little.
“I’m sorry, but I-I don’t have a James Parks in m-my sys-system.” She stuttered as she looked to see if anyone was coming to her rescue.
Shit! I gave her the wrong ID. “Oh, my bad. I’m so sorry, ma’am,” I said now, embarrassed. “I gave you my twin brother’s ID who’s out in the car. He’s handicapped, so I carry his info around with me just in case he has a seizure or something.” I quickly snatched the ID up and handed her my other ID.
She punched away at her computer and handed me back my ID. Then she instructed me to follow her.
I trailed behind as we made our way to the room set aside for box-holders. As I walked a couple of people gave some dirty looks.
I had put on a little muscle in jail and decided to flaunt it. “What the fuck are you looking at?” I said to one of the patrons, who had the look of a person smelling something foul. I was bluffing, because my ass was on parole. “Don’t make me beat your ass in this muthafucka!”
When the coward turned back around to mind his business, I continued on my way.
“You have a nice day,” the teller said as she sat my box on the table and walked away, leaving me to handle my business.
I hurriedly placed my money in my empty book bag and swiftly made my exit, looking back several times to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I know I wasn’t, but ever since Kenny busted my ass after having me followed around, I constantly looked over my shoulders.
I hopped in the car, and we made our way back to Carl’s house. I was back on the loose, and I was loving it.
Chapter 3
Ashley
My Life
October 28th, 2018, 10:03 P.M.
I slowly eased my key into the door and waved my ride off. It was about ten o’clock at night. I didn’t see my father’s car, and I was sure my mom was asleep by this time. I had been out on a date with Tony again tonight. We had made a trip to Inner Harbor just to sit and chill again this week. It was so cool just hanging out, just the two of us. We walked hand in hand, and sometimes we would stop and kiss. People would stop and stare at us like we were crazy or something was wrong. But we didn’t care about what people thought about us.
Yes, Tony was much older than me, but was it a crime to date someone older? Well, maybe it was, because I was sixteen and Tony was forty. I just acted older when we went to different places, so I wouldn’t seem so out of place, but people still stared at us like we were aliens.
My parents had no clue we were dating, or that I was “getting mine.” My mom and dad pretty much had no friends, so I knew I didn’t have to worry about running into anyone they knew. My mother, Mona Black, was a homemaker type, and my father, Shawn Black, was this big-shot lawyer. He was in court all the time and slept most of the time when he was off. My mother was busy all the time with my little sister Diana and my socially weird brother Alex, with his football practices and all that.
Alex and I were twins, but we were so different. He was older by ten minutes. He was a hermit and never got into any trouble, while I was more outgoing and popular.
We attended the same school, Randallstown High School, but I didn’t see him that much, since we had totally different class schedules. I saw him enough at home anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him, but sometimes he could be such a boy—goofy, always on his computer, and never got tired of football.
I was talking to a girl from my economics class the other day, another pretty girl Alex had turned down, and she was asking about him. “Hey, yo, Ash. Why yo brotha be actin’ so different than you? Is he gay or something?”
I looked at her for a sec. She was so ghetto-acting. We were standing at the lockers in the hallway getting books out of our lockers for the next class.
Alex was a good-looking guy from a sister/brother point of view, but I wasn’t really paying attention to his dating habits, or if he even liked girls. I had my own social life to secure.
“I don’t know, Jasmine.”
“Gurl, what you mean, you don’t know?” Her face frowned up. “He’s your brotha. Your twin at that. If anybody should know, it should be you.”
Okay, this chick is about to pluck my last nerve. “Ummm, Jasmine, why you so curious about my brother? I mean, what, you trying to get at him or something?” I had a hint of attitude in my voice.
“Well, maybe. He is a football player, and he is chocolaty-cute.”
She smiled hard. She had a crush on him, I could tell.
“I was just wondering, why he got to be playing hard to get? He turned a sister down like I was one of them dirty chicks or something.”
“Again, I don’t know why he acts the way he does.”
I really didn’t know why he was the way he was. I mean, we did have lunch period at the same time, but he always sat across the room with some butch-looking chicks. To me, they didn’t look interested, in that way, in each other at all. They just looked like they would converse while eating and go their separate ways afterwards. Besides, I spent most of the lunch period texting Tony on my phone anyway.
“Look, Jasmine, he is focused on his schoolwork and the football season. I don’t think he has time for girls right now.”
“Yeah, whateva, gurl.” She sucked her teeth. “Just put a word in for a sister, okay.”
“Sure thing.”
That was a promise I wasn’t going to keep. She was so out of luck.
Truth was, I thought Alex was gay myself. I had no solid proof, but frankly, it was his life, not mine. Regardless, I loved him. He was my brother.
Chapter 4
Mona
Bumpy Night
October 28th, 2018, 11:13 P.M.
I tossed and turned in the bed all night, trying to get me some rest, but it just wasn’t happening. I heard Shawn come in at about eleven o’clock, but he had not come to bed yet. His behavior had become more and more erratic lately, and I was becoming suspicious. In fact, we were just getting back to being intimate again. It took us both a while to get comfortable with each other after all that went down in our lives about ten years ago.
The children were clueless that the one they were calling Dad wasn’t really their father. There were days when I just wanted to sit them down and tell them the truth, but I chickened out every time with excuses that only appeased me. How could I tell my children that their father was a bisexual maniac that I cheated on their “father” with?
Shawn was of no help; he was still having nightmares about his molestation that he still didn’t want to talk about. I didn’t push him, out of love, but sometimes I wanted to shake him out of the funk that he got into that made him cut everybody off emotionally.
I sat up in bed and contemplated the task before me. I got up and walked sluggishly to the bathroom to sprinkle my face with some water to help wake me up fully. I looked in the mirror and surveyed the worry lines around my eyes. I had small, puffy bags under my eyes that also showed my restlessness.
The past couple of years had been rocky, but we survived. The cheating, lies, and homosexuality had taken their toll on Shawn and me, but we survived. The hours and hours of counseling both together and separately had helped us pull the bootstraps up, as they say, in our lives.
I pulled out some of that L’Oréal eye cream from off my vanity and smoothed it on my face, like I had been doing more and more lately. They say black don’t crack, but I was an exception to the rule. I attributed it all to stress, though. Shawn was on track to recovery and healing, but I kept worrying about some of our secrets coming back to haunt us.
I walked