Hood Misfits, Volume 1 (22 page)

London had been good to me and Chasity, who still wanted me to call her Ghost because Trigga had given her that name. We were living in Dalston, in a borough called Hackney. It was one of the places Trigga's contacts had showed us, and I liked it right off the rip. I had even gotten a job at the café around the corner.

I was in the kitchen of our flat when Ghost asked me, “Diamond, can I go across the way to Joslyn's for a tea party?”

Ghost had made friends easily, while I mostly kept to myself. I really didn't know what the hell I was doing. I kept praying that everything was all a dream, that I would wake up free to be a kid again and not be an adult before my time.

It was hard. Every day was hard. My ID said I was twenty-one years old, but I was still just sixteen. Although I had more money than I knew what to do with, I didn't want to be flashy, still scared shitless that nigga Dame had eyes even over here. I didn't know who was still on his team and who wasn't.

This nigga haunted me in my dreams. Most nights I'd wake up screaming, seeing him in my bedroom. Everywhere I looked, even though I knew he was dead, I would see his scowling mug. One day when me and Ghost were at the neighborhood park, I swore I saw that nigga standing there plain as day. I grabbed Ghost's hand, and we hightailed to my job just so he wouldn't know where we lived. The nigga still had a hold on me even though he was dead. I could hear him laughing at me in my head. For the most part I cried when Ghost wasn't looking.

Me and Ghost were learning as we went along. For a while, neither of us would go outside unless it was to get some food, but I was smart enough to know people would start to talk if we both just stayed cooped up in the flat, so we started to go out more and sightsee. We always made it home before nightfall so we could lock up. I was paranoid. Didn't trust nobody.

“Yeah, I guess that's okay, but don't stay too long.”

“Okay, I won't. Thanks, Diamond.”

She had stopped calling me Ray-Ray about a week after we'd settled in.

“You're welcome,” I told her, putting the last of the dishes away.

I listened to her lock the door after she left. I made sure she was gone before I grabbed the black backpack. There were times I would pull out Gina's, Big Jake's, and Trigga's pictures, and sit them all on the table and talk to them, just to let them know I hadn't forgotten about them. That day was one of those days. I never wanted Ghost to see me doing that shit though. I kept feeling that I had to be strong for her.

After I sat all of their pictures on the table, the backpack fell on the floor, and a cell phone fell out. I'd seen it before. Had kept it charged with the hope that one day Trigga would call.

I picked it up and looked at the screen. It vibrated in my hand, alerting me to a text.

I kept reading the message over and over, making sure I was reading it correctly. I have an aunt? Anika? The woman I had openly admired when I first saw her? The woman Dame had beat my ass for because I was staring at her too hard? I couldn't wrap my mind around it.

I would have been sitting there the whole day just reading it over and over again had a knock not come at the door. It was a coded knock, so I knew it was Ghost. I knocked in sync three times, then four, then two, and she responded in kind.

I snatched the door open a bit annoyed, because she sometimes refused to use her key. Then my heart stopped. Nobody was there. Only a happy birthday cake.

At first it felt like my heart slammed into my chest again.
Happy birthday?
Somebody was playing with me. My mind screamed,
RUN!

Immediately I slammed the door closed, sprinted to the couch and grabbed the gun I had hidden. “Shit!” I remembered Ghost was still out.

I reached for the cell phone but dropped it as soon as something fell in the back room. Keys jingling in the door alerted me. When a smiling Ghost walked in with the cake, I rushed over to snatch her in the house, kicked the door closed, and locked it.

“I didn't know it was your birthday, Diamond,” she said, oblivious to my paranoia. Until she saw my Glock.

I knocked the cake from her hand and kneeled down in front of her. “Remember what I said to do if we ever had to run?”

She nodded. “Yeah. But why we running?”

“Just get your stuff, Ghost. Somebody knows we're here. I don't know who, but we gotta go.”

She just ran for her room without asking any questions. I grabbed the backpack and shoved the passports back inside then ran to my room and looked in all of the secret places I'd hid money.

“I'm ready, Diamond.”

Ghost was efficient. That's why I loved her. She always listened to me no matter what.

I abruptly grabbed her hand, and we rushed for the door. We didn't say anything to anyone.

To be honest, I didn't know where to go. I still had some info from Trigga's contact, so I decided I would call him when I felt we were at a safe distance. His name was Phenom. He looked like Idris Elba. No, he just reminded me of him. The accent, the way he walked, talked, all brought to mind the man my mama had said was finer than old wine.

Me and Ghost ran down the stairs so fast, we bumped into hella people along the way, but we were getting the hell out of there one way or the other. I didn't have a car because I had to get used to driving on the wrong side of the street. I moved past a group of UK niggas shooting dice and ran right through their game. Various UK accents mixed with Caribbean and African influences yelled out at me.

I was running so recklessly, a car almost hit us, but I still didn't stop. Ghost was right there with me. Horns blared, people cursed at us.

We took the back way down an alley, but something told me to stop when I saw a black car block that exit.

“This way, Diamond!” Ghost yelled.

We made a quick detour down another alley, but I didn't see the guy in a hoodie slowly making his way down the alley until I was right up on him. Dudes in this area always wore hoodies, so it didn't seem out of the norm to me. Ghost skirted past him, but I almost knocked his shoulder off as I ran past him.

“Damn! You gon' knock a nigga's shoulder off. You gotta pay attention. Learn your environment, li'l shawty.”

Something clicked when he called me li'l shawty. My heart crashed into my chest just as I came to an abrupt halt. I stood there a minute with eyes closed, letting the words replay in my head. That down-south Georgia-boy slang sounded like a melody from heaven, but I could have been fantasizing. After all, I still talked to my mama and my daddy and they were dead.

Both me and Ghost slowly turned and looked at the male figure in front of us. He took his left hand and slid his hood back. I let out the breath I had been holding. His locks were longer, his body stockier with a more defined muscle tone, but that red tint to his skin was still there. And those light honey-brown eyes that looked like they were lined in kohl still looked right through me.

“Trigga! ! ! ! I knew you was alive! I knew it!”

Ghost had taken off running before I could stop her. I still thought he was a ghost, thought I was dreaming as I batted away tears. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me again, until he scooped Ghost up in his arms and swung her around. She was laughing and happy.

My feet slowly made way in their direction. I was nervous, chewing down on my bottom lip the whole way. “You-you're alive,” I stuttered out when I got close enough to him.

He licked his lips, propping Ghost on his shoulders, and then looked down at me. “Yeah, li'l shawty, a nigga alive.”

I had dreamed of that moment for the last three months but never thought it would happen. My dreams tortured me with images of him and Big Jake going down in a blaze of glory. I saw their bodies riddled with bullets and the fire burning the flesh away from their bones. I had thought I was the only one to survive the omen that was Damien.

Part of me wanted to go ham on this nigga and swing on him for leaving me in a foreign fuckin' country to try to figure this shit out by myself. I wanted to scream that I was only fuckin' sixteen years old and didn't know shit about life other than what had been done to me. I wanted to know why he would leave a nine-year-old in my care, knowing I didn't even know how to take care of my fuckin' self.

But I didn't do any of that. I simply moved closer to him, stood on my toes, and wrapped my arms around his neck. We stood that way for the longest. Maybe later I would cuss, scream, kick, and yell at him, but at that moment I was just happy to see him.

I pulled back and asked him, “You put that cake by the door?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Ya girl did.”

I looked up at Ghost.

“Not me,” she said.

My gaze went back to Trigga, and he motioned his head behind me.

I turned around and saw that black car again. When the door opened, my curiosity got the better of me. I ain't have no girls, no friends other than Dominique, and she wasn't in London. When Big Jake stepped from the car, I laughed. He was alive too. That big nigga made it out alive.

Then another figure stepped from the car. She was slim and almost as dark as me, and she had long braids down past her ass. She looked like she could be Kelly Rowland's twin sister. Her big doe-like eyes were wide as she chewed on her bottom lip.

I shook my head, not understanding. “Gina?”

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly, a white gauze wrapped around her neck.

I turned to look at Trigga then back at Big Jake. “I don't… I saw her kill herself.”

“Naw, li'l shawty,” Trigga said. “You saw what she wanted you to see.”

“My mama a doctor,” Gina said as she rushed to hug. “I know how to cut myself to make it look one way. I may be dense sometimes, but I'm a smart bitch when I wanna be.”

I broke down crying like the baby I was. I still had a family. I still had my peoples, my makeshift family full of hood misfits.

I listened as Gina told me she'd slit her throat in a way that made it look like she'd committed suicide. Trigga had taken her body from Jake's arms to get her away from the house. He was going to make sure she got a proper burial, was going to go curse her mama out and threaten to kill her if she didn't bury her daughter the right way. Until Gina grabbed a hold of his neck to let him know she was alive.

Gina told me she was the one who'd killed Sasha. I was shocked again. She said, after Trigga took her away for those first few hours, she got stitched and cleaned up just enough to come back and see that bitch meet her end. Then she asked me if I knew it was really my birthday.

I looked around at them all trying to remember. It was August fourteenth. I was seventeen years old. “It's really my birthday,” I said. “Didn't really think I was going to see it.”

“I know that feeling,” Big Jake chimed.

Trigga looked at him and smacked his teeth. “This big swolle nigga was gon' kill himself fa nothin'.” Then he asked me, “You see why I had to go back, right?”

We all laughed as Big Jake and Trigga started clowning each other again.

I nodded. I had so many questions to ask. Needed a lot of answers about Anika and Trigga's uncle, but for now, all was well in my world. Our world. We were all so happy that we didn't see that Dame's ghost had followed us all the way to the UK.

Well, it didn't follow us; we landed right in its backyard.

None of us had noticed the steel-grey Mercedes parked just a few feet away. Inside was a man identical to Dame in every sense of the word, including looks. Only, he was the evil that his younger twin brother wished he could have been.

E.N.G.A. Every Nigga Gotta Agenda, and we had just become his.

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Hood Misfits Volume 1: Carl Weber Presents Copyright
© 2014 Brick & Storm

ISBN: 978-1-6016-2625-7