I smirked at that shit.
We stayed hidden until the last set of taillights disappeared.
“How the fuck we gonna get back to the hotel now?!” Frog yelled out.
“We can get an Uber,” Kev responded.
“From where?” Frog asked. “From the site of a blown-up fuckin’ car!”
They went silent, and I let them, not adding shit to the conversation; my mind was spinning too much.
Frog was limping, talking about how he thought his foot was broken. Kev said he thought he broke his finger, while Carlos expressed how he thought the bullet went through his arm, and maybe his leg.
I didn’t say shit, but I knew I was fucked up, my arm, my leg, my fucking head. It was all fucked up. But it wasn’t gonna make me stop shit.
“Come on, I saw a gas station around the way. We can make it close to that and call for a ride,” Carlos said.
They nodded, but I didn’t say shit. We held on to each other while we tried to move outta the bushes without fucking up ourselves even more.
Once we got onto the street and under the streetlight, you could see the blood running out of our arms and legs through our clothes. We took our shirts and pants, whatever that wasn’t covered in blood, and tried to cut off the circulation.
We made it halfway to the sidewalk when we could hear the fire crackle and smell burning rubber when it got mixed with the sound of sirens, and knew we needed to get off the scene as soon as possible.
“Man, I can’t make it,” Frog said. “My shit is fucked up.”
They all nodded, agreeing with him. Again, I didn’t add shit to the conversation, letting them niggas handle shit. Carlos talked his nigga off a cliff and called an Uber so we could sit down.
I sat a lil’ ways away from them, listening to them talk but was looking off in the sky.
I took L. Not a setback, not an inconvenience, it was a fuckin Loss. I never have taken so many L’s back-to-fuckin-back like this, but it was no way I was gonna let it end like this.
When we got back to the hotel, all of us laid the fuck down feelin’ like we had been through war.
And shit, maybe it was the start to one.
The next few days were hell.
We laid around the hotel trying to nurse each other back to health. But real talk, I was fucked up the most.
I thought the bullet caught my arm once; it caught it twice, had my shit burning to the white meat, and one caught my left leg.
We spent time on Google looking up what to do and got ourselves some shit delivered to try to get the bullets out and cover up our wounds.
But that shit hurt like a bitch.
“What the fuck!” I yelled out as Carlos poured alcohol on my arms, then dug into the hole searching for the bullet
“Man, I can’t feel that shit, and my fuckin’ hand hurts,” Carlos responded, his hand damn near white like my shit was.
“Nigga, I don’t give a fuck what hurt. We need to get this shit together,” I responded.
“This shit was a fuckin’ dummy mission,” Frog expressed. “Look at us, we need a fuckin’ hospital.” Carlos, Kev, and Joe agreed with him. “For real, I think my ankle fucked up,” Joe added.
I rubbed my head. I was already annoyed, my heart beating in my ear, and these niggas weren’t making shit better. “We are not going to no hospital, and if any nigga mentions going back to Cali, I’ma shoot you. We are not leaving here until the job is done!”
“How the fuck are we supposed to finish a fuckin job, and we all are fucked up?” Carlos asked. “And this shit is not what you said it was at all. You talked like it was some lil’ nigga, not a nigga that got two trucks full of niggas after you,” Frog added.
Them niggas talked back and forth about how we were fucked up, how the whole trip was fucked up. But that’s not where my mind was. My mind was on Islah. She got that nigga wrapped around her finger, ready to run a drill over her. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was more fucked up than I thought I was. That ho ass nigga had eyes on me all over the city, so my move had to be thought out. I took a deep breath and kept thinking about what move I needed to make to achieve my goal. When a thought came to me—a thought that made me smile for the first time, and I don’t know how long.
