Creepin': A New Orleans Love Story

by Chenell Parker

  The three of them continued to talk about Peter as they made their way over to a group of people dancing near the DJ. Paige kept her eyes trained on Tre while he zipped up and down the street with Mia seated on the back of his bike. She had her arms wrapped tightly around his waist with a huge smile adoring her face. Paige wished she could snatch her off the next time they passed by, but that wasn’t possible without a few people trying to kill her. Mia and Moonie were two people that she wished she could get rid of permanently.

  ***

  “Mia, go straight home and I’m serious,” Tre said as he walked Mia to her truck. “You know anything is bound to pop off around here after a certain time.”

  The Super Sunday festivities were coming to an end, but that didn’t mean that everyone would go home. Most times people hung around the park just to see if a fight or some other kind of action would take place. A few times, shots had rung out causing people to panic and trample each other, trying to get away. Tre didn’t want Mia around if anything happened and he was happy that she decided to go home early. Brandis had already left with Duke, so she would be riding home by herself.

  “I am going straight home Tre. I have school tomorrow,” Mia replied.

  “Okay, call me once you get settled. I love you.” He wanted to kiss her, but he knew that she wasn’t having it, especially with Von being so close by.

  “I love you too,” Mia answered before getting in her car and pulling off.

  As soon as she turned the corner, she went in the opposite direction from her house. She needed gas and she didn’t want to leave for school earlier than usual to get it. The gas station was two minutes away from the park and that was perfect. Mia pulled into the almost empty station and pulled her debit card out to pay. Once she had the gas pump going, she used that as an opportunity to throw away some empty water bottles from her cup holders that she and Brandis left there earlier. About three minutes later, Mia heard the clicking of the gas pump letting her know that her car was full. When she pulled the pump out, she looked up just in time to see Paige and Shania walking towards her. Since Mia wasn’t scared, she took her time replacing the pump and securing her gas cap.

  “So what was all that hot shit you were talking at your school a few weeks ago?” Paige asked her.

  “You mean the part about you being too old to be fighting high school students or the part about your nieces being too old to be high school students? I said a lot of hot shit that day, so you have to remind me,” Mia flippantly replied.

  “You’re real cute,” Paige chuckled sarcastically.

  “Thank you,” Mia replied. “Everybody says that, especially Tre.”

  “Real funny bitch… Shania hit that hoe,” Paige ordered her flunky of a niece.

  Before Shania had a chance to react, Mia was hitting her first. Paige was yelling, trying to coach her niece on what to do next, but it wasn’t helping much. Mia was shorter than her, but she was clearly winning the fight. Paige tried to pull them apart, but Mia’s hold on Shania was too strong.

  “Get off of me,” Mia yelled when she felt Paige pulling her shirt.

  She held Shania with one hand while shoving Paige away with the other. It took everything in Paige not to hit her much younger opponent. Instead, she yelled for Sariah to come over and do it for her.

  “Don’t just stand there and let her get the best of your sister. You better come over here and handle your business,” Paige demanded.

  Mia didn’t know if Sariah had come over or not until she felt her hair being pulled from behind, followed by a series of licks. She tried to keep all of her focus on Shania, but it was becoming too hard. In a matter of seconds, she turned around and unleashed her fury on the other sister. Mia was outnumbered, so once again she was being pulled in two different directions. She was getting tired, but she refused to give up. She felt them trying to pull her to the ground, but she wasn’t going down that easily. They would probably stomp her like a dog if she did.

  “Hey, break that shit up,” a male voice yelled in the distance.

  The sisters kept right on swinging, so Mia did the same. She was already being jumped and she didn’t want to make it worse by not defending herself. A few seconds passed before Mia felt someone pulling them apart. Whoever it was grabbed Sariah first, so she used that as an opportunity to really focus on the sister. She grabbed Shania’s hair and rained a series of blows to her face.

  “Don’t just grab my nieces and let that bitch get the best of them,” Paige yelled.

  “You better get your nieces and get the hell out of here before all of y’all be going to jail,” he warned. “You’re wrong for standing by while they jumped that damn girl anyway.”

  Mia was still swinging like crazy until he felt herself being lifted from the ground.

  “Let me go,” she yelled, kicked and screamed.

  “Calm down lil mama. Come inside and call somebody to pick you up,” the unknown man requested.

  Mia didn’t immediately look in his face, but she did see that he was an employee of the gas station just by the uniform shirt that he wore. She calmed down a little when he opened the door and placed her feet on the floor. She looked out of the window and saw Paige and her crew piling up into her barely working Toyota Camry. They peeled out of the parking lot, leaving a trail of smoke behind them.

  “Should we call the police?” the female cashier asked the other employee.

  “Nah, I think they’re gone. You have a phone to call somebody to pick you up?” he asked Mia.

  “Yeah, but my phone is in my car,” she replied.

  “I can go get it for you or you can use the store’s phone,” he offered.

  “Yeah, here you go, just use this one,” the cashier suggested handing her the cordless phone. She grabbed a stack of paper towels and handed them to Mia. “You’re lip is bleeding.”

  “Thanks,” Mia smiled weakly. “Is there a bathroom that I can use?”

  The cashier pointed the way and Mia walked off, while dialing Tre’s phone number at the same time. She knew that he was going to be pissed, especially because he asked her to go straight home and she didn’t listen.

  “Yeah,” Tre yelled into the phone. Mia was happy that he answered because he usually didn’t if the number was unknown to him.

  “Where are you Tre?” Mia asked him.

  She examined her face in the mirror waiting for him to answer. Aside from a few scratches, busted lip and her wild hair, Mia didn’t look like she’d been in a fight with not one, but two people at the same time. The sisters couldn’t really fight one on one and apparently they couldn’t fight together either. Since they wanted to jump, Mia knew that it was far from over between the three of them.

  “Mia?” Tre asked like he was unsure.

  “Yeah, where are you?” she asked again.

  “I’m still at the park. Why are you calling me from another phone? Where are you?”

  “I’m at the gas station around the corner from the park. That bitch Paige got her nieces to jump me.”

  “What!” Tre yelled angrily. “Stay right there, I’m on my way.”

  Mia hung up the phone and wet the paper towels in her hand. After cleaning the blood from her lip, she fixed her hair and splashed cold water on her face before going back to the front of the store.

  “Thank you, my God brother is on his way,” she said handing the phone back to the cashier.

  “You’re welcome baby, just stay in here until he pulls up,” the older woman suggested.

  Mia nodded and stood near the counter and peered out of the window. The guy that helped her was out front sweeping, but Mia wanted to thank him too.

  “There he is, thanks again,” Mia said when she saw Tre pull up on his bike.

  She walked out front and thanked the man who helped her, before walking over to her car to talk to Tre. She saw the frown on his face before she even made it over to him.

  “What the fuck happened, Mia?” he yelled while grabbing her face to in
spect it.

  “I already told you what happened. Those scary bitches jumped me.”

  “Why don’t you listen, Mia? I told you to go straight home and that’s what you should have done. All of this shit could have been avoided,” he fussed.

  “Stop talking to me like I’m your child. I needed gas, so I came to get some. It’s not my fault that your bitch can’t let go,” Mia snapped.

  “I’m so done playing games with Paige and her nieces. Get in your car and let me follow you home,” he instructed.

  Without uttering another word, Mia hopped in her car and headed towards her house, with Tre following close behind on his bike.

  ***

  The next day, Tre was outside of Mia’s school twenty minutes before the bell rang at the end of the day. He tried convincing her to stay home, but she refused. She’d only been back in school for a few weeks and she didn’t want to start missing days already. She made it clear that she wasn’t scared and he had no doubt in his mind about that. Besides, the seniors were located in an area of the school of their own. They didn’t have to fraternize with the other grades, or even see them for that matter. Since he wasn’t there to see Mia, he waited on the side that the ninth through eleventh graders entered and exited. As soon as the bell sounded, Tre watched the students file out of the building until he spotted who he was looking for.

  “What’s up y’all?” he spoke when he saw Paige’s nieces walk out.

  “Hey Tank,” Shania said smiling hard.

  Out of the two sisters, Tre disliked her the most. She was messy and she was always reporting to Paige about everything that went on. Sariah was more of a follower and did everything that her sister told her to do. She was the quiet one, but she came out of her shell just to please other people.

  “Let me talk to you for a minute Shania,” Tre said stopping her in her tracks.

  He was leaned up against his bike, so she walked over to where he stood. He was actually talking to both of them, but Shania was always the mouthpiece for her sister anyway.

  “Okay, what’s up?” she questioned.

  “I don’t know what Paige has been telling y’all, but we are not together and we haven’t been together for a while. Mia don’t have shit to do with whatever is going on with us and neither do y’all. For y’all to jump her last night was going too damn far,” Tre spat angrily.

  “Nobody jumped her scary ass,” Shania lied. “She got her ass whipped and now she wants to claim that she got jumped.”

  “So you and this simple looking bitch didn’t jump her when she was at the gas station last night?” Tre asked while pointing to Sariah.

  “My sister ain’t simple. Like I just said, I whipped her ass and I did it by myself. If she has a problem with it, she can come see me for round two,” Shania countered.

  “You got that, round two it is,” Tre smirked right before he got on his bike and pulled off.

  “Fuck him,” Shania spat angrily. “I can’t wait to tell Paige about his stupid ass. Let’s get to this bus stop before we miss our bus.”

  Just like always, Sariah followed behind her sister with no questions asked. She really wished her sister and aunt would just leave the situation with Tre alone, but they weren’t letting up. Thanks to them, she would probably die before she made it out of the eleventh grade. Her grades weren’t all that great, but they were good enough for her to pass had she not missed so many days from being suspended all the time. They were cool with Mia at one time, but she was definitely the enemy now. Every time Tank did something to make Paige mad, she took her frustrations out on Mia. If it weren’t for her pushing them up to fight her, they probably never would have done it. For the first time in a long time, Sariah decided to speak up about how she felt.

  “I’m getting tired of all this drama behind Paige and Tank. If he doesn’t want her, she needs to move on and let that shit go. She already got another man anyway. Next time she wants somebody to fight Mia, she better do it herself,” Sariah said surprising her sister.

  Sariah usually went with the flow of things, but she must have really been fed up to speak on it. Paige had been like a mother to them since their mother died some years ago. Aside from their grandmother, she was the only other female who they could depend on. Their mother was stabbed in a fight when they were only ten and eleven years old, and they’d been with their father ever since. He basically didn’t care what they did and Paige had them doing all kinds of shit.

  “I’m starting to feel the same way,” Shania said agreeing with her sister, as they walked up to their bus stop. They still had a few more minutes to wait, but she was happy that they didn’t miss it.

  “Here comes Tank stupid ass again,” Sariah said when she saw him pulling up on his bike.

  “So about that second round,” Tre said directing his comment more towards Shania.

  She was tired of going back and forth with him, but he needed to know that she wasn’t scared of him or Lamia.

  “Tell Mia whenever she’s ready, she knows exactly where to find me,” Shania replied.

  “Who said that your second round was going to be with Mia?” he asked with a smirk.

  “Are you going to fight me for her?” Shania said as she and her sister laughed.

  “Nah, I don’t fight girls, even if they do look like men,” he laughed. “But I got somebody who’s willing to go a few rounds with you.”

  He whistled and a group of four girls that the girls never even noticed before, hopped out of a black Tahoe. No words were said, as they raced over to the sisters and commenced to beating them down right at the bus stop. The first hit that Shania felt was almost like a brick being thrown in her face. The ones that followed were no better. Her face was on fire and her ears were ringing. There was no way that she and Sariah were winning the fight, but she swung back anyway. Shania prayed that her sister was making out better than her, because she was getting her ass kicked up and down the sidewalk. She knew that a crowd had formed just by all the yelling and other noises that she heard around them. People were actually cheering the fight on instead of trying to break it up.

  “Stomp that hoe,” somebody in the crowd yelled causing Shania to panic. Her sister must have fallen and someone was encouraging her attackers to finish her off.

  “Get them off of me,” Shania yelled hoping that someone came to her rescue soon.

  She was growing weaker by the second and she now knew how Mia felt when they did the same thing to her the night before. They had only been fighting for a few minutes, but the pain made it feel like hours.

  “I thought you wanted round two,” Tre taunted Shania, while she continued to get the beat down of her life. He must have paid those girls a grip to fight them and they were putting in overtime. The sisters had just decided that they were done fighting with Mia, but it was too late. They took it too far when they jumped her and Tank wasn’t having it. If she could take it back to avoid the situation they were in right now, she would. She was sure that Sariah was probably feeling the same way.

  “Hey y’all, I think somebody called the police,” a man yelled from the crowd. That was music to Shania’s ears. She needed something or someone to bring her nightmare to an end and the police was perfect.

  “Let’s move around y’all. I think they got the point,” Tre said.

  Just as fast as the fight started, it stopped and Tre and his female accomplices were gone in a matter of seconds. The crowd of people started to disperse, but not before some of their classmates laughed and let the girls know that the entire fight had been recorded. As if things weren’t already bad enough, they now had to worry about the entire school as well as everyone on social media hearing about it or seeing it. They would have to relive their nightmare for a long time.

  “Ahhh,” Shania cried out in pain when she tried to lift herself up on one hand.

  “Look at your hand and wrist,” Sariah yelled excitedly. Shania’s hand was throbbing like crazy, but it, along with her wrist, had started t
o swell as well. It almost looked like it was deformed or crooked.

  “It hurts too badly for me to even use it to get up. Call daddy or Paige to come and pick us up,” she ordered her sister.

  They knew without a doubt that Tre was going to see their father, whether he wanted to or not. Shad didn’t play about his only two daughters and Tre was going to find that out the hard way.

  Chapter 16

  Tre sat in front of the restaurant and gathered his thoughts before going inside. He looked down at his ringing phone and declined another one of Paige’s calls. She’d been blowing his phone up for three days straight and he didn’t answer for her one time. She’d even left a few messages cursing him out for having her nieces jumped. When they jumped Mia at the gas station after Super Sunday, all of Tre’s common sense went out of the window. He called his cousin Tae and some of her friends, and it was over from there. Tae parked her Tahoe right at their bus stop and waited for Tre to give her the green light to put in work. He knew that they couldn’t fight them on school grounds without going to jail, so their bus stop was the perfect place. The look on the sisters’ faces when Tae and her crew came at them was priceless. He didn’t care about how Paige or anyone else felt when it came down to Mia. He warned her about what would happen, but they must have been taking him for a joke. Mia could handle herself in a one-on-one fight, but they took it to another level when they jumped her. The joke was on them this time because they had been fucked all the way up. When the phone rang again, he was about to decline, but he decided to answer it this time.

  “What the fuck you keep calling my phone for Paige?” he yelled angrily.

  “You know why I’m calling your phone, so don’t play dumb nigga. My fucking nieces are walking around here with a broken hand and black eye thanks to you getting them jumped. They have to go to a GED program because they can’t even go back to school,” Paige screamed.

  Shania’s wrist and hand were broken as a result of trying to block some of the licks to her face. In addition to having a patch of her hair pulled out, Sariah also had a black swollen eye to go along with it. They were too embarrassed to go back to school in their condition, so Paige and their father removed them from the school’s enrollment. When they were completely healed, they would have to register to get a GED instead.