Black & Ugly (38 page)

Black and Ugly

"Wayne, I need you to answer the question."

"No ... uh ... no I don't," Miss Wayne conveys as he begins to cry.

"Daffany."

"Yes," she says, crying as hard as everybody else.

"Yes, you do know?" he asks, thinking she's telling him something.

"No, I don't," she responds and puts her head down. "But I wish I did. I'm so sorry." He then moves to me, looking into my eyes as if he knows I know something. Sky grabs my arm and squeezes it tightly, and I can tell she's worried that I will betray her.

"Parade, baby, do you know who killed Melony?"

"No. I don't know anything," I answer quickly and prepare to give my life for the only true family I ever had. If I have to die beside them, I'm going to. And I know they feel the same, otherwise they would have given Sky up, too, because although they're not sure, I know they suspect her.

"Well, you know what this means. If Sky doesn't admit to killing her or denies killing her, I'll have to tell my chop men to get four body bags. So Sky, did you kill Melony Walker that night?"

"Yes," she says as she busts out crying. "Yes, I did, but please don't hurt my friends." Up until this moment, we all thought Sky was selfish and only cared about herself, but here she is admitting to the ultimate crime in order to save our lives.

"I knew you did, but to be honest, I thought you'd
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sell your friends out."

"Uh ... how ... uh ... did you know?" Sky cries.

"Because you're wearing her one-of-a-kind canary-yellow diamond pendant necklace. I needed to get a good look at it and since it's dim in the living room, I followed you in the kitchen. "So," he says as he stands and grabs a pillow. "Lay down on the floor."

"Oh, God no! Please don't. Please don't kill her!" we all scream.

"Shut the fuck up!" he yells as he points the gun at us and silences the crying, "or I'll kill you mothafuckas anyway."

Sky reluctantly gets face down on the floor, crying.

He places the pillow to the back of her head, cocks the gun and attempts to pull the trigger. Someone rattles the door.

"Shut the fuck up!" Cannon whispers harshly but loud enough for us to hear. "You expectin' somebody, mothafucka?" he asks Miss Wayne.

"No." He shakes his head rapidly.

"Everybody get on the floor," Cannon commands as he grabs us by our arms and cuts off the light.

The door creeps open and, in the dark, I push my friends toward Miss Wayne's bedroom. The sounds of several footsteps let me know Markee bought more than one person. Unnoticed, we're able to get into Miss Wayne's bedroom and lock the door.

"Who the fuck is that?" a voice yells.

"Who the fuck are you?" Cannon hollers back.

"Don't worry 'bout it, mothafucka."
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"You came at the wrong time, man. You betta get the fuck outta here!" Cannon shouts.

"Fuck you, nigga. We ain't goin' a mothafuckin'

place and you ain't either. So what, you trying to beat us to the purses?" Markee asks.

"Purses? What the fuck are you talkin' about?

What are you, some type of gay bandit?" Cannon questions.

"You callin' me gay?" Markee asks. "Fuck this shit.

You callin' me gay, mothafucka?"

"Markee ... is that you, man?" Cannon inquires.

Now I'm worried. I didn't know they knew each other. Now I'm sure they're gonna work together to kill all of us anyway. My little plan backfired and it's all my fault. My stomach is churning and I feel like I can throw up.

"Yeah," he responds, apparently recognizing him, too.

"What you doin' here, man? You fuckin' shit up."

"Shit! My fuckin' brotha's gonna kill me. Shit!

Shit! I didn't know you were in here, man. Parade called me and told me some purses were here and I was tryin' to jack them joints before the faggy came home."

"Okay, just walk out and let me handle my business. I'll never tell your brother you were here," Cannon says real smoothly.

"Sorry, yo, I can't do that."
Bang, Bang, Bang.

We all hold one another and start crying as we hear the sound of a body dropping to the floor. We want resT. Styles

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olution, but hearing the shots scares us even more.

Someone immediately approaches the door and we know it's Markee.

"Who in there? Open this fuckin' door. Parade, I know you set me up, bitch. I'ma kill your ass. Don't think that just because I killed this nigga that hit on y'all's head ain't goin' through. You ain't buy nothing but a few more seconds."

"Oh my God. I'm so sorry, y'all. I made things worse," I tell them.

"I love y'all," Daffany says, feeling like the rest of us - that things are all over now and that we are certainly going to die. We know that if he fills the tiny room with bullets, we'll all be dead. There is nowhere to escape, not even in the closet because it sits directly opposite the bedroom door.

As we hear the shots ring out, we continue to say our good-byes on the floor, holding one another. They stop. We stand up and feel our bodies.

"What ... uh ... happened?" I ask as if they know.

"I don't know," Daffany says.

"I think we okay," Sky adds.

"Oh. I forgot. That's a metal door." Miss Wayne laughs.

He says that and I drop to my knees and thank God.

We all know his door is metal, but in all the commo-tion, forgot.

"FREEZE. THIS IS THE POLICE!" Hearing those words, for once in our lives, is like music to our ears. We stay in the room while listening
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to Markee being hauled off. Next, we hear authoritative knocks on the metal door.

"Is anybody in there?" an officer yells.

"Yes!" we say simultaneously.

"Well, please open this door!" he continues.

I think about Cannon hiring fake cops and say,

"With all due respect, can you slide your badge under the door? We've been having run-ins with fake cops lately." We all bust out laughing.

"No problem, ma'am," he answers as he slides his badge under the door.

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Epilogue

Parade

Six Months Later

LIFE IS DIFFERENT. I MOVED away from the Manor because I couldn't stay around there anymore.

Everything about that place reminds me of a life I hate and gives me bad feelings.

The night everything jumped off, we were all worried that something bad would eventually happen to us, but with Markee shooting Cannon three times in the chest, we felt positive that we would be okay. We were wrong, because Sky was murdered the next day.

It was terrible. Whoever killed her did a far worse job than what Cannon would have done. They stabbed her so many times in the face that she was unrecogniz-able and because her parents were both witnesses, they did the same to them. It was a closed-casket funeral.

We were so scared that none of us went. Later, an anonymous call came to my phone threatening to handle us if we opened our mouths. Needless to say, we didn't.

Daffany admitted to having HIV and went to the
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doctor to get meds. She claims that she has stopped having sex for money, but Miss Wayne says he still sees her hanging out with certain men around the neighborhood. I just hope she's safe. We hang out sometimes, but only if she comes to my place over here in Riverdale, Maryland, which is about twenty minutes away.

Miss Wayne moved, too, with a man he met on MySpace, and they've been doing pretty good. He visits around the way more than I do because his family and everything he's ever known is still there. Unlike him, I don't have shit to say to my mother or a reason to go back, so if it weren't for him, I'd never know what was going on.

Miss Wayne is somebody I'll never stop talking to because he's the one person I truly consider family. I'm happy for him and his new friend and hope it lasts because I hear gay male relationships usually don't.