Losing Romeo

by A. J. Byrd

  I get to the toilet and peel off my soaked panties only to hear clots of blood hit the water with sickening splashes. I can no longer hold back my tears, now that it’s clear to me exactly what’s happening.

  No baby.

  No Romeo.

  The very idea of losing him again causes my abdomen to lock up even tighter. He’ll leave me. I know he will. Hell, it’s clear that he wants to leave now, when he thinks I’m having his baby. It’s just his word that he’s going to man up and be here for me and our child. That’s all that’s binding him to me. And if there’s one thing I know well about the love of my life, it’s that he always does what he says he’s going to do.

  An hour later, I’m sitting in a tub of hot water and I’m just trying to think. But all I’m successful in doing is crying. No way I’m going to school just so that I can act like everything is fine—especially since everything is far from being fine. At a time like this, I wish more than anything that there was someone I could really talk to. Someone I could trust to keep their damn mouth shut. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone like that.

  Fleetingly, I think about how it would be nice to talk to my mother about this. But let’s face it. My mother is many things, but deep ain’t one of them. Shopping, brunches and gossiping is the extent of her expertise. My mom’s main job is to be beautiful. Why? Because my father loves beautiful things.

  Growing up, my father would always joke about how lucky I am because he’s rich and my mother is good-looking. I grew up believing that I was an honest-to-God princess. Daddy dearest bought me everything he thought I wanted and made sure that everyone respected the pedestal he perched me on. Of course, the one thing I truly wanted, to spend more time with him, he made it clear a long time ago that I simply couldn’t have.

  Why? Work. The excuse of the century. Let him tell it, he works 24/7. I don’t buy it, and I don’t think my mother does, either. But at least he hasn’t brought home any more brothers and sisters. My brain finally stops at Nicole, my pain-in-the-ass half sister. We may share the same dad, but we’re nothing alike. For one thing, the girl has to be twice my size, fashion challenged and always showing up at the most embarrassing time. Bottom line: I hate her.

  I shouldn’t be surprised that she sided with Anjenai last night, but in a strange way I am and I’m a little hurt, too. I draw in a deep breath and notice for the first time that the water is starting to cool. I’m cramping, but at least the bleeding has stopped. I still have to clean up the mess before the maid sees it and reports it to my mother. But not right now. I still need a plan.

  It’s hours later, after I’ve cleaned up and spent most of the time ignoring phone calls and text messages, that the answer starts staring me in the face. I run the idea through my head again, checking for loopholes or ways this miracle plan could backfire or blow up in my face. Honestly, there’s a few possible ways that either or both could happen, but hell, I’m a desperate girl, here.

  An image of Romeo and Anjenai together again floats across my mind. This plan has to work. “It will work,” I re-affirm aloud. Keeping Romeo is worth any risk coming my way.

  two

  Anjenai—Un-Break My Heart

  I hate Romeo. I hate that I ever met him. I hate that I ever trusted him. And I hate that I was stupid enough to allow my seeing him to come between me and my two best friends in the whole world, Kierra and Tyler. For God’s sake, we’ve been together for, like, forever. We went to day care together. Through thick and thin, we’ve always had each other’s backs. The three chains around our necks, B-F-F, are supposed to remind us of that fact every day.

  I lost track of that.

  But it’ll never happen again.

  Romeo Blackwell is dead to me. So he may as well stop trying to stare a hole into the side of my head in Spanish class and in gym. Besides, I don’t know why he’s looking like he wants to talk to me so bad. He’s the one who dumped me in the middle of my first high school party. He’s the one who had my friends and me looking like a bunch of loud project hood rats who dared to show up in their rich kids’ suburban paradise.

  The truth of the matter is that my side of town was rezoned and we were forced to go to Maynard Jackson High complete with all these stuck-up divas and wannabe ballers. They are all so tired that it’s not even funny.

  “Ms. Legend?” Ms. Lopez inquires.

  I quickly jar back to my second-period class and realize that all eyes in the classroom are focused on me. “Yes?”

  Ms. Lopez looks annoyed. “I called on you to recite the days of the week in Spanish.”

  Now I’m annoyed and quickly rattle off, “Lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado y domingo.”

  “Very good,” she says and moves on to someone else who’s not paying attention in her class.

  I’m being pissy and I know it. I’m not normally like this. I’m usually the annoying smart chick who studies all the time, makes the honor roll and obsesses about grades and scholarships even though I’m just a freshman. Mainly because, unlike most of the kids in this school, I don’t have parents who will be able to write big tuition checks to the college of my choice when I get out of here.

  Hell, I don’t have parents at all. They were killed in a car accident. Now my four brothers and I live with Granny on a fixed income. It’s not easy, given how small Granny’s apartment is. We’re all packed in there like a can of sardines. We don’t have much, but we have each other. I may go to Maynard Jackson High, but I don’t belong here.

  The class bell rings and Tyler and I jump out of our chairs like Pop Tarts in a toaster.

  “Whoa,” Tyler says, grabbing my arm. “Slow your roll. Don’t let that asshole chase you out of here.” She gives Romeo an evil look with a sideward glance.

  She’s right. I slow down and smile at her.

  “What?” Tyler asks.

  I shrug and say simply, “I’m just glad that we’re cool again.”

  Tyler gets this goofy smile on her face and then playfully bumps my shoulder. Our first month here at this school had managed to do something that we never thought could happen: pull us apart. On our first day of school, Tyler, Kierra and I had all developed a crush on Romeo. Instead of letting a boy come between us, we’d all agreed that none of us would go after him. It seemed like an easy deal to make, considering the chances of the most popular boy in the school actually falling for one of us were slim to remote.

  That is, until Coach Whittaker encouraged Romeo to help me work out for basketball tryouts. I could shoot, but running and dribbling were horses of different colors. Still, everything was cool until that first practice, when Romeo kissed me. Remembering that kiss now fills me with so many mixed emotions that I can hardly think straight.

  “Are you all right?” Tyler asks probably because my smile turned into a frown in the blink of an eye.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I’m cool,” I lie. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  Tyler bobs her head, but she studies me for another second before taking off to her English class.

  I, on the other hand, just suck in a deep breath and head to my locker. The very moment I finish messing with the combination to my lock, Romeo steps up to me. “We need to talk.”

  His voice is like warm honey dripping in my ear. For a split second, I want to forgive him. I want to pretend that he and Phoenix didn’t embarrass and humiliate me and my friends at Shadiq’s party. I want to forget that he’s fifteen and is about to become Phoenix’s baby daddy by the summer.

  “I know that you’re mad,” he continues.

  I don’t even glance his way. One look at his honey-brown skin, deep dimples and warm brown eyes and I might just melt. Hell, I think I’m doing that anyway.

  Romeo continues. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am about—”

  “Oh, I have a pretty good idea of exactly how sorry you are,” I hiss, grabbing my history book and slamming my locker door. “The good news is I just don’t give a damn.” I jerk away from him, and I’m su
rprised when he grabs my arm. Even then I refuse to look at him. “Take your hands off me.”

  “Anjenai,” he whispers. “It’s killing me to think that you hate me.”

  I jerk my arm from his grasp. “Get used to it.” I storm away with my head held high, but my stomach is looping in knots. I hope he doesn’t think I’m stupid and don’t know that the reason that he chose today to speak to me is that Phoenix isn’t here today. He’s just a lapdog without a leash.

  I’m over it.

  three

  Tyler—Bad Girl

  I don’t like English class, so at the last second I decide to ditch it and play hooky. There’s no point in hanging out by the bleachers. Coaches and teachers are cracking down on kids skipping class over there. Loitering in the girls’ bathrooms is no fun because Nance, the security guard, patrols this place like it’s a prison which I guess it is. No. I think I’ll just take a hike down the road a bit and hang out at the strip mall a few blocks down the way. Besides, the walk would probably go a long way toward clearing my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I’m relieved that Anje and I have been able to squash that silly-ass beef between us. Looking back on it, knowing what I know, I can’t believe that we were ever fighting over that loser or that I even made that whack-ass attempt to steal him.

  Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

  As boldly as you please, I trek across school property, not giving a damn if the powers that be see me or not, and then head on down the road toward the strip mall. All the while, I keep replaying that one kiss I laid on Romeo. It was even more humiliating when I realized that he wasn’t kissing me back. I really put myself on the line only to have him tell me how sorry he was but that he was really into Anje instead of me. Just goes to prove that you can’t believe anything anyone says anymore. It also didn’t help that Phoenix’s high-yella hoes, Bianca and Raven, rolled up on us and blabbed to the whole school what they saw. It got around to Anjenai, and for a few weeks, we went from being friends to enemies. It was the first time in our fourteen-year history.

  I have to be honest with myself—that was one of the lowest times in my life. And that’s saying something. With my mom walking out on my dad and me and my dad working so much that half the time I think he forgets that I even exist, the last thing I needed was to lose the friendship that had always been the one constant in my life. And the whole damn thing would have been my fault.

  Honestly, sometimes I think I can’t help the dumb stuff I do. My biggest problem is my temper. But knowing that and being able to control it seem to be two very different things. I can’t help it that everything annoys me—people in particular, and my damn school coming in a close second. I should just drop out. Sure, I’m happy that I made the basketball team. But how long will that last, since I have to maintain a C average and my ass don’t even like going to class? I swear to God, this place is just trying to bore me to death. It takes everything I have to not put toothpicks in my eyelids to prop them open just to stay awake.

  Maybe things would have been different if Oak Hill kids hadn’t been rezoned to come out to this suburban nightmare and instead we went to Riverwood High like Anje, Kierra and I had been planning since we were in grade school. I can’t stand being around these black bourgie sellouts.

  I should drop out.

  I want to drop out.

  Hell. It’s not like my father would ever know. He doesn’t know half of what I do. If he did, it would probably give him a heart attack. I can’t help chuckling at that. Then I draw in a deep breath and exhale slowly. There’s a part of me that knows that I shouldn’t be so hard on my dad. After all, he did come to my rescue that night at Shadiq’s party and pick me up from that lone dark road. That was cool. But after that, he went right back to being an MIA dad and I went back to feeling like a ghost in our apartment. We hardly speak, talk or even remain in the same room together when he’s home.

  Yeah, I know that jobs are tight and he has to hold on to whatever piece of job that he has at all costs, but most of the time I just feel like…the world has forgotten about me. My damn mother definitely did. She just packed up and left like we suddenly didn’t matter anymore. I know that was hard on my dad, too. For a long time after she left, there wasn’t a liquor bottle he didn’t like. That’s when I started to feel like he’d walked out on me, as well.

  It still feels that way. To this day, he’s never really sat down and tried to explain to me what happened. Sure, they fought all the time. She’d scream. He’d yell. Things were thrown, and in the end a door was slammed with the words, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I didn’t get it.

  I still don’t.

  For a long time I was in denial, thinking that she just left to teach him a lesson and that she was going to come back. He was going to apologize, and we could go back to being the dysfunctional family that we’d always been. When that didn’t happen, I thought that I was really the cause of her leaving and no one had the guts to tell me. Eventually, she mailed my father a letter, but he never let me read it. I want to know what it said, but now I lack the guts to ask my dad to see it.

  After the sadness and then the depression, I started to feel resentment and then anger. I seem to be stuck on angry.

  My dad’s drinking eventually subsided. He slips up every now and then. But I do recognize that he’s trying to reconnect. But honestly? I still feel like it’s a little too late.

  “Ayo, Tyler! Wait up!” a voice yells out to me. “Where you goin’?”

  I jerk around to see Michelle and Trisha plodding their way toward me. Looks like I’m not the only one that decided to skip class. “Nowhere,” I holler back and then shrug my shoulders when they catch up with me. “I was just kickin’ it.”

  Michelle and Trisha are also Oak Hill girls, aka hood rats, according to our bourgie classmates. I guess you can say we’re sort of friends, even though I broke their onetime leader, Billie Grant’s, nose on the first day of school. At first I thought that made me enemy number one, but it turned out that Billie wasn’t all that well liked within her own clique. That or there’s just no loyalty nowadays.

  Anyway, I started hanging with Michelle and Trisha during the time Anje and I were beefing. I guess they are all right. They introduced me to a few things—nothing too serious—experimenting with marijuana and stuff. But I don’t trust them any farther than I can throw them.

  “What are y’all doing out here?”

  “We saw you sneaking off the school grounds, so we figured we’d just catch up and hang with you.”

  I nod even though I’m not really in the mood for company. My annoyance disappears when I see Michelle reach into her jean jacket and pull out a fat blunt and a lighter right here in the open. She’s bold like that.

  “Want a hit?” she asks, lighting up and taking a couple of tokes.

  “Hell, why not?” I say. I’m bold like that, too. I take a few puffs and then pass it over to Trisha. I hold the smoke in my lungs for as long as I possibly can, and as I exhale, the thick smoke clouds take away all the stress I was feeling a few minutes ago.

  Michelle and Trisha start talking a bunch of trash that I’m not a bit interested in, so I end up just nodding my head through most of it. All that matters is that they keep the rotation going. By the time we reach the strip mall we are all high and giggling like a group of six-year-olds.

  Once we reach the mall, we start perusing one of the department stores. I start wondering why the hell I even bothered coming here. It’s not like I have any money or anything. Not that I would have anywhere near what it costs for even a T-shirt. Still, I sift through the stuff with a mix of disgust and longing. I can easily picture the Redbones strutting in here and plopping down one of their parents’ stupid credit cards to buy whatever the hell their hearts want.

  For a few minutes I drift away from Michelle and Trisha. But when I circle back, I’m stunned to see them stuffing clothes in their bags, down their pants and under their jackets.

  “What ar
e y’all doing?” I hiss.

  “Shh,” Michelle says. “Just keep an eye out.”

  Oh, shit. My high is instantly blown. They are straight jacking the place, I realize. My nervous gaze skitters about. I see two salespeople helping out customers and one lady checking someone out at the cash register. “Hurry up,” I say.

  I gotta hand it to Michelle and Trisha—they clearly look like professionals: snipping off price tags and security tags with impressive precision. Five minutes later, we’re strolling out the joint, smiling like three little angels. I ain’t gonna lie: my heart is racing like crazy. The blunt we smoked is probably adding to my paranoia. Not until we make it outside the mall do I relax, but even then I half expect a security guard to jump out of nowhere and haul our asses to jail.

  When the coast is clear, I look at them. “Damn. You two might want to warn a bitch before you pull a stunt like that.”

  “I thought that was a given,” Trisha says, laughing. “What else are you supposed to do at a mall?”

  Michelle laughs and then smacks her lips. “I already got the munchies.”

  Across the way is a Taco Bell. With just one glance at the place, my stomach starts growling. “Yeah. I can eat. We ain’t going to steal tacos, too, are we?”

  “HEY, YOU GIRLS! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

  My head jerks back to the front of the mall to see a team of security guards charging toward us.

  Michelle yells, “RUN!”

  Hell, she doesn’t have to say it twice.

  four

  Kierra—Regret

  It’s what I see and feel whenever I see Christopher Hunter, one of Romeo’s road dawgs. I regret that I ever met him, talked to him, kissed him and I definitely regret that I ever had sex with him if you want to call what we did sex. Hell, it all happened so fast, I can’t be too sure. I just know there was a lot of pain and tears. After that, the asshole was running out of the bedroom door so fast he left skid marks. Judging by the way he’s acting, I’d say that he feels the same way about me. If you ask me, Romeo and Chris are definitely two birds of a feather.