead and cheeks, like he couldn’t help but pop them. He was extra pale then, even though it was summer, like he didn’t like being in the sun. And everyone who knew him that I knew loved him.
But his eyes told me everything I needed to know. And the way he looked at me when he realized who I was, and his hands dropped from my arms like I had the cooties, I knew he was just as crazy as I thought, as my mind recognized.
His gaze shifted behind me right before I turned to get away from him, but then I was stopped again.
There, in front of me, in a matching black hoodie, was my Rico.
His eyes were partially covered by his hoodie, but I knew it was him by the cologne that wafted from him. He was the only boy I knew who didn’t bother with body spray. He always wore cologne.
He leaned in, letting his lips graze my ear. “Go wait outside, Snow.”
“But–”
“Snow.”
I eyed Porscha, who was now staring daggers at me, even through the sea of people, never mind the guy sucking on her neck. I gestured for her to come with me outside, and only moved when I saw her get out of the guy’s lap.
Peanut shoulder checked me as I walked out of the house, but I didn’t dare say anything about it. Something was very wrong, and I was thanking my lucky stars that, if I needed to run, I didn’t bring anything I absolutely loved in my sleepover bag.
“What’s going on, Wyn?” Porscha asked as she walked up to me on the lawn.
I whirled on her, palming my forehead with both hands. “Porscha, why didn’t you tell me we were gonna be in the Tree Streets?! I know you’ve seen all the bullshit online!”
Porscha looked around like I was tripping, before grabbing my wrist hard and pulling me away from the door.
“First off, please stop acting like you’re Miss Project Bitch because you know them. My cousin said them niggas are busters, anyway, and them twins are fags.”
I got in her face, even though I hadn’t fought a day in my life. “You and your slow ass cousin don’t know shit. You’re tripping, and we need to leave. Now.”
Porscha pushed me out of her face and stomped away, back into the house. My feet wanted to follow her, but as soon as I took a step toward her, Rico strolled out, heading toward me.
“After that bitch give you whatever she finna give you, come to the Corolla on the corner. Don’t make me come get you.”