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Authors: Treasure Hernandez

BOOK: Choosing Sides
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Chapter Seventeen
W
ith only thirty seconds remaining in the game, Joe's team was ahead 84-52. Joe knew that they had a pact to keep beef away from the charity game, but he wasn't going to let this opportunity to demean Sweets slip away. He stood up and looked at Sweets. He then put up his middle finger and cracked a small smile.
Sweets was steaming hot. He hated to lose, and to lose to Joe made it that much worse. Sweets stared at Joe as he openly disrespected him in front of the entire audience.
Someone in the crowd stood up and yelled, “North Side!”
Other members of the crowd began to chant, “North Side!” giving respect to Joe's side of the city.
Sweets, totally humiliated, wasn't going to let Joe's disrespect ride. He looked over at the members of the Shottah Boyz, and Rah-Rah nodded his head, to signal that he would take care of the problem.
Malek dribbled the ball, waiting for the final buzzer to sound. He had easily led his team to a victory. When the final buzzer went off, everyone cleared the stands and rushed the court, chanting, “North Side, North Side, North Side.”
Malek smiled and scanned the crowd. He went over to Joe and gave him a brief hug, and the team joined him, huddling around and jumping up and down.
Joe embraced Malek and locked hands with him. “Good game, fam. You did ya thing out there. You ever need something or a favor, holla at me.”
“Thanks.”
The crowd had begun to break up, but in the midst of everything, Malek spotted her. He spotted Halleigh and his heart dropped.
“I'm 'bout to let that bitch-ass nigga have it,” Rah-Rah said under his breath. He gripped on his .45 pistol that he had tucked under his shirt. The youngest of the Shottah Boyz, he was by far the nuttiest of the clique. Rah-Rah watched Jamaica Joe as he embraced one of the players from his team and knew that it was the perfect time to get at him. He had the go-ahead from Sweets to let him have it and was more than happy to put in the work. Rah-Rah got within five feet of Joe, pulled out his pistol and pointed it at him, while he was still embracing Malek.
Halleigh felt dirty as she rushed away from the car, and it seemed as though people were staring at her. It was like they knew what she'd just done.
Mitch emerged from the car and ran after her. He yelled, “Yo, ma!”
She stopped walking and turned around to face him, but didn't respond. She knew that she had hit a new low. In her wildest dreams, she never thought she would turn a trick. What was happening to her? Who was she becoming? She didn't even know herself anymore.
“Where can I reach you, you know, if I'm trying to see you again?” Mitch asked. “I mean, you working for somebody, or is this a private hustle?”
“I work for Manolo.” She hated what she had just said.
I work for Manolo
. She never wanted to work for him. She just wanted him to love and protect her from the very mean streets he now had her working. Tears flooded her eyes.
“Word? You a Manolo ‘mami'?” he asked. Before she could respond, he continued, “Damn, that nigga is moving up. Let him know Mitch said you good for business, baby. He ain't had a bitch like you since Tash retired.” Mitch pulled off another hundred-dollar bill and placed it in her hand. “I'm-a get at you again, ma, for real.”
Halleigh placed the money down in her short's pocket with the other bills as she stood on the curb. Just as she was getting ready to go find Mimi, gunshots rang out through the park.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The park suddenly turned into a frenzy as everybody began ducking low and running for cover. Pandemonium reigned. The thunder of feet stampeding and hysterical shouts could be heard all over the park.
Oh, God! Where is Mimi?
She looked frantically for Tasha, Manolo, and Mimi. Anybody. But when she didn't find them, she made a run for the car.
Boom! Boom!
More shots rang out.
Mimi spotted Halleigh running toward the car, which she had already made her way to. She yelled, “Hal! Hal! Come on. Them niggas started shooting. Somebody got shot! The police on they way.”
Manolo, who was sitting in the driver's side of the car, along with Tasha in the front passenger side, yelled, “Halleigh, let's go!”
Halleigh finally hopped into the car. Tasha was sitting calmly on the passenger's side, and when everyone was safely inside, she called out, “All right, let's go.” And Manolo pulled away from the curb and headed toward the house.
After they all calmed down, Tasha turned toward the back seat. She could tell by the look on Halleigh's face that she'd been crying. Her eyes were red. But Tasha knew that those tears had nothing to do with the fear of bullets traveling.
She turned her first trick.
Tasha recognized the lost look that every girl had after they turned their first trick.
As if Manolo had read Tasha's mind, he said pointedly, “Hal, I saw you handling your business out there. You got my money?”
Halleigh pulled the money from her pocket and handed it to Manolo.
He looked at the four crisp hundred-dollar bills. “Damn, Hal! How much you charge the nigga?”
“Two fifty. He just told me to keep the rest,” she answered in a whisper. Dazed, she stared blankly out of the window.
Manolo laughed and looked in the rearview at the young girl. Then he looked at Mimi, who sat next to her. “You see that? You better take notes.” Manolo was pleased with himself for grooming a bitch like Halleigh. He knew she was guaranteed to make him money.
Looking at her through the rearview mirror as she stared out of the window, he knew that out of all the girls, she really wasn't cut out for this business. For a brief moment, a little bit of guilt seeped into his veins, but then he thought about his mother, eloquently referred to as Lady. Lady—she resembled the legendary Lady Day, Billie Holiday, before heroin took its toll on her looks—was a high-yellow hustler, and Manolo's father was her pimp. So if hoeing was good enough for his mother, it was certainly good enough for any bitch. And with that thought, the guilt evaporated from his veins as he visualized just how much money his little Sunshine was really worth.
Chapter Eighteen
T
he shots rang out as Malek was embracing Joe.
Boom! Boom!
“What the fuck was that?” Joe hollered. He let Malek go, but Malek's body acted as if it didn't want to part from Joe's, as if it was just heavy and couldn't move.
Just then, Malek, clinging to Joe, said as loudly as he could, which turned out to be a whisper, “Man, I've been hit!”
His tone was so low, and the whole park had fallen into such chaos, Joe didn't hear him. “Get up off me!” Joe exclaimed, unaware that Malek had been hit. Once again, he tried to push Malek off him.
Bullets that were, in fact, meant for Joe, had caught Malek in the calf and in his hip, but no one noticed, as people emerged from every direction, running and hiding. Screams rang out and echoed throughout the park; the cacophony of gunfire piercing the summer day making it sound like the Fourth of July. Except, these were no firecrackers.
The park had erupted into a war zone. People fell to the ground, and some hid behind cars as they called out to one another to try to get to safety.
“Hit the ground.”
“Run!”
“Get Nay-Nay and them.”
Instantly, Joe's henchmen came to their boss's defense, and they began to return fire. Laying there in the midst of gunfire, Malek listened to the curses of Joe's men. “Aw, hell naw!” one called out. “No, these bitch-ass niggas didn't start no shit today of all days.”
“Open fire on these mu'fuckas,” another spat.
“I swear on everything I love, it's on,” another one said.
Rah-Rah shouted, “Y'all niggas is dead.” He maneuvered through the crowd, smoking gun in his hand. He'd heard shots fired and knew that they were coming for him. He saw his older brother, Lynch, another member of the Shottah Boyz, trading shots with one of Joe's henchmen.
Boom! Boom!
Rah-Rah rose up and fired two shots at Tariq, who was shooting it out with his brother. Rah-Rah bust his gun like a madman, not caring who he hit, as he continued to fire in Tariq's direction carelessly.
Meantime, women, children, and men scattered in a frenzy, trying not to get caught by stray bullets.
“Yo, I'm hit,” Malek whispered, holding his leg in agony. It felt like a missile had hit him. He had fallen on top of Joe when he got hit.
After pushing Malek off him, Joe held the young man in his arms. He looked at his leg and noticed that the bullet had gone in and out, and that blood was pouring out of his calf. “It went in and out. You good. Stay right here!”
Joe then reached into his waist and pulled out his all-black .45 pistol. He cocked it and rose up. Without even ducking for cover, he walked straight toward Rah-Rah, who was too busy busting at Tariq to see him coming. With one shot, Joe sent a hollow-tip through Rah-Rah's torso, causing him to drop his gun and fall to the pavement. He then walked over to Rah-Rah as he spat up blood and clenched his stomach.
As Rah-Rah struggled to get air, Joe stared at the young boy. He pointed his gun at Rah-Rah's head, his index finger on the trigger, and his conscience pricked him.
This kid doesn't even look a day older than seventeen
, he thought to himself. Mayhem happening all around him, he blocked all of it out and just stared deep into Rah-Rah's eyes as the young boy tried to stay conscious. Joe looked at the tattoo on the boy's neck—
Shottah Boyz
. He then realized that the young boy wasn't an average kid. He was a killer. A killer who had just tried to take his life. Joe let off two bullets into Rah-Rah's chest, leaving him staring into space forever.
Joe saw the rest of the members of the Shottah Boyz jump into a black tinted SUV and speed off. He ran back toward Malek, who was on the ground in pain. He yelled to his henchmen across the park, “Yo, come over here!”
His workers, along with Tariq, ran over to him and picked up Malek so they could rush him to the hospital. But when the screeching tires of the black SUV that the Shottah Boyz had jumped into came back around, Joe and his men immediately began to fire shots at the truck, but the bullets didn't penetrate.
“It's bulletproof!” Joe yelled. He stopped firing. He knew he'd just be wasting shots. He was very familiar with bulletproof whips, since all of his were equipped with the feature.
The back door opened, and a young man that strongly resembled Rah-Rah came out with his hands up and no shirt on, to let them know he wasn't strapped. Tears ran down his eyes as he slowly walked toward his dead brother.
Joe signaled his crew to take Malek to the car and to not shoot at Lynch. He understood the game.
“No! Oh, my God. Rah-Rah!” Lynch held both hands above his head and made his way over to his younger brother. He wasn't even focused on the men who had been shooting at him with their guns. He just wanted to come and get his heart—his brother. He didn't notice that Rah-Rah wasn't in the car, until they reached the corner and he knew that something had gone wrong. Rah-Rah was the fastest of them all and was always the first to jump in the car when they exited a crime scene. But not this time. He had an inevitable appointment with his maker.
Lynch had come back, unconcerned for any danger to himself, and found his brother lying dead. He kneeled next to his brother's lifeless body and gently scooped him into his arms and rocked back and forth. He hadn't cried since adolescence, but now he was crying a river for Rah-Rah, another soul lost to the game.
Malek heaved deep breaths and squirmed in the back seat as Tariq sped through Flint's streets, headed toward McLaren Hospital. The bullet wound felt like fire.
Joe, sitting next to Malek, tried to keep him calm. “You gon' be all right, fam. Just hold steady.”
Malek tried to block out the pain, but it was too much to bear. The only thing he could think about was how his basketball future and life with Halleigh were doomed. His life was going in a fast downward spiral. This was the beginning of the end for him.
Chapter Nineteen
M
alek rested in his hospital bed as his mother sat next to him with her Bible open. His father had just left after Mrs. Johnson insisted he go home and get some rest. He agreed, but only upon the promise that, once he returned to the hospital, she would go home and get some rest too. Mrs. Johnson had been right there by Malek's side for days straight. She hadn't even changed clothes, she was so worried about her son.
The room was filled with flowers from Jamaica Joe and his crew.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” Mrs. Johnson read from Psalm 23.
“Ma, stop reading all that stuff about dying. I'm gon' be fine,” Malek assured her.
“I know. The doctor said you were lucky. This has always been one of my favorite scriptures, though. It's comforting.”
Mrs. Johnson had been reading him her favorite scriptures for the past three days. She'd almost had a heart attack when she got news that her only son had been shot. She was relieved when the doctor informed her that both wounds had been in-and-out and no major organs had been punctured. Malek was very lucky to not have any permanent damage.
One reason Mrs. Johnson had been continuously reading scripture was because she felt that if she kept talking, Malek wouldn't have time to ask her what she knew he had been wondering about for the past three days. But finally, she had worked up the nerve to tell Malek what she knew was his greatest fear.
“Baby,” Mrs. Johnson started, “your, uh, agent called me this morning.” She swallowed the knot in her throat.
Malek sat up at attention. “What did he say?” Malek had wondered why his agent hadn't been up to the hospital to see him, and was fearing the worst. That he was no longer interested in agenting him.
“He, uh, said that, uh—”
“Come on, Ma,” Malek said, starting to get agitated, “just spit it out.”
“Okay, son, he said that all the NBA teams have lost interest in you,” Mrs. Johnson reluctantly informed Malek, and it just broke her heart to do so. She knew that the news would hurt his heart just as well, but she had to tell him the truth.
“What?” Malek said as he sat there in shock. The words felt like daggers straight through his heart.
“Baby, I'm sorry,” Mrs. Johnson said. “He said it doesn't look too good. He doesn't even want to represent you anymore.”
A single tear slid down Malek's face as his childhood dreams began to evaporate. All he knew was basketball. If you took that away from him, in his mind, he was nothing.
“Let's just thank the Almighty Lord that you are still breathing.” Mrs. Johnson grabbed her only child's hand.
Malek was too devastated to speak. He just threw his head back in the pillow, bit his bottom lip, and let the tears flow. He didn't have Halleigh, he didn't have basketball, and he didn't have any hope. College basketball was out of the question, because he'd hired an agent, which made him ineligible to play college ball. And the bullet holes in his body wasn't helping matters, either.
“Ma, the only thing I ever wanted to do was play ball. That's all I ever knew. What am I supposed to do now, huh? I was supposed to buy you and Dad that big brick house. I'm just like my real daddy now. A failure.”
“Malek, hush that nonsense. You ain't nothing like that man. You are an intelligent young man with all the opportunities in the world. This little mishap isn't going to stop you. With God on our side, we gon' make it through this, hear?”
“Yes, ma'am.” Malek gripped his mother's hand. “Ma, I never forgot how you worked so hard all these years. And how Pops worked those two jobs selling sweepers and doing telemarketing sales just to feed and clothe me. How y'all found the money to send me to basketball camp every summer, even if y'all had to go without. Mama, I will try to find some way to pay you and Dad back, I promise.” Malek just broke down in a heaving sob.
“Don't worry about it. Everything is going to work out. You don't owe me or your father anything. Just be a good man and make something out of your life. I don't know why this happened to you, son, but we are going to get through it.”
Malek didn't tell his mother that he knew the man who the bullet was really intended for. He just told her that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time and caught a stray bullet, trying to spare her all that worrying.
The painkillers the doctor had Malek on were starting to make him kind of drowsy. As he began to doze off, the thoughts of the news about his future was eating him up.
“I love you, baby,” Mrs. Johnson said, rubbing her son's forehead.
“I love you too,” Malek answered, closing his eyes.
Malek thoughts were consumed by his ugly reality. Why hadn't he listened to his agent, or to his own gut feelings for that matter? He'd had a bad feeling about playing in the Berston game, but felt that he owed it to Joe. Now his career had ended before it even began.
I fucked up. I fucked up,
Malek thought to himself, wishing that the recent events had never happened. But Mrs. Johnson was right. At least he had his life, unlike Rah-Rah, who his brother, Lynch, could only wish for at this point. Three days after the shooting, Malek might have been laying up in the hospital, but Lynch's brother was about to be laying six feet under.
Lynch walked out of the funeral home with revenge on his mind. He just had to do the most difficult task he'd ever been faced with—pick out his brother's casket. He didn't know how he would even make it through the funeral. It had always been Rah-Rah and Lynch, since they were little boys. He didn't know how he was going to be able to go on.
Although grief-stricken, all he could think about for the last three days was getting back at Jamaica Joe. He kept picturing him hugging and cheering along with Malek after the game. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
Still feeling incensed, he joined Sweets and the rest of the Shottah Boyz in Sweet's Hummer. He wanted Jamaica Joe's blood. “Where you say ol' dude live again?” Lynch asked. He loaded up his automatic assault rifle, aka, the street sweeper.
Sweets hadn't been able to find out where Joe lived, so he suggested the next best thing. He was going to make Joe look for them. “Yeah, when you wanna bring out a rat, you gotta lay out the cheese,” Sweets told Lynch. “Don't worry, we gon' get these niggas. I swear on everything I love, and I swear on your brother's grave.”
Sweets was also devastated by the loss. Rah-Rah had been like a son to him. He had raised the boy up since he was nine years old. After their mother's crack habit had caused her to dissipate into a strawberry, Rah-Rah and Lynch were just two homeless little waifs.
Although they had been placed in foster care, the boys kept running away due to the physical and emotional abuse. When Sweets found them, they had just run away from their latest foster home placement and were eating out of the garbage. He took them into his home and taught them a trade. Eventually, the authorities, their caseloads swollen with too many drug babies, too many broken families, and too much dysfunction to worry about two little black boys, stopped looking for them. So they were just another statistic that had fallen into the cracks.
From the start, Sweets became their provider, their protector, and their mentor. Sweets never forgot the foster home he had been raised in, where he had been sexually molested. Which was why he had always provided a safe haven for “his boys.” Although bisexual, Sweets wasn't a pedophile, and he never messed with any of his boys. That's why they were all so loyal to him. In return, they became his little killing squad; Rah-Rah being the baddest.
Sweets never went along with his Shottah Boyz when handling business, but this time it was personal. He was ready to kill anyone associated with Joe, and that meant Malek was in danger now too.
After some convincing from the nurses on staff, Mrs. Johnson went home to get some rest. They told her that the medication would have Malek out for quite some time, so while he was asleep, it was as good a time to sleep as any for her as well. At first, she insisted that she do what she had been doing, sleeping right there in the hospital chair, but after further convincing she headed on home.
Mrs. Johnson pulled up to her house and prepared to walk in to change clothes. She wanted to get back to her son's side as quickly as possible. She knew that he was in pain. She didn't show Malek, but she was hurting inside also. The thought of a big house was nice to her. She didn't say it, but she had also been banking on Malek getting drafted by the pros.
She had worked hard for so many years, and she thought that Malek would change all of that. But reality finally set in, and she now knew the chances of him going pro were slim and next to nothing.
It took all her strength not to break down and cry when she pulled up in front of their little Cape Cod-style house. Malek just didn't know what his success had represented for her. He'd been her entire life, and his success had become hers.
Now, she could see the dark days that lay ahead for her son. She was a realist. It was a crushing defeat for her to see Malek throw away his one opportunity to get out of Flint.
Nineteen years earlier, she had missed her chance when she chose not to go away to college, hooking up instead with Malek's biological father, which turned out to be one of the worst decisions, considering he never was a father to her son. Determined not to raise her child on welfare, she worked at a string of low-paying jobs, never the career she could have had as a school teacher, had she not chosen love. That's why she didn't want Malek to throw everything away on a hoodrat like Halleigh, who was no longer in the picture anyhow.
Mrs. Johnson was so consumed by her thoughts as she shambled up the stairs on her front porch and unlocked her front door, she didn't see the black SUV pull up with Lynch hanging out of the window, his weapon cocked.
Shots rang out as Lynch sprayed the house like an insane man. He didn't care that he was shooting at an innocent bystander. He just wanted to send a message to Joe. Bullets ripped through Mrs. Johnson's back, and she fell to the ground, gripping her Bible to her chest.
“Lord, help me,” were her last words spoken.
Lynch made the Johnson house look like Swiss cheese and laughed as he let off his whole clip. He was trying to start a war. And indeed that's what he did. The war had just begun—North versus South Flint.

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