Read Online Criminal by Terra Elan McVoy - Free Book Online Page B

them. There wasn’t any TV, and we’d never had a computer. I didn’t have many books, and I hadn’t thought to bring any old magazines from the salon today either. I found a pack of cards in the bedside table and sat on my bed, sipping beer and playing Solitaire.
    After about an hour there was a knock at my door. When I opened it, Cherry was standing there, giggling.
    She crooked her finger at me, beckoning. “You gotta come out here.”
    â€œI’m not in the mood.”
    She laughed, bending forward. “Oh-ho, honey. You will be.” She looked down the hall and hollered, “Emilio! Emilio, get your narrow ass over here.” To me, she said, “You’ve made quite an impression, little girl.”
    Behind her I saw the younger guy step into the hall. He had his hands in his pockets, shy, but his eyes had the same druggy gleam my mother’s did.
    I shoved past her. “Leave me alone.” I pushed past Emilio too, into the living room, where Leroy and Bo and Cecilia weregrinding to the music. Behind me Cherry called my name, but I didn’t even turn. I just went out through the kitchen, to the back of the house, and into the dark. I walked to the only safe place I knew—to Bird’s. I hadn’t even been at my momma’s for a day, and already it was starting: her selling me off to her friends. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go, either. Bird was my only hope. But I didn’t know how to make her not mad at me.
    I stood at the curb at the edge of her yard, trying to picture myself saying something and knowing there was nothing I could that would make anything right enough for her.
    Except, of course, the truth.

ONE HOUR, TWO. I’M NOT SURE HOW LONG I WAS THERE ON the curb outside Bird’s house, trying to get the courage to go knock on her door. Eventually the lights went out. I didn’t want to wake her or Jamelee up, not for this. As I walked—slow—back to Cherry’s, I told myself the daytime would be better anyway. She’d be fresher headed, and more time between our fight would’ve passed. I sat, numb, on the curb just down the street from our house until Cherry and her friends piled out the front door and into Bo’s car. They roared past me, not even seeing. Only then did I let myself in. I went straight to my room and locked the door.
    Sunday I stayed in bed as late as I could, listening for noises of Cherry coming home that never happened. I thought of Bird, at church, and later dinner withher grandma. I wanted so bad to be sitting at that table with them, listening to Rose’s stories and passing along more biscuits. But Bird wouldn’t want me there. So I waited. A shamed little corner of me hoped something about the Lord’s day would fill her with more forgiveness, too. Tomorrow. I would talk to her tomorrow.
    I could’ve gone somewhere on the bus, I guess, but I didn’t want to leave and then come back with Cherry and her crew around. So I sat on the couch and watched DVDs from her bootlegged collection. As I lay there, every inch of me felt ready to spring up at the sound of Bo’s car, rush back into my room, and lock the door. But even after the second movie, no sound came. Sometime around four, I found a box of macaroni and cheese in the pantry and made it for myself, though Cherry had no milk and there was no telling how long the butter had been in there. No beer left to speak of either, and no one around to buy me any. Nothing to do but feel sorry for myself.
    By seven o’clock I was bored and bleary eyed from so much TV. I paced the length of the living room a few times, trying to think. Cherry might have money in her bedside table, the pocket of her robe, but I was afraid to go in her room at all. The edge of the doorway was about as far as I went when it came to her space anymore.
    All I needed to get me through until tomorrow