“Shayna said the boy looks like Sean. She also said the boy is bad. Like really, really bad. Jumping on her furniture. Wouldn’t stop playing with her stuff even after his mom told him to stop. He even tried to hit her puppy.”
My chest deflated. Sean and Lakesha? Sean had a sonandthe kid was bad?
Jazzy changed into her nightgown as she continued the story. “Shayna said Lakesha was saying Sean is stable and she wants to move in with him so they can be a family. He lives in those new apartments about a mile past Mr. Henderson’s store. Lakesha trailed him and found out where he lives.”
My eyes widened. “She’s a stalker.”
Niya shrugged. “No, not if Seanisher baby daddy. He’s not supposed to be living all high and mighty while she’s struggling to raise his kid all by herself.”
“Okay, but he ran out of church, so maybe he isnotthe father,” I said in my Maury Povich voice.
Jazzy hung up her pants in the closet and sighed. “Niya. Really? Do you think it’s a good idea to try to get with Jhavon’s best friend? Sean is like a brother to us. He’s like Jhavon number two. It might be too hard to separate your feelings for him from your feelings for our brother.”
My sister created a part down the middle of her head, separating the braids into two sections. Then she braided them into two giant ropes, putting rubber bands at the bottom.
I laid back flat on the bed. “I never said I liked Sean. I only said Isawhim.”
“Niya. We’re twins. Did you forget? I know what you’re feeling.” She wrapped a silk scarf around her hairline.
I couldn’t deny this annoying truth.
“Give it up.” She clicked off the lamp.
Her bed creaked as she dove beneath the covers.
In the darkness, I could still see the outline of her body. She was turned onto one side, which meant she was nowhere near zzzzs. I still had time to probe her brain.
“You ever think about what we’ll be like when we’re Big’s age? When we’re seventy-one?”
“No. We might not make it to seventy-one. Momma, Daddy, and Jhavon didn’t. People die every day.”
“But what if wedosurvive?” I pressed.
“Then we’d be old. Nobody wants to be old. That’s depressing.”
I wondered aloud, “You think we’ll still live in this house? In this room?”
“No. I’ll move to Big’s room,” she stated. “You can stay here in this room.”
The words, “I don’t want to stay in this room forever,” came rushing out from somewhere inside me.
“Well, you’re not getting Big’s room. It’s mine. I just called it. Night.”
In that split second of time, I knew there was no way I was going to spend the next 44 years of my life in that same bed, that same room, sleeping against that same dingy wall.
Something had to change.
