by Nikki Carter
With all of the people closing in on us, I can’t see Dilly. This annoys me, because it was my plan to stay on him like nobody’s business. I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. Big D is to the right of me, and Mystique has her arm looped through my left arm. Benji’s behind us, and there’s a mob of fans in front of us.
Mystique screams, “Are you ready for this, Sunday?”
“Am I ready for what?”
She raises her hand above her head and waves at the crowd. “For this? Fame, fans, all of it?”
“I don’t know! I’m nowhere near this status, though. I’m a long way away from this.”
Mystique shakes her head. “You’re closer than you think.”
The BET cameras are behind us too, trying to capture this madness, I guess. I feel some comfort knowing that they’re here. If something goes down, maybe they’ll get it on camera.
“Let’s go to the VIP area!” Mystique hollers.
My eyes dart left and right looking for Dilly. How could he have gotten away so quickly? Then I see him. He and Bethany are in the middle of the floor dancing.
I jump up and wave for him to come on with us. But he shakes his head. He motions to the dance floor with his arms and then points at Bethany’s booty with his hands. She’s backing up on him, and he’s loving it.
I turn to Big D. “Can you go get Dilly and make him come to the VIP area with us?”
“He looks like he’s having a good time. Why you trying to wreck my man’s flow?”
I desperately try to think of something that will justify my worrying. Then I feel a hand at the small of my back. It’s Sam.
“Don’t worry about him,” he says in my ear. “Dilly is a big boy. He won’t get lost. Plus, he’s got Bethany to keep him company.”
I sigh, but no one can hear me, as I get pulled by Mystique and pushed by the crowd toward the VIP area. Maybe something I said made Big D a little worried be cause he and Shelly go onto the dance floor near Dilly. Now, my heartbeat slows to its regular pace.
“What’s up with you, Sunday? You seem a little off. I thought my mother had my masseuse clear your aura.”
“She did; let’s get over to VIP. Can we see the dance floor from there?”
“We can see everything from there.”
Benji leads the way for us to get into the glass-enclosed VIP area. There are plush chairs, chilled champagne bottles, and music piped in from the floor. It’s like being at the club without the dusty guys breathing down your throat or getting their sweat on you.
“This is how the other side lives, huh?” I ask with a laugh.
For a while, I’m calm. There are so many people here that I can’t tell if Carlos’s boys are gonna be coming through or not. But I can see if anyone tries anything from my post next to the window, and I’ll let security know as soon as possible.
Sam asks, “Are you enjoying yourself, Sunday?”
“I am. I just want to get tomorrow over with and get back to ATL. I’m not used to not being in control of my surroundings. And that’s how I feel in New York City. I don’t even know my way around here.”
Zac is in the corner chilling with his friends when his cell phone rings. He steps away from them to answer it. Mystique watches him as he moves, and her face scrunches into a frown. Something isn’t right about the fast way Zac starts walking toward the door to the VIP area, like he’s in a hurry to get somewhere.
Zac peers out at the dance floor and frowns before opening the door to the VIP area and leaving with Benji at his back.
I look down at the dance floor too, trying to see what Zac was seeing. And then I see him. The guy that was standing outside of Zac’s penthouse when we first got to New York City. He’s standing right on the dance floor, and he’s moving toward Dilly.
I’m scared out of my mind, even though I can tell that Zac has already called in his security forces. Big men are moving from places all over the dance floor. The man can’t see them, but from where I’m standing I can see that they have him surrounded. Dilly and Bethany are still dancing, oblivious to everything going on around them.
Benji gets to the guy first. He puts him in a chokehold and pulls him down to the floor. Once this happens it starts a chain reaction. Men come out of the woodwork to help their friend, and Benji is fighting two or three at a time.
Then, Benji gets some help from the rest of the security team. The dance floor clears as blows get thrown. I think I see a gun, but it doesn’t go off, because one of the security staff intervenes and snatches the man to the floor.
I can’t see Dilly, Bethany, Truth, or Dreya anymore! They must’ve run when the crowd headed toward the doors. But not being able to see them is driving me crazy. I start toward the VIP room door.
“Where are you going, Sunday? You can’t go out there!” Sam shouts.
“I can’t stay in here either. I’ve got to go and help.”
Sam grabs both my arms and physically holds me in place. I squirm in his hands, trying to shake myself loose of his grip. But he won’t budge. He’s holding me too tightly.
Finally, they all crash through the VIP doors. One of the security guards has escorted all four of them and Shelly too.
“Where’s Big D?” I ask.
“He’s down there fighting still. He jumped all up in it when somebody tried to grab me,” Dilly explained.
I rush over to Dilly and throw my arms around his neck. I kiss his face over and over again. I don’t care if Sam is mad or if Bethany is jealous! I was so scared somebody was going to hurt him that it was driving me nuts.
“Dang, all I gotta do is get into a fight? Why didn’t you tell me that before? We could’ve done this a long time ago.”
Because everyone is looking at me like I’m an utter lunatic, I explain. “Carlos told me someone was going to snatch Dilly tonight. And, he said I couldn’t tell anyone because then Bryce and LaKeisha would do something to my mom.”
Dilly snatches away from me. “What kind of people do you think we are?” he asks.
“Your brother shot Carlos!” I yell. “That’s the kind of person your brother is! Someone who shoots people.”
“I keep telling you that you don’t know the whole story but you insist on making my brother the bad guy. I’m telling you, he might not be a saint, but he’s not the villain of this story. Believe that!”
Dilly walks to the other side of the VIP area, crosses his arms, and stares down at the dance floor. Sam grabs me and holds me in his arms, like he never wants to stop hugging me. Some guys out on the dance floor are knocked out, and others are nursing bruises when the police officers appear on the scene.
Big D rejoins us in the VIP section. “Is everybody all right? We all here? We all accounted for?” Everyone nods. “Good. Shelly, can you get me some ice for my hand? I think I broke a finger on someone’s face.”
Shelly grins. “That’s my boo. You put in some work baby.”
I guess Dilly’s not done with his tirade because he comes back over to me and Sam.
“Sunday, how can you say you’re my friend and you knew that gang was about to kidnap me and you didn’t say anything?” He sounds hurt, like he wants to cry. “How could you not warn me?”
“I’m supposed to pick you over my mother? That doesn’t even make sense!”
“Think about it, Sunday. If you had told me, why do you think I’d tell my brother that Carlos had anything to do with it? You didn’t trust me, and you almost got me hurt.”
“They weren’t going to hurt you.”
Dilly roars furiously, “Are you kidding me? They are the Los Diablos! They would’ve hurt me without a thought, especially since no one knows what went down in the club that night with Carlos. They could’ve taken me, and it would’ve been your fault.”
He’s right. It would’ve been my fault for not saying anything. But Carlos in a gang? Los Diablos? I knew his cousins were bad, but I didn’t know it was like this. I want to believe that Carlos is just caught up in his revenge
thing, but now I don’t know for sure. Was there more to the nightclub story? Did Los Diablos have something to do with that, too?
“I-I didn’t know.”
“No, you didn’t, but would that have been enough if I had gotten hurt?”
Sam puts a hand up. “That’s enough. Everyone is scared here. She was scared for her mother, and you’ve got people going after you. It’s not a reason for you to get all up in her face like that.”
“Man, who you think you talking to? You ain’t my daddy, and you don’t even know me all like that. You need to fall back. I’m through with all of y’all.”
“Dilly, I didn’t know about it! You done with me too?” Bethany asks.
He looks her up and down and frowns. “I gotta get out of here.”
Bethany starts to go after him, but Mystique, who’s been silent up until now, holds her arm. “Let him go. He won’t get far. Zac’s men won’t let him out the club.” She pauses. “Sunday, you’ve got to trust us,” Mystique says. “You could’ve come to me and Zac with what you knew. He’s got plenty of resources for that. He could’ve made sure that no one got hurt.”
“I know that now. But will Dilly ever forgive me?”
“We’ve just got to wait and see, I guess. He’s pretty mad.”
How do I always do this? I have absolutely no luck with friends and boys! I’ve got to find a way to make this up to Dilly. I just have to.
Sam hugs me again. “We’ll make it better, Sunday. I’ll help you do it.”
I hold him tight, hoping and praying that he knows what he’s talking about.
33
“They cancelled the concert,” I say to Chad in my last BET confessional.
“Why did they do that?”
“A fight broke out with a New York gang the night before at the club, and the concert promoter didn’t feel safe with us performing. He didn’t want to take the risk of anyone getting hurt.”
Chad asks, “Are you upset about it?”
“Sort of. I mean, they caught the guys that were there to do the dirt, and I really needed to perform.”
“So you’re back in Atlanta. What’s next for Sunday Tolliver?”
“What’s next for me? Well, I’m gonna chill for the rest of this summer. No more promotional tours. I’m just doing music and getting ready for college.”
“Boys?”
“There you go.”
Chad laughs. “I’m serious. Will you and Sam be getting closer over the rest of the summer?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You never give me a straight answer, do you?”
“You never ask the right questions.”
I’m sitting at Pascal’s with Mystique, Big D, and some guy in a suit. I take it they’re going to introduce us in a minute or two, but right now everyone is just settling into the table.
“Sunday, I want you to meet Jacob Metz, my film and television agent.”
I shake his hand when he offers it. “Nice to meet you.”
“Sunday, he wants to talk to you about an opportunity,” Big D says. “And I think you need to hear him out, because this is big.”
Jacob says, “I’ve seen some of the footage of you from the BET reality show taping.”
“Oh, my God. Is it crazy?”
Jacob laughs. “For the most part, yes! But you’re not crazy in it, and that’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
“Okay …”
“The heads over at BET are interested in giving you your own show.”
My eyes widen. “My own show? Why me?”
“They like the positive image that you portray, and they want to show the music industry in a more positive light.”
“What would I do on my own show?”
Mystique answers. “The cameras would tape you and Sam in the studio and follow you around for the first couple weeks at Spelman.”
There goes my idea of staying low-key on campus. I don’t want to be a celebrity on campus. I just want to be a freshman.
“I don’t know if I’m all that interesting.”
“We’ll make it interesting,” Jacob says. “We’ll send you to an exotic location or two for the weekend to shoot a video. Kids eat that stuff up, and you’re going to college, and BET is all about that right now.”
I look at Mystique and Big D. “Do you think I should do it?”
“I think you should,” Big D says.
It sounds like an amazing opportunity. But what’s going to happen when Dreya and Aunt Charlie find out? Are they going to hate me? Are they going to steal my joy? I don’t know if I want to do this, and not have Dreya be a part in some way.
“What about my cousin?” I ask.
Jacob shakes his head. “Absolutely not. She is the opposite of what they want to show right now. A lot of what she did on y’all’s reality show is going to be shown in a bad light. She’s not going to be the star of that show either. You are.”
I feel like I’m trapped here.
“I need to talk to my mother.”
“Jacob’s already talked to Ms. Tolliver, and she’s all for it. She says that the money you make from the show can pay for the rest of your tuition, and she’s all for that.”
So, I guess it’s decided then. I look at the smiles on Mystique and Big D’s faces, and they look so proud. Like parents of a baby graduating from kindergarten. It’s nothing but love.
But what if I can’t cut it without a supporting cast around me? What if they make me the center of attention and I bomb? I’m just about my music, and my life. There’s not much reality show stuff in that right?
“What if I can’t do it by myself?” I ask Mystique. “What if I’m boring?”
Mystique laughs out loud. “Sunday, you’re anything but boring. Do you know how much I admire you? How much I think you are awesome? I wish I’d been like you when I was that age. You’re going to be such a positive role model.”
Jacob adds, “The world will be yours for the taking, Sunday. All you have to do is reach out and grab it.”
I smile at them all and feel at ease now that they’ve gassed me up. I don’t think I need Dreya, Truth, Bethany, or anybody else to help me be a star. It’s time for me to step up to the plate and get my game face on.
Time for me to do it all on my own.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
ALL THE
WRONG MOVES
Nikki Carter
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The following questions are intended to
enhance your group’s reading of
ALL THE WRONG MOVES.
Discussion Questions
1. At the beginning of the story Sam drops a whammy on Sunday when she finds out he’s going to prom with another girl. Was he dead wrong for that? Or did Sunday deserve it because she caused a fight between Sam and Truth?
2. What do you think of Dilly? Is he a possible crush for Sunday in the future or will the drama between their families keep that from ever happening?
3. Dilly tells Sunday that his brother, Bryce, is not the villain of the story. Do you think there was more to Carlos’s shooting than what Sunday knows?
4. Would you be embarrassed to have Aunt Charlie for a mother? Why or why not?
5. Bethany gets really grimy in this story. Do you think Dreya will ever find out about her creeping with Truth?
6. Speaking of Bethany, do you believe that she turned over a new leaf by the end of the book? Will she and Sunday ever be good friends again?
7. What do you think is going to happen when everyone sees the reality show? Will it be drama on top of drama?
8. What’s next for Sam and Sunday? They seem to be closer by the end of the book, but not boyfriend-girlfriend status yet. Will they ever get there? Or is Sunday’s career going to take center stage?
Don’t miss the next book in Nikki Carter’s
Fab Life series
Doing My Own Thing
Available in July 2011,
wherever books are
sold!
1
Have you ever been super nervous about something for absolutely no reason at all?
Today is the day when we get to see the first three episodes of our BET reality show, “Backstage: The Epsilon Records Summer Tour.” I shouldn’t be nervous, because I went out of my way to make sure I didn’t do anything that could be misconstrued as ghetto or lame. I didn’t talk badly about anybody in my confessionals, I never once used profanity, and I was only digging one boy the whole time (Sam).
So, I shouldn’t be nervous.
But for some crazy reason I am. I have the butterflies-flitting-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling that something ridiculous is about to pop off.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t really talked to anyone except Sam since the taping was completed. We ended on a bad note. The final show in New York City got can celled because of a botched kidnapping attempt that ended up in a nightclub brawl. It was all bad.
I keep playing the whole thing over and over again in my head, because I knew about the kidnapping ahead of time, but didn’t tell anyone. In hindsight, I should’ve tried to do something, but I was afraid that something bad might happen to my mom and little cousin. That’s all I was thinking about. It didn’t even occur to me that telling Big D, Mystique, or Dilly about what was going down could’ve led to a different result.
And now, I’m paying the price for that. Dilly’s still not speaking to me, and the tour has been over for three weeks. Big D is a little salty with me too, and that really hurts, because he’s always in my corner. Mystique is a little disappointed, but she told me that she would’ve done what I did, so that made me feel a little better.
My phone buzzes on my hip. “Hey, Sam.”
“You want me to pick you up to go to the studio? Or are you driving, since you finally decided to stop being a tightwad and got yourself a car?”
I laugh out loud. Yes, I am a tightwad with the money I’ve earned so far on the songwriting end of things. But when I got my six thousand dollar check at the end of the tour, I went to a used car lot and got a car. It’s a tricked out gold Toyota Camry that was probably seized from a drug dealer or something. Anyhoo, I’m on wheels.
