Getting Played

by Celeste O. Norfleet

  I don’t know how long I stand there trying to figure out the voice. I’m not really sure. Then it hits me that I have to run. I look around. Nobody is outside. I run to Terrence’s house. I know his grandmother is home this time of day. I climb over the fence and run to their back door. I knock, then I bang. Terrence opens the door. He looks at me like I am crazy. “Girl, what the hell are you doing here banging on the door like that?”

  “I need help,” I say, breathlessly. He looks at me hard. I hate seeing this look. I know he doesn’t like me anymore. “Look, whatever. I just need to be here until it’s over.”

  “Until what’s over?” he asks.

  “Terrence, there are some police cars out front next door,” his grandmother says, coming into the kitchen. She sees me and I guess sees my panicked expression. “Get her inside here now,” she says. Terrence grabs my arm and pulls me inside.

  I am still shaking when his grandmother comes over to me. “Good Lord, child, what’s going on? You’re shaking like a leaf.”

  Terrence goes to open the back door and I grab and push him aside. “No, don’t go out there,” I yell.

  He looks at me, then down at the phone in my hand. “Who’s on the phone?”

  I stand with my back against their back door blocking him from leaving. Then I hear my name being called over and over again. I put the phone to my ear. “Hello,” I say.

  “Are you safe?” some woman asks.

  “Yeah, I’m next door.”

  “Good, stay there.”

  I nod. “Mrs. Harrison, can I stay here with you for a few minutes?” I ask.

  “Good Lord, of course.”

  “What’s going on?” Terrence asks.

  “There’s someone in the house.”

  “Where are your grandmother and sister?” Mrs. Harrison asks.

  “My grandmom is out and Jade just went back to school. I was in the house by myself when I heard them.”

  “They didn’t see you leaving?” I shake my head, no.

  There is a loud commotion outside. I jump. Terrence pulls me away from the door. “Stay here,” he says, then opens the back door. He steps outside. Mrs. Harrison follows. I want to, but I can’t move. I just stay there in their kitchen. I hear my name again. “Yeah, hello,” I say.

  “Kenisha, where are you?”

  “Next door at Mrs. Harrison’s house,” I say.

  “It’s over. We got them coming out of the house.”

  “Okay, thank you,” I say, then hang up. I sit down at the kitchen table and just stare. I don’t even want to know who it was. I don’t care. I know whoever it was found the trophy and that’s what they wanted. So good. They got it back, and now Jade and I don’t have to think about it anymore.

  Terrence comes back in after a while. “You okay?” he asks, sitting down across from me.

  “Yeah,” I say. I look up at him. He is half-smirking, shaking his head. “What?” I say.

  “Girl, you got so much drama around you.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Did they get them for real?”

  “Yeah, the cops caught both of them coming out of the house.”

  “Both?” I question, wondering about the female voice I heard before I closed the back door.

  “Yeah, it was your boy Darien and some other dude. They had that trophy you used before to beat him down with them.” Then Terrence starts laughing. “That’s some messed up stuff right there. Those trophies keep getting his stupid ass in trouble.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t even realize I still had it until I was cleaning up earlier. I gotta call my grandmother and Jade.”

  “Yeah, and I think the police want to talk to you, too. I’m going back outside.”

  I call Jade and my grandmother and tell them what happened. After I assure them I am fine and tell them where I am, they tell me they are already on the way. I end the call, and a few minutes later, Diamond calls. “Hey, let me call you right back. We need to talk.”

  “No, but wait,” Diamond says. “I gotta tell you this real fast, then we can talk about it later. Barron came over last night. He was all upset. He told me that it was Troy and some of the other football players who were doing the break-ins around in your neighborhood.”

  “What?” I say.

  “But it wasn’t them that did the one at the Pizza Place. Whoever it was scared the hell out of Troy and his boys, ’cause they’re not doing it anymore.”

  “Did he believe them?”

  “Yeah.”

  I hear talking outside. “Let me call you right back.” As soon as I end the call, Detective Clark walks in with my grandmother and Terrence’s grandmother. I jump up and hug my grandmother. It is so good to see her.

  “Kenisha, are you okay?” Detective Clark asks. I nod. “I need to ask you some questions about what happened this afternoon.” I nod again. Just then, Jade comes in with Detective Wilson. We look at each other and I start crying. She grabs me and holds tight. After a while, Detective Clark suggests he can talk to me later. But I don’t want that. I want to get this day over with.

  “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  “Yes,” I say strongly.

  “Okay, take me through it. What happened?”

  I tell him about the trash can and how I accidently left it in front of the back door and how I heard it fall when I was in my room. Then I tell him about the creaking step and sneaking out the back way. I debate about telling him I heard a female voice. In the end I decide to tell. What the hell, whoever she was, she was in my house and didn’t belong there.

  “Did you recognize any of the voices?”

  “I didn’t hear anybody clear enough to be one hundred percent sure.”

  “Okay, as I said before, we did arrest two men coming out of your house, Mrs. King. They were carrying a trophy. Do you know where it came from?”

  She looks puzzled. “A trophy?”

  “That was me,” I say quickly. “A few weeks ago Darien Moore and I got into it in his room. He told me his sister was missing. I went to help, but he tried to make me stay. I grabbed one of his trophies and hit him with it. Then I grabbed another one and broke his arm. After that I grabbed another one. When I saw he was incapacitated, I still held on to the trophy and ran.”

  “I see. So, it’s his property. You took it from his house.”

  “Uh-huh, I didn’t know back then that I broke his arm and I was scared he might still come after me again. So, I took it for protection. I never gave it back. I forgot all about it. I only found it when I was straightening up my bedroom after the first time they broke in.”

  “That was apparently what they were looking for.”

  “A stupid trophy, that’s silly,” Jade says, looking directly at me. “Why break into someone’s house just to get a trophy? It can’t be of that much value.”

  “Maybe it’s sentimental value,” I say. “I shouldn’t have taken it in the beginning.”

  “You were defending yourself, it’s understandable. So you hit him with his own trophy and broke his arm.” I nod. The detectives glance at each other and halfway smile. “Okay, we’re gonna wrap this up and let you all get back to what you were doing. If we have any more questions we’ll contact you later. Thank you for being so patient. And, Kenisha, you did a really brave thing today.”

  I nod. I don’t really care anymore. They have the trophy and he has his money. It’s over for me. If the police open the trophy and find the money, it’s on him. Thank God.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Next Best Thing

  “When all is said and done I guess nobody ever really wins in the end. Maybe just breaking even is good enough. All I know is that either way, I’m gonna keep moving forward. Every day is something new and every day I’m gonna deal with it the best way I can. I don’t know what’s up with tomorrow. I guess I’ll see when I get there.”

  —MySpace.com

  We go to church Sunday morning, then go out afterward and eat brunch. It’s just the t
hree of us and it’s great. I feel normal again. We drive by Giorgio’s, and I see he’s in there with his two cooks, but it still isn’t open. I get out to say hi, and to tell him I’m not working there anymore. I knock on the locked door, and he walks over and lets me in.

  “Hey, how are you?” I say.

  “Fine, and you?” he answers, looking around behind me.

  I turn to see what he is looking at. “Oh, that’s my grandmother and sister in the car waiting for me. I just wanted to stop by to say how sorry I am about everything that happened and to tell you I can’t work here anymore.”

  “I understand.”

  “Are you going to stay open?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Well, I’m gonna go now. I’ll be back for pizza. Take care.”

  “You, too,” he says, looking around before unlocking the glass door. He lets me out then locks up immediately and hurries to the back. I guess I really don’t blame him for being so skittish. If I had a black eye and a huge busted lip I would be skittish, too.

  So I get back in the car and we go home. As soon as we pull in front of the house, we see a big black SUV parked out front, too. We get out and start walking up the path to the front porch. The car door opens and Tyrece, Jade’s ex-fiancé, gets out and walks over. “Hello,” he says.

  “Hi, Ty,” I say, happy to see him and knowing this has to be a good sign. He leans down and hugs me and my grandmother. Then he looks at Jade. “Hello, Jade.”

  “Hello, Ty,” she says curtly.

  “Grandmom, come on, we should go inside,” I say.

  We start inside, and I look back, seeing Jade and Ty following. I am hoping she isn’t going to do something like slam the front door in his face. Thankfully, she doesn’t. We go inside and Jade and Ty stay out on the front porch talking.

  To keep busy, Grandmom mixes up a batch of monster cookies, and I bring my laptop down and start outlining what I want to write my congressional page essay on. We are talking in the kitchen when Jade comes back in the house about an hour later. She isn’t smiling. “Everything okay?” Grandmom asks.

  She shrugs. “Maybe. We’ll see. Ty needed to make a quick run to his mom’s house. He said he’d be back later.” She looks at me. I am smiling so wide my face starts to hurt. That is the best news I’ve heard in a while. “What are you smiling about?” she asks.

  “Nothing, everything,” I say. She knows what I mean.

  The doorbell rings a few minutes later. Detectives Clark and Wilson come by with a few last-minute questions. Basically, they want to know how I got down the steps without being seen. My grandmother goes to open the pantry door, and I take them up to the closet next to my bedroom. When they come back down the back stairs, they are chuckling. We sit down in the living room, and they tell us the man with Darien has a slash on his hand and they suspect he is the same man from the Giorgio’s break-in and the others. They’re testing his blood against the blood on the pizza cutter for a match.

  “Who is he?” Jade asks.

  “Nobody, just someone trying to make a name for himself.”

  “And the others in the robbery?” I ask.

  “We don’t have any leads right now. If you think of anything, let us know.” I nod, but I know I’m not going to think of anything. Afterward, they thank us again for our help, then leave.

  They are leaving when my dad, Cash and the boys are walking up the steps. My dad shakes hands with the detectives in greeting. I know I have to tell him what happened the day before. I’m just not looking forward to it. They come in. The boys hug me and Jade then make a beeline to the kitchen to find my grandmother. Jade and Cash follow.

  “Why were the detectives here?” my dad asks.

  “Sit down, Dad,” I say. I tell him what happened, how I slipped down the back stairs and ran out. He nods a lot, but keeps quiet mostly. He asks a few questions and is surprised we even have back stairs. “Are you okay?” he finally asks when I am finished.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. All that’s finally over,” I say.

  “Do you want to come back to Virginia to live? You can go to Hazelhurst if you want. That’s why I came by. I paid the tuition last Friday.”

  “Nah, get your money back. I’m staying at The Penn.”

  “I always hated that nickname.”

  “Really, I kind of like it now.”

  He frowns. “Are you sure? What about all your friends?”

  “They’re still my friends. That part will never change.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll leave the tuition there at the school in an escrow account, just in case you change your mind in your senior year.”

  “Thanks, Dad. What about you, are you okay after all that?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “We got stuffed monster cookies,” Jason says, with his face smeared with chocolate. “Grandmom said to come get a cookie, too.”

  Dad and I go to grab a cookie. We talk a few minutes, then Ty comes back. Jade introduces everyone. My dad and Cash are stunned when he walks in. I guess it’s not every day a Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum album-receiving, worldwide entertainer walks in the kitchen and just grabs a cookie and gets milk from the refrigerator and starts chatting like it’s no big deal. The fact that he insists on calling me Lil Sis really trips them out. After a while, Jade and Ty leave. Then my dad and everybody leaves.

  Later that evening, my grandmother is up in her bedroom, and I am sitting out on the back porch chilling. After everything is done, and all the questions are answered, it’s nice to just sit back and chill. I sit watching the rain come down. It’s just getting to be dark, and rumbles of thunder are in the distance. I am texting both Jalisa and Diamond and not paying attention to anything else.

  “Hey.”

  I jump, then calm down instantly hearing the familiar voice. I look over, seeing Terrence on his back porch, too. What was I thinking? Tattoo or not, that definitely wasn’t lawn mower guy’s voice before. “Hi,” I say. I tell my girls that lawn mower guy is here and I’ll catch up with them later. I get two smiley faces. I watch as he runs over, hops the fence and hurries to our porch. I stand waiting. “You’re wet,” I say.

  “No biggie.”

  “Are we ever gonna be okay again?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I have to think about it. I still can’t believe you thought that was me at Giorgio’s,” Terrence says.

  “I’m sorry. I just saw the tattoo and it scared me.”

  “But you think I’d do that and beat up on some guy?”

  “No, never. It’s just that after that Gia thing, we weren’t really talking and I had no idea what was going on with you.”

  “So you believed the worst of me.”

  “I believed that I needed to protect you,” I say.

  He nods. “For the record, I was stuck at work all day Saturday. Then the brothers at the frat did a fundraiser on campus for sickle cell anemia. I was there all night.”

  “I know it wasn’t you.”

  “Good, I can’t believe you actually thought I’d rob the Pizza Place.”

  “Momentary insanity,” I say.

  “Yeah, that I can believe,” he jokes.

  “I gotta find Li’l T and straighten his butt out,” I say.

  “I already talked to him. He thought it was funny that you thought it was me.”

  “So who did he recognize?”

  “He said it was your girl’s brother. He thought that’s why you were so upset and who you were protecting. Some dude named Brian. He’s a crackhead who lives around the way.”

  There was another jolt to my system. “Brian, Jalisa’s big brother?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, since we’re clearing the air, what was up with you and Gia? I mean I get it, she’s older and you go to the same school and all, but…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She said that you two hang out at school.”

  “Yeah, we do. I tuto
r her. That’s one of my jobs.”

  “One of them?” I ask.

  “I have three,” he says.

  “You have three jobs? How? Why?”

  He takes a deep breath and sighs heavily. “The fight I was in with D a few weeks ago messed up one of my scholarships. To stay in school I had to make up the money somehow. I tutor, I work in the cafeteria and I work in the bookstore.”

  “That’s why you never come home anymore.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me all this before?” I ask.

  “I was pissed.”

  “It was my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I chose to fight D. We’ve been going at this thing for years.”

  “Still, if you hadn’t seen me that night, you’d still have your scholarship money. So it is my fault.”

  “I’ve already applied for another scholarship for next semester. Financial aid said it looks really good.”

  “So maybe you won’t have to work then?” I ask hopefully.

  “Nah, I’m still keeping at least one of the jobs.”

  “Maybe not tutoring,” I suggest.

  “You’re sounding a little jealous, girl.”

  “I know, right,” I say.

  “Well, don’t be,” he whispers. Then he kisses me and I kiss him right back. And all of a sudden, everything feels all right again. We stay out a little while longer talking. Then he has to get back to Howard, and I need to get ready for school the next day. We say goodbye and make plans to catch up the following weekend. We wave as we both go back into the houses.

  I feel like I just lived a lifetime in the last three weeks. I take the back stairs up to my bedroom. Tomorrow is Monday, and I need to get my head straight for that. I am going to school and have no intention of hiding at Dr. Tubbs’ office.

  I sit on my bed with my laptop open to the congressional page application on one side of me and my recipe book on the other. I pick up and flip through the recipe book. I read all the things I’ve been through since I came to live here with my grandmother and my sister. Dad asked if I wanted to move back to Virginia and go to my old school again. There’s no way I can do that. My phone beeps, then my text message light blinks. I pick it up and press the button to see the message.