Read Online Tyrell by Coe Booth - Free Book Online Page B

kitchen after a while, and he look at us and start laughing. I don’t know what’s so funny, but I start laughing too, and then we start actin’ mad stupid, talkin’ ‘bout how things was back in the day. We talk ‘bout how we used to be stealing shit from the candy store ‘round the corner, and how Calvin got busted when we was in sixth grade, and they moms had to come down to the store. The Chinese man from the store screamed at they moms for not watching her son and, man, Cal got a beating all the way back to they apartment. And me, Andre, and Greg was out there in front of the building, laughing and eating the candy we just stole our own self. That shit was funny.
    After a while, Andre say, “So what you thinking about, Ty?”
    â€œYeah, what you need?” Cal ask again.
    I’m tired of him always asking me that. But I do need something, so I can’t front. “I got all my pops equipment and records and CDs and shit,” I tell them. “It’s in storage.”
    â€œYou wanna sell?” Greg ask. “ ‘Cause I know a guy that would buy all that shit.” Greg always know a guy that wanna buy something.
    â€œNah, I don’t wanna sell his shit. He gettin’ out in a couple months. I wanna use it, throw a couple parties like he used to. But for our age. I’ma find a place, and I’ma charge people to come. Y’all can sell your shit outside, and I’ma DJ. What y’all think?”
    Greg look at Andre, who the oldest and make the decisions for all of them.
    â€œSound a’ight to me,” Andre say.
    â€œWhat you need?” Cal ask me for the third fuckin’ time.
    â€œI need cash. ‘Bout two, three hundred to get the place and set shit up. We pack that place, make this party off-the-hook and we all get paid. But that’s only the first one,” I say, trying to make them see that this could be big, like my pops parties used to be. “We keep havin’ them, folks keep coming, and we start making some real money then.”
    I don’t tell them that all I’m trying to do right now is make enough money to get me, my moms, and Troy our own apartment. ‘Cause we been at the EAU over two weeks now, and I’m starting to think they ain’t never gonna get us no Tier II.
    I mean, most of the time, they only make you stay at the motels a couple nights, then they put you in a Tier II shelter where each family get, like, they own apartment with a kitchen and bedrooms and shit. And yeah, them places ain’t all that nice, but they way better than Bennett and least you get to stay there for a while. Least you know where you gonna be sleeping every night.
    But they treating my family different now. That’s ‘cause ‘bout three years ago, when my pops was locked up, we was broke and living in a Tier II shelter, and my moms scammed the city. She bought some social security numbers and other shit and was getting welfare money for three different families with all kinds of fake names and shit. She said she only did it ‘cause she was desperate.
    When the city found out, she was arrested. They ain’t put her in jail, but she still on probation for it. She s’posed to be paying the city back, but they givin’ her time since they think she got a retarded kid, like that ain’t another one of her scams.
    The problem is, now that we homeless again, the EAU don’twanna give us no Tier II again, not when my moms was convicted of welfare fraud. That’s why we been at the EAU for two weeks now and they ain’t found nothing for us. My moms think they just trying to fuck with us long enough that we give up and find a place to stay on our own. But we don’t got nowhere else to go. If we did, why would we be sleeping at Bennett?
    Andre reach in his pocket, pull out a big roll of cash, count off three fifty-dollar bills, and just hand it to me like it ain’t nothing