Love Me

by Diamond Johnson

  The shit that my parents were going through had turned me angry. I felt like they were going out like every other parent who acted like they weren’t mature enough to work through their damn problems. At thirteen years old, I just wanted something stable. That moving from house to house throughout the week was stupid as hell. Because I didn’t too much agree with the changes that had been going on in my life lately, it caused me to distance myself from my mom. I think I was more distanced from my father because I felt like he was really the reason why the marriage wasn’t working. I just felt like he no longer cared.

  With me distancing myself, and my parents having problems of their own, they hadn’t even noticed the phone that Raheem had given to me well over three weeks ago and that I’d been keeping in contact with him. Call me stupid, but I believed him when he said that he was sorry. He was right, neither of us were ready for a child, so I couldn’t blame him for wanting me to get an abortion.

  I lay back in the twin sized bed that was closest to the window with a goofy smile on my face because I knew that in a few short hours, I would be able to see him. His mother had gone out tonight with a few of her friends, so he had the apartment to himself. Knowing what was about to go down between us tonight had me smiling from ear to ear.

  “Grandma, pleaseeee. It’s the weekend. Let us stay up late tonight,” my adorable, yet annoying ass little sister begged as she got up from the bed and handed our grandmother her iPad.

  She was too cute in the lemonade braids that my mom had put in her hair the night before.

  “No! Get your little ass in the bed, Jada. Jaden, let me get yours too,” my grandma said with her hand out as she stood in the doorway.

  I laughed to myself because they were trying my grandma with trying to keep their iPads. If we were at home with our mom, she would have taken it from them at least an hour ago. The only reason we were spending the night there is that my mom had to go out of town for the weekend for some type of work seminar, and auntie Sky had a date tonight, so here we were. It worked out good for me because I got to see my man.

  After my grandma collected their iPads and we said our goodnights to her, she quickly closed the door behind her and walked out of the bedroom. She allowed us to keep on the television, so they watched cartoons, and within a few minutes, the cartoons were watching them. My little sister always begged to stay up past her bedtime but would always end up falling asleep before 11:00.

  I made sure that the two of them were asleep before I walked over to the TV and turned it off. If I was going to be up texting Raheem, I needed it to be quiet, so I could hear my grandma coming. She liked to clean at night, so with the TV off, I could hear the music playing in the kitchen as she cleaned.

  I sent a text message to Raheem, letting him know that my siblings had gone to sleep and that we could text now, and I waited for him to respond. The seconds turned to minutes, and it wasn’t long before the minutes turned into hours. Because today was a long ass day in school, I ended up falling asleep with the phone on the pillow.

  3:56 A.M

  The sound of the phone vibrating on my pillow is what awakened me from my sleep. When I saw what time it was on the clock, and I saw who was calling me, I was pissed at myself for sleeping so damn late. I’d reached to answer the phone too late, so it ended. I sucked my teeth when I saw that this was Raheem’s tenth time trying to call me tonight. I had over fifteen text messages from him that I didn’t even bother to read, so I just called him back. I sat up in the bed, making sure that my brother and sister were asleep before I called.

  “Yo! What the fuck were you doing? I been calling your ass since twelve this fuckin morning!” Raheem barked into the phone.

  I had to turn the volume down because he was so fuckin’ loud.

  “I texted you around ten, and you took too long to respond, so I ended up falling asleep. Is everything alright?” I asked him.

  “Man, I’m outside. You know where to find me,” he said, and then he ended the call.

  So many things were telling me to stay in the house because he was being too disrespectful, but I was so dumb that I still ended up getting out of the bed. My Tory Burch slides were sitting at the foot of the bed, so I quickly slid them on my feet before I crept out of the room in a pair of shorts that were so little that they looked like boy shorts along with a tank top. I checked my grandmother’s room just to make sure that she was sleeping, and when I saw that she was, I closed the door back and crept to the front door.

  Like a thief in the night, I silently made my way out the house with my keys in hand, and I hightailed to the stairs, preparing to meet Raheem. I quickly spotted him with his back against the wall and one foot posted up on the wall too. I could tell from his posture that he wasn’t in a good mood. Instead of being dumb this time and hugging up on him and kissing him, I just stood in front of him, preparing myself for what he was going to say.

  “Give me this shit, yo! You don’t know how to answer this bitch, so you don’t need it!” he snapped and snatched the phone that he’d given me from my hands.

  I thought about the way he’d slapped me a few months ago, him choking me, the way he’d talked to me when he found out that I was pregnant, and how I was standing my silly ass out there right now and letting him talk to me like he was crazy. I realized that he wasn’t even worth it. I sucked my teeth and prepared to walk away from him, but he reached out, grabbed me by the back of my long ponytail, and slammed my body against the wall.

  “Fuck you think you going, bitch? Why you didn’t answer the phone tonight? You were out there giving my pussy away?” he growled.

  His mouth was so close to mine that I could smell liquor on his breath. Not only that, his eyes were bloodshot red like he was high or something. Tears welled up in my eyes because I knew that he was going to hit me. Not because I thought of him as abusive, but because he was under the influence, and it was just no telling with him.

  “Get your hands off my sister!” I heard a little voice say off in the distance.

  When I turned, I saw that it was Jaden. I could have died when I saw my little brother standing there in his Spiderman pajamas trying to defend me.

  Raheem looked from me to my brother, and then he laughed.

  “Fuck you, little nigga! Take your ass back in the house before I take my belt off and fuck you up!” Raheem said.

  When he talked, his words slurred, so I knew for a fact that he was drunk.

  “Don’t talk to him like that!” I said to Raheem.

  Wham! He slapped me dead in my face.

  When Jaden saw that, he took off running in my defense. At the same time, all I heard coming from the parking lot was…

  Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Gunshots rang out. I pushed the shit out of Raheem so I could get to my little brother, but it was too late. I watched a bullet pierce him right in the middle of his chest, sending him down on his back. My body froze. My hands went over my mouth as I stood there looking down at my little brother. I found the strength in my legs to move again, so I hightailed it to him, picking him from off the ground and dropping down myself so I could put him in my lap to see him. Blood oozed from his mouth and profusely leaked from his chest.

  “Noooo. Jaden! Jaden!” I shook him, but his body was unresponsive.

  His eyes were wide open as he stared at me with eyes that had yet to blink. I think he… I think he was... dead.

  To be continued

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