“But I know now and I understand,” Charli said. “I know you’re having a tough time.”
“You shouldn’t have to know all of the details to trust me, Charli,” Eva said. “Randal, Hallie, Ella, the three of them might be pushovers, but I’m not, but it seems like when anybody questions your authority, you trip. I knew making you captain was a big mistake. You don’t care about the people on the team. You just care about winning. You talk about my bad grades, but when have you offered to study with me?”
Not wanting to be attacked, Charli said, “Yeah, I did. When you were at my house a couple of weeks ago and you were talking about this whole cheating scandal in the first place.”
“No, you just said we can all get together and study. You never offered specifically to help me.”
Charli said, “Well, why didn’t you ask me?”
“What does any of this have to do with anything?!” I screamed at the two of them.
“Eva, if you wanna be mad at me because I told our best friends our business, then that’s fine. You haven’t been speaking to me, and once I think we’re cool, you turn into Dr. Jekyll again.”
“I think Mr. Hyde is the bad one,” Hallie said.
I screamed back, “Whichever one! The point is, Charli and Eva, that both of you guys are mad, but we all have a mission to win. Let’s not quit before we even try. Hallie has been working hard to get her tumbling. Randal’s been taking stunting classes to make sure she’s able to do her thing at the top of the pyramid. If I’m honest with both of you guys, you always talk about how I’m so sweet, but I never say the truth. Well, Eva, you’re a bully. Charli, you’re a brat. Both of you guys could use a bite of my sweet apple and mellow out a little bit. Dang.”
“I could do that,” Charli said surprisingly.
I asked, “Eva, what’s it gonna be? You gonna stay with us and not quit? Are you gonna come back into the gym so we can get this team back together and cooperating?”
“Yeah,” Eva said.
She did not hug us, but she followed us to the gym. The rest of the afternoon, we practiced harder than we had done in awhile. All twenty of us were about the business of winning, and that is what it was going to have to take. At the end of our excruciating practice, no one said it, but everyone was proud that we did not quit.
I was not panicking, but it had been fortyeight hours since the last time I talked to Leo. I would see him in the hall, but he would walk the other way. I would say his name, but he acted like he could not hear me. I would wait for him after football practice, but he would take forever.
Things at home were a little awkward too. Eva and I shared the same room, the same bathroom, the same refrigerator, the same trash can, but we were not saying anything to each other. I wanted to be able to talk to her and get her advice about how to hold on to my guy. However, I was tired of always being the first one to apologize. I had not done anything. I was the one who had egg on my face for wanting to hang out with my dad and then being pushed aside.
Thankfully, we did not stand near each other in our cheer formation at the football game. We had to get there ninety minutes early to warm up and decorate the gates. I was excited about that because I wanted to go up to Leo and make him talk to me. When I saw him stretching with Brenton, Amir, and two other defensive studs, I went up to my girls, Charli and Hallie, for their assistance.
I said, “Okay, you guys, I need your help.”
“What’s up?” Charli asked.
“Something’s going on with Leo, and I want to talk to him. I know if I go over there alone, it won’t work. If Coach looks over and sees the other two guys stretching, it won’t be good. If all three of us go over there, then it will seem like Coach Woods told us to go over there and tell the boys something, and Coach Strong would just dismiss it.”
“Great! You ain’t said nothing but a word. I need to go over to Amir and give him a good luck kiss,” Hallie said, shaking her body.
“Settle down,” Charli said.
Hallie teased back, “Whatever. You are probably gonna beat me to the punch with Brenton.”
“We don’t need to make the defensive boys too soft,” Charli said. “They need to be strong and get ready to knock some heads, bash somebody, get the ball back, and score.”
The two of them went over to their boyfriends. When Leo saw me, he put his hands up in the air. I was not going to let him get away. We had gone through too much for there to be drama.
Finally, looking him eye to eye, I said, “Okay, please talk to me, Mr. Steele. I thought I was being just a little over-the-top thinking you had shut me out, but it’s real obvious you don’t want to talk to me.”
“All right, I was trying not to hurt your feelings, but let me just go out and say it,” Leo stated. “I just think it’s best if I don’t have a girlfriend right now. I thought this could work out between us, but it’s just too much.”
“What? Am I bothering you too much? I know I left you a gazillion messages, but I was just concerned that everything might not be okay. I didn’t mean to push you away,” I said, feeling like someone had punched me in the gut.
I stepped up to him, put my hand on his shoulder pad, and stood on my tippytoes because he was a lot taller than me. Leo stepped back. My heart sank.
Not caring I was breaking, he said, “You know what? I gotta go into the locker room. Sorry.”
And he was gone. The stands were filling up. Everyone was getting in place. Hallie and Charli had pumped up their guys, so in their world everything was fine. I was the only one shattered. I felt like a tree in the midst of my own winter—leaves and branches bare and shivering with cold. I was nothing but brittle branches, just hanging on. Immediately, I jogged off to the women’s restroom. I could sense Hallie behind me.
“Okay, Charli went to go tell Coach Woods where we are, but you gotta talk to me, girl. You wanted to talk to Leo, and now you’re upset. What did he say to you?”
“He doesn’t want to be my boyfriend, okay? He broke things off.”
Hallie embraced me. “Why?” she asked.
I did not want to, but I backed away. I needed her support. I needed her to hold me up before I fell apart. I needed her to tell me that it was all a dream, but I knew there was no need to pinch myself. This was my reality. He did not want me, and I had to accept that.
“Don’t worry about it, girl. After the game we are going to talk to him because Amir told me that he really, really likes you. There’s gotta be an explanation for all of this.”
“I’m not going to beg anybody to be with me,” I told Hallie, knowing I had pride and was my mom’s daughter and Eva’s sister for goodness’
sake. “Just when I opened up my heart and thought things were good.”
“Well, he ain’t the only guy out there. There’s more fish in the sea. Plus there’s a party tonight, and you can go to it. One thing about being with Leo is you stepped up your game, girl. You don’t just wake up and come out the house looking like you used to. You are styling, though I can’t figure you and Eva out. You both always complain about not having any money, but every week y’all got on something new.”
“Girl, my mom brings us stuff back from Ross, the Body Shop, and TJ Maxx. If you say sale, she’ll find it.”
“I wish I had a mom who cared like that,” Hallie lamented.
Oh no. I did not mean to be insensitive to everything Hallie was going through. She just put her mom in rehab, which was a good thing. At least I hoped it was. However, I did not want to open up a can of worms.
Knowing me, Hallie said, “You were wondering about my mom. You didn’t put your foot in your mouth. She’s doing okay. She’s still in there, at least. I remember two years ago my dad put her in rehab, and three days later she was gone. So at least that’s not the case. It’s been two weeks, and she is still there.”
“I’m glad to hear that about your mom,” I said to my girlfriend, hugging her tight this time.
Hallie pulled away from the embrace
and said, “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with Leo, and I know it took a lot for you to trust him. I just really think there’s something else going on there that has nothing to do with you. But for now we need to go cheer.”
I was a professional cheerleader doing my cheers and my jumps with accuracy. However, my heart was not in it. How could I fully cheer and get behind the Lions when the one who made my heart go pitter-patter had stomped all over it?
After we went on the field at halftime, Hallie came over to me and said, “Come here. Girl, I gotta talk to you.”
“What’s up?”
“I just talked to Amir before he went into the locker room, and he said Leo feels horrible. It’s something to do with the Axes. He just wants you to stay away so you won’t get hurt.”
“Huh?”
“That’s all I know. It’s not like he wants to. Give him a couple of days, and when this all blows over, y’all will be fine.”
I could not wait for the third and fourth quarter to breeze by. We were playing a horrible team, and we creamed them, 35–7. Leo had three sacks. I saw scouts from Georgia Tech and UGA in the stands.
I dashed over to him and said, “With all your tackles and defensive stand, you’re the man.”
“Okay, uh, thanks,” he said, trying to run around me.
“Leo, I heard about what’s going on, something about the Axes. Why does that have anything to do with me? Why does that have anything to do with you? I mean, what’s up? Is it Shameek?”
“He’s running around telling everybody stuff, and it ain’t over between me and him. You and I both know that he doesn’t make idle threats. Even if he is bluffing, I can’t take that chance.” he said. “I’m gonna hang low, and I don’t want anybody around me.” He lightly cupped my chin in his hand and continued, “Including the girl I really care about.
“I don’t want them to think I’m close to you. They’re smart enough to know that there’s more than one way to hurt me. Ella, if anything happened to you … You know what? Just stay away.”
As I watched him jog to the field house, I did not know whether to be happy or sad. He still really cared about me, and that was great. Unfortunately, the gang we knew to be crazy was not letting go of the drama. So should I do what he said and stay away from him? Following him, I knew there was no way I could.
“Leo, Leo!” I screamed, but he kept going through the field-house door.
Amir and Landon ran up to me. Amir held me back as I tried to go into the locker room. Landon kept pushing his hand downward as if I needed to chill.
Landon said, “People are watching him, Ella. Shameek’s got beef with Leo, and all of us are trying to watch his back. We can’t watch his and yours too.”
“I just don’t want him to be scared. I don’t want him to be alone. I don’t want him to think I don’t care. I know the Axes are crazy, but they can’t scare us, and I will tell them so.”
Landon’s eyes widened. “Wait, whoa, hold on, Ella. You need to stay away from those guys. We don’t even know if they know that you and Leo … you just need to chill.”
“Fine,” I wailed, and I rushed over to my girls.
“So where’s the party?” Eva said to Hallie.
Hallie shrugged. “I think we better go home. I just talked to some of the guys, and they said things might get crazy with the Axes.”
“Shameek and his boys are just talking junk,” Eva said dismissively. “Ain’t nothing really about to happen. We’re on a winning streak, and I’m trying to shake my thang. We don’t have to go for a long time, but we need to celebrate. Maybe that’s the problem with our team, we don’t hang out like we used to.”
My sister was slick. She knew the right buttons to push with Charli and Hallie. They wanted us to be a team. If the five of us were going to make that happen, then Charli was all for it.
Our captain said, “All right, maybe just for a little while.”
We were always ready for a party. We had on our uniforms, but we had our after-party outfits in the cars. The party was at Wax’s house. Like all sets he threw, the place was packed. I stepped into a corner of the living room to get some air. When my phone vibrated, I looked down and was surprised to see a message from Leo.
He texted, “Please tell me that you are not at Wax’s.”
I wrote back, “Yes, but if you tell me where you are, I can get Hallie to drop me off.”
He texted back, “Go home.”
I texted back, “Soon.”
Just when I was about to go find my girls so we could leave, I was detained. Shameek, the gangbanging idiot, stepped through the door. He licked his lips at me and hissed.
Quickly I said, “Excuse me.”
“Oh no, pretty mama, I need to talk to you.”
“I’m getting ready to leave,” I said, once again trying to get around him.
“Only way you’re getting around me, baby, is if you give me some sugar.”
“Shameek, please move,” I said, trying to push him to the side.
He would not move, so I turned around to find another way out. Two of the Axes were standing behind me. Before I could scream, Shameek had one hand around my waist and the other around my mouth.
He whispered, “I just wanna talk to you, baby. Gotta message I need you to take back to the ole boy.”
He held my waist pretty tight, and he was pushing me through the house. The screen door opened, and there were not a lot of people out on the back deck. Shameek took me out that way and down some stairs. It was so dark. My eyes filled up with tears.
“So Steele is your man, huh? I bet you he can’t make you feel like this,” he hinted. His yucky bad breath made me feel as equally sick as the thought of what he was preparing to do to me.
All I could think of was that Leo told me not to hang out. He told me to stay home. He even texted me and warned me. Why did I have to be such a hard head?
Shameek took his hand off of my mouth. I gasped, “What do you want?”
“I want to hurt your boy. I know if I tap you, it’ll be worse than anything I could do to him physically. I know he’s such a punk that he probably hasn’t even satisfied you yet. You ain’t gotta worry, baby. I ain’t gonna be gentle, but I ain’t gonna take too long. Unbutton her pants, Bruno.”
I started screaming. Shameek tried covering my mouth, but I was jerking my head all over the place so that he could not keep me quiet. When he did cover my lips, I bit his hand.
“Can’t y’all hold her down? Dang!” Shameek barked.
I just kept screaming, and then I heard Leo call for me. “Ella? Ella?”
“She hasn’t left because I’m driving,” I heard Hallie say.
“Down—” I screamed before Shameek stuffed something in my mouth.
I heard a bunch of footsteps coming down the stairs. Leo rushed over. Shameek threw me on the ground. I was so scared.
“I wondered where you were, Leo. I was about to have fun and do what you haven’t. What? You came to watch?” Shameek teased. “You should have never crossed me when I had business with Blake Strong. You wanna be the hero, but I get the last word.”
“You got beef with me, not with my girl.”
“Ahh, you told me you didn’t have nobody. What? You think I don’t have eyes and ears everywhere? That I couldn’t find who the trick was who ratted us out when we were bashing your head in? We should’ve finished what we started back then. Let’s finish now.”
As Shameek’s boy, Bruno, tossed him over a gun, Amir yelled, “Leo, watch out!”
“No!” I screamed. I darted toward Leo to get him out of the way, but the shot rang out and the bullet hit me.
“No!” I heard Leo howl. I felt him catch me as I fell.
People were running. People were screaming, and I was losing it. My body felt cold. I was in pain. I saw his concerned face looking down at me. He was crying as he held me close. My limp body did not feel so bad.
“Stay with me,” Leo begged. “Come on, Ella, stay
with me. I love you, girl. Please don’t leave me. Call the ambulance!”
I tried, replying, “I … I …”
I wanted to tell him that I loved him too. However, I could barely breathe. I wanted to tell him not to cry, but I wanted to cry. I wanted to let out tears of joy that he was okay. I wanted to tell him not to ever break up with me again. Whatever was going on in our lives, we could get through it together. As I became woozier, I thought that maybe this was my end.
Once again I tried to speak. “Love … love …” Leo said, “Don’t talk. Don’t talk now, Ella.” “Love you,” I forced out. “Where … Eva?” Leo said, “Shhh, we’ll find her.” I knew I loved Leo, and I knew I had to show him he was not alone. As my eyes closed, I knew that he knew I loved him. I did not intentionally take the bullet, but when you love somebody, you try to protect them. Instinct takes over. Though it might have cost me my life, I had come correct.
CHAPTER 7
Joyous Screams
When I opened my eyes, the ceiling was the first thing I saw. I realized I was on my back. Turning my head to the left and right, I noticed how everything looked so sterile. I tried hard to figure out what was going on. Then I remembered I had been shot.
Seeing all white, I wondered if I was in heaven, but as I heard my mother scream, I knew differently. “You did this to her. What have you done to my baby?”
I heard Leo’s voice reply. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I’m so sorry.”
I realized maybe I was in hell because my mom was hitting my boyfriend repeatedly like he had pulled out the gun and shot me himself. I had to get up, but the pain in my arm and the wooziness in my body would not let me move.
“Just get out. I don’t want her around you ever. You put my baby in harm’s way. She could die.”
Witnessing my mother being too harsh, a nurse walked in and said, “Ma’am, I don’t think your daughter’s going to die from getting grazed by a bullet. Let’s not exaggerate.”
“Is she gonna be okay?” Leo asked the nurse in a very caring tone.
The lady replied, “Yes, she is a lucky girl.”
Yell Out / Do You Page 8
