Hood Tales, Volume 1

by C. N. Phillips

  “How did they die?”

  “One of Justin’s old hits came back to haunt him. This was way before I was who I am now. I was just a normal high school girl, you know? I mean, I was bad as hell, but I was normal. I thought my mother would get me dressed for my senior prom, do my hair all pretty, and apply my makeup flawlessly. She was so beautiful. I know it would have made her happy, turning me into her twin.” She smiled at the thought. “And my dad? He would have taken a thousand pictures of me and given my date a hard time. Him and Justin both.”

  “Like Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys II?”

  “Exactly like them! Oh, my God, it would have been great.” Robin laughed softly and shrugged. “But life had other plans for me. It hurt. No, it hurts, knowing that I won’t ever see them again. After they were murdered, the cleaners burned the house down. Justin and I had been in such a hurry to get out of there we didn’t grab any of our family pictures. So, I just hold them really close in my memory. I’m so scared I’ll forget their voices, though. I don’t want to forget my mom’s laugh or even the sound of my dad yelling at me for getting in trouble at school. It’s all I have left of them, you know?”

  “Have you forgotten yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then you won’t.”

  “Promise?” She didn’t know why she needed to hear him promise, but she did. If he promised, she would believe it.

  “I promise,” he told her, and that time it was he who took her hands in his. He kissed each one of her fingers tenderly.

  “I sometimes think that I don’t want this life. Then again, I don’t know who I would be if I weren’t Robin Hood, robbing the hood. The only difference is I give to myself, not others. I give myself everything that was taken from me. I truly feel that my identity now is what the universe gave to me. I am my own fairy tale.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more. Some days I want to take all the cake I’ve saved over the years and dip. But then, it’s like, I can go anywhere I want to in the world, far away from here, but it ain’t gon’ change anything. I am who I am, not because of the shit around me; I’m me because of what’s inside. It don’t matter where I’m at, this hustle in me ain’t going nowhere. It’s embedded in my DNA, so I just have to accept it.

  “Nights like tonight remind me of how savage shit can get. But times like right now with you remind me of how sweet it can be, too. I should be mad at the world, fucking the city up right now. My nigga is gone. But I’m calm, because of you. Tell me something, Robin: if you believe in fairy-tale magic and all that, what if the stars aligned the way they did tonight to bring us together like this?”

  “In tragedy?”

  “Even a phoenix is birthed through fire,” he said, rubbing the tips of her fingers on his lips. “The most beautiful stories begin in tragedy. This might not be the appropriate time to say this, but has anybody ever told you how beautiful you are?”

  She inhaled sharply and tried to avoid his eyes. When she’d said that his eyes didn’t lie, she was being serious. She was afraid of what she would see when she looked there. But, still, she wanted to know what she would find. She looked at him and bit her lip, shaking her head. “Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Look at me like that. I don’t deserve for anyone to look at me like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s my fault all of this happened in the first place. If I wouldn’t have trusted Malik; if I wouldn’t have thought he was different from other niggas . . .”

  She’d finally said it. It was out. She could tell by the way his hand got stiff that he knew what she was implying, and she was afraid the look in his eyes would fade. He had every right to hate her. If she had remained solid, then his friend would still be alive and Justin would not be in the hospital.

  Arrik watched her closely. She was so beautiful it made no sense to his soul. Her cheekbones were model worthy, and her full lips pouted even when she wasn’t upset. Her long eyelashes accented the golden specks in her brown eyes. The once straight hair on her head had gotten wet in the shower, and now it was wavy. He could tell by her posture that she was afraid of what he was going to say or do. It was true that he would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little disappointed, but mad at her was something he couldn’t be. Just as she was about to drop her head, he caught her chin.

  “Chin up, ma. Right or wrong, always keep your head up. I can’t blame you for anything when I too got caught up in greed. Those diamonds sounded good to me, so if I am to blame anything, it’s the gluttony of man. It has always been our biggest downfall. There is only one thing that I know for certain.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, and he gave her a sly smile.

  “If you had made it to prom, you would have been the most beautiful girl on the dance floor.”

  Robin felt her face grow hot and the butterflies in her stomach go haywire. As unrealistic as it all seemed to her, Robin felt like she’d known him forever. She cleared her throat and took her hands back from him before she did something freaky, like push her fingers in his mouth.

  “We need to find Amos before he leaves town with that safe,” she said.

  No sooner than the words left her mouth did her phone begin vibrating on top of the wooden kitchen table. Her hand flew to it, and she flipped it over, thinking it was the hospital calling her for Justin. When she saw that it wasn’t the hospital, but Donte instead, she answered, realizing that he didn’t know anything about what had happened that night.

  “Donte—”

  “I know,” Donte said quickly on the other end. “I mean, I don’t know, but I know some shit is off. This nigga Amos just called me and said that Malik turned rogue. Said he shot up y’all crib and Justin told him to go to the safe house.”

  “Donte—”

  “And I started thinking, that nigga Justin don’t even let me be in the safe house around all that money by myself. I mean, I know a nigga got sticky fingers and all, but I’d like to think I’m the closest one to Justin. If he’s letting anyone lie low in the safe house, it’s gon’ be me! Or you, of course.”

  “Donte—”

  “So, I play it cool and whatnot. I may not be the brightest jewel in the crown, but a criminal knows when a nigga is about to do some criminal shit, you feel me? He said he’s twenty minutes away from the house, and I told him the code to get in. I’m too far away so, sis, you know where he’s gon’ be. Get there. I’m about to go to the hospital to check on my dog. If he did do some snake-ass shit, make him pay. I told Justin about trusting them dark-skinned niggas! I don’t care if they came back into style.”

  “Bye, Donte!” Robin hung the phone up and hopped frantically out of her seat. “I need a gun,” she told Arrik. “Make that two. Amos is about to be at our safe house. That greedy-ass nigga is going for the cash, too.”

  Chapter 7

  Amos felt like he was on top of the world. Out of all his life of scheming, he’d finally hit the jackpot. He never thought that he would hit big like that, but Justin’s team was just too easy to infiltrate. Justin was just too keen on giving chances, and he didn’t see the evil that really filled Amos’s heart. He grew up with a mother who told him every day that he wouldn’t be shit, which was true to a certain extent. He did grow up to be that way, but now he wasn’t shit sitting on $3 million. He wanted to thank whoever Justin had stolen the diamonds from in the first place. Because of them, Amos would not have to do a job for a very long time unless it was just for fun.

  The only thing Amos needed to do was crack the safe open, which he’d tried and failed to do multiple times already. He didn’t know what kind of safe Justin had, but it was a miniature Fort Knox. Still, no matter, he had nothing but time and no doubt in his mind that he would crack it open sooner or later.

  He took greed to a whole different level; like right then he should have been on the road headed out of the state, but no. He wanted all of the money that the team had. To the normal eye
, the safe house was just a beat-up old house in the hood. One story, one bedroom, fully furnished. It was the perfect house for a grandma. But Amos knew better. He knew that the house was the money. He figured that although he wouldn’t be able to get all the money, he would get enough to live comfortably without having to cash out on the diamonds for a while.

  When he got there, the first thing he did when he entered the house with the code Donte gave him was pull the hose on the gas stove and allow the gas to fill up the home. When he was done, he went back to the living room and prepared to do what he came for.

  “Sorry, house,” he said when he picked up the sledgehammer that he’d gotten out of the trunk of his car. “This is going to hurt.”

  Just as he reared back and prepared to hit one of the walls in the dark house with all of his might, he saw headlights pull up outside. Creeping to the window, he saw that a Mercedes-Benz had slowed to a stop right outside of the house.

  “Shit!” he said to himself, seeing Robin and Arrik hop out of the car, both toting guns. “Donte set me up.”

  Pulling the weapon from his waist, he thought of the gas that he’d released inside of the house. The last thing he wanted to do was have a gun war there, but if they were going to take him out, they were coming with him.

  * * *

  “It’s too quiet,” Robin said, aiming her gun as she took the first step into the house. “I don’t like it.”

  “Ain’t that his car in the front?”

  “That yellow Mustang? Yeah. But where is he?”

  She walked down the hallway slowly. The one thing she could say about Amos was that he had the same training as her. She couldn’t sense his presence because he didn’t want her to, and that made him deadly.

  “Stay close to me,” Robin told Arrik, but he grabbed her hand and put her behind him.

  “No, you stay close to me,” he said and led the way into the living room. “You smell that? Gas.”

  Robin smelled it all right, but her mind was on something else.

  “The safe!”

  She took off in the direction of it and dropped to the carpet. From the looks of it, Amos had not been able to crack it yet, which was a good thing. She tried to lift it up, but it was too heavy for her. She didn’t know how Amos was lugging it around, or why he’d even brought it in the house with him anyway. She figured that the only way that she would get the diamonds out of the house was if she cracked the code. From the corner of her eye, she saw something jump out of the shadows behind Arrik.

  “Arrik, watch out!”

  But Arrik was already prepared for Amos. He blocked Amos’s swing with his arm, and after realizing that it hurt far more than a fist, he glanced at his arm and saw a large cut there. Looking up, he was able to lean back just in time as Amos swung the knife at him again. He took two steps back so that he could tuck in his gun and put up his fists. He didn’t want to risk firing his gun and causing the whole house to explode. With calculated aim, he ignored the pain in his arm and prepared to lay into Amos the way he used to do cats back in the day on the streets. With two powerful punches, Arrik aimed for the shoulder of the hand holding the knife.

  “Aggh!” Amos shouted in pain and dropped the knife.

  He tried to follow through with a combo of his own, but Arrik was too quick for him. He easily dodged the hits and stuck Amos in the side of his ribs and followed through with a powerful punch to the chin.

  “Get up, bitch,” Arrik taunted him. “You should have just stuck to robbing niggas. You aren’t ready for this ass whooping!”

  Amos got up quickly and used his big body to run and tackle Arrik to the ground. While the two men brawled in the house lit up by the moon, Robin was committed to trying to get the safe to open. She’d already tried every code she could think of—her birthday, Justin’s birthday, their parents’ birthdays—but nothing seemed to work. She even put in the day that Justin’s pit bull died when they were younger, and other combinations that only Justin would think of.

  “Come on! Dammit!” she yelled out in frustration. “Justin, what the fuck!”

  The gas smell had gotten stronger, and she was beginning to feel lightheaded from inhaling so much of it. She was still feeling weak from the beating Amos had put on her earlier, and if she didn’t get the safe open soon, she was going to pass out right there on the floor.

  Think, Robin. Think!

  She thought long and hard, and finally, something came to her mind. It was a memory of her when she was five years old. She didn’t know if it was the gas or the panic that made the memory resurface, but it did, and she remembered it vividly.

  “Big brother, I’m scared of the dark!” the tiny voice of Robin said. “Will you stay the night in my room?”

  A ten-year-old Justin sat at the foot of her bed, holding in his hand the fifth nighttime story he’d read her that night. They were both in their pajamas, and all he wanted to do was go and play his new video game before his parents made him go to sleep too. Robin wasn’t trying to let him go, though; she was holding him hostage. He wanted to be annoyed, but she looked so cute clutching her quilt to her chin and staring at him with wide eyes. He knew that if he didn’t do something to soothe her spirits, he would wake up to her and her quilt at the foot of his bed in the middle of the night.

  “Nothing is going to get you,” he said.

  “Yes-huh!” she squealed. “You told me the man under the bed who likes toes will eat my feet if I go to sleep in here!”

  He winced, suddenly remembering that he had told her that. He sighed and set the book down on his sister’s soft full-sized bed. For that, he figured he owed her some snuggle time.

  “Okay,” he said, giving in. “I’ll lie with you, but only for a minute.”

  “You just wanna go play that game so bad,” Robin said, scooting over so he could climb in beside her. “I don’t know why. You always lose!”

  He tickled her tummy for talking smack, but more so because she was right. “You better hush before I call the toe monster and have him come by tonight.”

  “No!” Robin screamed.

  “What’s going on in there?” their father’s voice boomed from down the hallway.

  “Nothing,” they called back in unison.

  “Look, Rob,” Justin said, placing his cheek on top of her soft ponytails, “I was just trying to scare you when I told you that there was a man under your bed. Monsters aren’t real.”

  “So why would you lie to me? I’m just a little kid!”

  “Because that’s what big brothers do. We help you face your fears, and we fight the monsters for you.”

  “Well, boy, I’m happy that I have the strongest big brother in the whole world then. You need a gun!”

  “You better not let Mama hear you talking like that.”

  Robin’s eyes got wide, and they shot to her open bedroom door. When she saw that the coast was clear, she leaned into Justin’s ear and whispered, “You need a gun! So that way you won’t hurt yourself killing the monsters for me! You can just get them from a distance!”

  Justin laughed at how smart his baby sister was. He had never been the kid who felt burdened by having a sibling. She was his best friend. When he looked into her eyes, he saw his own, and he loved her very much. He truly felt bad for scaring her, and he thought about how she always chose his room to go to when she was scared, not their parents’ room. She would probably be terrified as she tiptoed down the hall to get to his room, but the fact that she made the trip let him know that she had courage in her heart. He vowed to never make her feel frightened again. He would only make her feel safe.

  “Robin?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know what I do when I’m scared?”

  “You get scared sometimes?” she asked him incredulously.

  “Yeah.” He giggled. “Everybody gets scared, silly.”

  “What makes you scared?”

  Justin thought on it and remembered the last time he felt fear. The memory made him
shudder and hug Robin a little tighter. “That time last summer when you fell into the pool when no grownups were around,” he said.

  “You weren’t scared. You jumped in and saved me!”

  “That didn’t mean I wasn’t scared. I thought you were going to die or something.”

  “But I didn’t, because you saved me like you always will.”

  “Yeah, but I kept thinking about what if I weren’t there? That scared me more than anything.”

  “So, what do you do when you’re afraid, big brother?”

  “Promise you won’t laugh?”

  “I promise! I pinky swear double-doggie promise! Tell me. I’m dying over here!”

  “I say, ‘Six, four, eight, two.’ Over and over, like a spell, and I’m not scared anymore.”

  “What?” Robin made a face. “I don’t get it.”

  “Those are the days me, you, Mom, and Dad were born. Dad says that he and Mom used magic to make us.”

  “That’s how we got here?”

  “Yes. Magic. He said that the universe and stars came together to make us, and as long as we believe in the magic, there is nothing that can hurt us. Especially on those days.”

  “Magic? So, we have magic powers like Cinderella’s fairy godmother?”

  “N . . .” Justin caught himself, remembering that Robin was only five. “Yes. We have magic exactly like her. So, nothing can hurt you.”

  Robin lay there and thought about his words. After a few moments, she smiled big, showing off her missing front teeth. She gave her big brother a big kiss on the cheek before pushing his arm with both of her hands.

  “Okay, you can leave,” she told him. “I’ll be just fine! And if the toe monster shows his big, ugly, stupid face, I’ll turn him into a pumpkin!”

  Laughing, Justin got out of the bed and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. “You do that,” he said, tucking her in. “But if you need me, you know where I’ll be. I love you, Robin. See you in the morning.”