Getting Played (17 page)

“You saw my tattoo?” he repeats. “Which tattoo—this
one?” he says, pointing to his neck. I nod. “And you think I was there robbing the place.” I nod.

“Don't worry, nobody knows. I would never say a word. I'll take it to the grave. I just need you to promise me that you'll never do anything like that again. I know we've been having our problems, but if you need money, maybe I can ask my sister again.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, hold up. You seriously think it was me the other night who attacked you.”

“I saw you,” I say. I reach up to touch the tattoo on his neck.

He backs off, leaning away from me. “Girl, you trippin', you actually think that was me. You really don't know me, do you?”

“I don't know why you're getting all pissed off. I'm just trying to protect you.”

“Yeah, by thinking I'm some kind of street thug that goes around stealing and robbing people.”

“It wasn't just me. Li'l T saw you, too.”

“What?” he says loudly.

“Yeah, Li'l T.”

“I don't care what Li'l T said he saw.”

“We talked about it. He saw the car and one of the guys who got out and pushed us all back inside.”

“I don't know who you think you saw, but it wasn't me.”

“Terrence…”

“I don't want to do this,” he says. “Why don't you just look around your room like the police asked you?”

I look around my bedroom seeing everything I guess was
there. I really can't tell. There is just too much stuff around all over the place. “Can you tell if something's missing?” he asks coldly.

I shrug. “I don't know.” I look around again. It's no use. I don't have a clue.

“What about your jewelry?”

“Oh, my God, my mom's jewelry. I forgot about that.” I run into our bathroom and check where I keep my jewelry. Like Jade suggested when I first moved in, I keep it where she keeps hers, in the bottom vanity drawer were we dump tampons and pads. That drawer wasn't even touched. All the jewelry is still there. I feel relieved for the first time that night. “Come on,” I say, “I don't want to do this anymore, either.”

He nods. We go downstairs and find everybody in the living room. My grandmother is telling one of her “I remember when” family stories about my great-great aunt who traveled all over the world and made a fortune. Everybody is sitting and standing around listening like she was imparting the knowledge of the universe. Maybe she is. She has a way of doing that sometimes. Terrence and I stand in the open doorway next to Jade listening, too.

Just as she finishes her story, the doorbell rings like crazy. The cops quickly look at each other and then nod. We are all trying to figure out what that means when the bell starts ringing like crazy again. “I'll get it,” Jade says, heading to the door.

“No,” Detective Wilson says. Clark nods and goes to the door. He opens it.

“Who the hell are you?” I hear my dad demand.
Shit. I forgot all about him.
“Where's my daughter?”

Detective Clark flips out his badge and introduces himself. “What's going on?” my dad asks, changing his tone instantly. He rushes in, seeing Jade first. “Jade, what's going on, is your grandmother okay? Is Kenisha here?”

I roll my eyes. This is going to be a long night.

Now What?

The
next three days were uneventful. Absolutely nothing happened. It felt strange not to have to duck and dodge drama for a few minutes. Cassie hadn't spoken to me, Troy and his stupid crew were MIA, and my dad had finally relaxed. After the police sat down and spoke to him the night of the break-in, he finally chilled, then of course, he went ballistic because I didn't tell him about the threatening phone calls. It took him about a minute and a half to realize that's what I came to him earlier to talk about. He offered to get me a new phone. I declined on principle. Of course I was grounded again for sneaking out. Or rather, his version of grounded. Yeah, I'm still laughing about that, too.

I didn't sleep in my bedroom because it was still a mess.
I just went up there to grab clothes in the morning before school and that's it. I slept in my mom's old bedroom on the second floor. Whenever I did go upstairs, I just shook my head. I know Jalisa and Diamond volunteered to help clean with me. Even Terrence wanted to help, but I turned everybody down. I need to do this myself. But Terrence still righted the bureau, bed, desk and bookcases in both mine and Jade's rooms. So Saturday morning, I just needed to take care of my clothes and books and other stuff like that.

I get up early, shower, dress and go downstairs. My grandmother left a note on the kitchen table saying she was going out to the grocery store. I grab some orange juice and go back upstairs. When I get to my bedroom it looks even worse than before, if that's even possible. I decide to start in the walk-in closet I share with Jade. That way I can at least put my clothes away as I pick them up.

So I am sitting on the closet floor sorting my shoes when I hear noises in the hall and in Jade's bedroom. I know my grandmother is out, so of course I think whoever was there before had come back. I freeze and look around for something to swing. Then I hear my name called quietly. It's Jade. “Hey,” I holler from the closet. “I'm in here.”

She peeks inside and looks down. “Hey,” she says. “Girl, you scared me. I looked in your bedroom and nobody was there. Then, as I was walking down the hall, I heard a bumping noise.”

I hold up a pair of my boots. “I know. You scared me, too. I'm just trying to get the closet straight so we can hang our clothes up again.”

She comes in and leans back against one of the built-in dressers. “I guess we had the same idea—Saturday morning cleanup. Who picked up all the big furniture?” she asks, looking back into her bedroom.

“Terrence did,” I say. “He came back up Tuesday night after you went back to the dorm and everybody else left.”

“Thank him for me,” she says.

“You'd better do that yourself. I don't think he's speaking to me anymore.”

“Why not? What happened?”

I shrug. “I don't know. He's pissed at me, but I don't know why. All I can think of is maybe it's because he was fighting Darien and had to go to the police station that night. But the day after, we talked and he was okay. Then a few days later he wasn't.”

“Something happened in those few days,” she surmises.

“I guess, but I don't know what, and he's not saying. Do you know some girl named Gia?”

“Ms. Lottie's granddaughter?” she asks.

“Yeah, they had a thing and broke up just before mom and I came to live here. Now they're both at Howard and I think it's back on again. I think I'm getting played.”

“That doesn't sound right,” she says.

“Have you ever seen them on campus together?”

“The campus is huge. I've only ever seen Terrence in the library or in the cafeteria when he's working or maybe when his frat is doing something.”

“The night all this happened, he got mad again, but I was only trying to protect him.”

“What do you mean, protect him from what?”

I look at Jade, not sure if I should tell her, but I have to tell someone. “He was there the night of the robbery at Giorgio's. He was one of them.”

“Terrence?” she questions. I nod. “No, that's not possible. I know Terrence. It's not his character. I used to babysit him years ago. He'd never do anything like that, ever.”

“But I saw him. And also Li'l T saw him. When we talked at school, he said he recognized one of the guys, too.”

“Then he recognized someone else,” she says.

All of a sudden I am feeling weird. I should be the one defending Terrence unconditionally like Jade is, instead of accusing him and then trying to protect him. “One of the guys that night had his exact same tattoo in the exact same place on his neck. And don't say I didn't see it because I know I did.”

“Kenisha, there are a million guys with the same tattoo in the same place. It doesn't mean they're all guilty. Besides, his frat had some event all Saturday night. I know he had to be there for that.”

Everything she is saying made sense. And so now it looks like I have been jumping to the wrong conclusions again. I shrug. It's all messed up.

“It'll work out,” she says, reassuringly.

“Like you and Ty?”

She looks away. “That's a whole other story.”

“Is it going to have a happy ending?”

She looks back at me and shrugs. “I really don't know.” Then she looks away again and her jaw drops. “Kenisha
Lewis, I know you are not wearing my brand-new shoes that I haven't even worn yet.”

Oops.
I look down at my feet. “Yeah, I tried some of your shoes on. Girl, I had no idea you had all these designer shoes and handbags and stuff in here—Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Michael Kors, Dolce & Gabbana,” I say. “You have sunglasses, belts, scarves, hats, for real, so you know we wear the same size shoe, right? I'm seriously raiding your side of the closet from now on.”

“Not if you want to live to be seventeen,” she jokes. She looks down at her rows and rows of footwear. They are all neatly placed below where her clothes are gonna go again. “Thanks for getting them all back together.”

“Sure,” I say.

“Look, about what I said before when I snapped at you…”

“Jade, I know you were upset about the Tyrece thing. I would be, too. So seriously, don't worry about it.” She nods and turns to leave. “Oh, wait, guess what? I checked our jewelry from Mom,” I say. Her eyes get wide as she looks over at the bathroom vanity. Then she seems crestfallen and shakes her head. “No, that's just it, they didn't touch anything. I guess a drawer full of tampons and pads is like kryptonite to criminals.”

We laugh. “So now, instead of pepper spray, I'll carry some tampons in my bag and just throw them if someone steps up to me.”

“Nah, definitely still carry the pepper spray,” I say.

“I still can't believe all this,” she says miserably.

“I know. It's so stupid. What the hell were they looking for? I swear I don't have anything of Darien's.”

“Maybe you hit him too hard with his stupid trophies and broke more than just his arm,” Jade jokes. I stop and look up at her. “What?” she asks, seeing the expression on my face.

“Oh, my God,” I say.

“What?” she asks again.

“The trophy, I forgot all about it. The police asked if he gave me a box or something, but he didn't. Then when I talked to Ursula before, she said…oh, my God, I know what's in it.” I jump up and run into my bedroom. Jade follows. I look under the bed. “I threw it under here.”

“You threw what under there?” she asks. I am on my hands and knees, but can't find it by feeling around. So I get up and shift the bed aside. Jade helps. “What are you looking for?” she asks.

“It's not here,” I say. “They must have taken it.”

“Who took what?”

“Darien's trophy. That night, I hit him twice and each time the trophy broke. Then the last time, I grabbed another one to hit him again, but he was down on the floor. I just took it and ran. Then I remember Ursula said the police found drugs on the floor in his bedroom. He'd been hiding the drugs in the trophies. See, that's what they were looking for. I still had one of his trophies.”

“Well, at least they got it now and it's out of here.”

“No,” I say. “I remember now. I moved it from under the bed.” I stand up and walk over to the bedroom door and close it. The trophy is still sitting where I put it days
ago. I pick it up and bring it back to where Jade is sitting on my bed.

“Do you think it has drugs in it?” she asks. I nod. She reaches for it, and I move it away. “No, don't touch it.”

“Why not?”

“Because when we give it to the police and they dust it for fingerprints, I don't want yours on it.”

“Yours are on it,” she says.

“Yeah, that's because I was gonna hit him with it. I'm sure they will expect to see that when I explain what happened and why I still have it.”

“Do you have any gloves?”

“Yeah, I just put my winter hats, scarves and gloves away in the closet.” I run and bring back two pairs of leather gloves. We put them on and search the trophy for an opening. We look for a while, but can't find one. “Why don't I just throw it across the room? It'll be like the rest of the place.”

“Except the police are going to know this is what they were looking for, so why would they break in and then leave it here.”

“They won't know what kind of condition it was in when I took it from Darien's room,” I say.

“True. Okay, do it. But don't make it too badly broken.”

I nod and toss it kinda hard across the room. We run over to see if it broke. It didn't. “Maybe there's nothing inside,” I say. Then, when I pick it up, I feel the top is loose. I wiggle and twist the silver football figure on top. It turns. I look at Jade. This is it. We sit down on the bed again as I
keep untwisting until the whole top part comes loose. Jade holds the base, and I pull the top. It comes apart and all of a sudden all these big fat rolls of hundred dollar bills tumble out all over the bed and floor. The trophy is pretty big and it looks like the rolls of money had been stuffed inside all the way to the top.

We look at each other and then down at all the money on my bed and floor. “Oh, my God, how much do you think it is,” I ask.

“Too much,” she mutters. “We have to call the police.”

“Wait, whoever is after this now thinks it's not here, right?” Jade nods and picks up one of the rolls of cash. “They're gonna have to assume that the police took this trophy with the others, right?” Jade nods again, picking up another one. “So really nobody knows we have this money, right?”

Jade shakes her head. “No. Wrong. So don't even think about it. This is the last thing we need in this house.”

“But, Jade…”

“No, Kenisha,” she insists firmly, grabbing the rest off the floor as I gather up those that fell on the bed with us.

“Aw, man, you are just too damn honest.”

“Believe me, it has nothing to do with me being honest and everything to do with not having this here with us. This is drug money. People got hurt for this money.”

I nod slowly. I know she's right. But just for a minute I'm really tempted. “So what do we do?”

“We put the money back.”

“All of it? Are you sure?” I joke.

Jade smiles. “Yeah, all of it, I'm sure and so are you.”

But curiosity gets the better of us. We dump the rest of the rubber-band rolled money out on the bed first. They were jammed inside really tightly. We finally get them all out. There are twenty rolls, and each roll has between seventy-five and eighty one hundred dollar bills each wrapped up tightly in a rubber band. I grab my calculator, and we figure out the approximate total. When the LCD display shows the total, we just look at each other. There is over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars stuffed in the trophy. “That's a lot of money,” I say.

Jade nods. “Yeah, like I said, too much money,” she says.

“But what if we give it to the police and they keep it?”

“But what if they come back to look for it again?”

We stuff all the money back inside the trophy and screw the top back on. It looks about how it looked before. Now we are just sitting there looking at it. Neither one of us speaks or barely even breathes. “Jade, Kenisha, I'm back,” our grandmother calls out from the second floor. We both jump and grab our chests and then burst out laughing. We keep laughing until tears start streaming down our faces. I grab the trophy and put it back behind my door. It is always open, so I guess that's how they didn't find it when they searched my room.

“Hi, Grandmom,” Jade calls down, taking the gloves off.

“Hi, Grandmom,” I repeat, taking mine off, too.

“I brought some sandwiches in with me. Come on down and get something to eat.”

We both say okay, and then look at each other. “So what do we do with that?”

“We'll leave it where it is for right now. We can think about it later, okay?” she says. I nod. “Come on, let's go.”

I head to the front stairs, and Jade heads to the back. “Where are you going?” she asks.

I turn, seeing her opening the back stairs closet. I grimace. “I hate those stairs.”

“Come on,” she insists, as she pushes the shelving away.

“I hate these stairs,” I say, following her in darkness.

“Why? It's quick and easy and leads right to the kitchen.”

“But it's so dark. I always feel like I'm gonna fall and break my neck coming down this way or like I'm walking down into the pit of hell.” She laughs. “I'm serious, it's scary.”

“I used to be scared of coming down here, too, but then I guess I got used to it. Mom took me down one time when I was petrified. She helped me get used to them.”

“How?” I ask.

“I remember I must have been about nine or ten. She held my hand and told me to just close my eyes, hold tight to the rail and just keep walking. After that, whenever I'd be nervous about walking into the darkness I'd grab the rail tight like I did with her hand, close my eyes and, like she said, I'd just keep walking.”