A Slum Love Crime. (A$AP Rocky Story)

Part Dodici

My mother came back late last night. I wanted to oversleep, but she wouldn’t let me. She told me I couldn’t be in the house for too long, because she had business to take care of here. As I was stuffing my hair into a messy ponytail, Momma came into my room and dropped a fifty-dollar bill on my dresser.

“What’s that for?” I asked her. It was probably rent money that she wanted me to hide in my drawer for her.

“Your hair. Go to the salon and get it curled today, Tremaine. It’s a gift.” Momma replied, urging the money into my hand. I looked her up and down, but grabbed the money anyway. I wanted to ask her if she’d lost her mind, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Thank you.” I muttered. I waited for her to leave the room before I peeked out my window….the same window that I used to stare at Rakim from. He wasn’t there, or at least I couldn’t see him from this angle. Only Ferg and Twelvy were there. I wondered, briefly, if Rakim had told them what was going on with Mango.

I wanted to put a face to Mango. I wanted to understand who he really was; how he spoke, how he acted, his intentions…I wanted to know how Rakim reacted when he was offered those millions of dollars by Mango.

I was still having trouble grasping the idea that Rakim was a millionaire, not to mention an almost-killer.

Getting to school was uneventful, just like the beginning of the school day. But during lunch time was when the drama started. That’s when I got to talk to Kevon. All the times I’ve spoken to him, he’s either been with Jordan or by himself. But this time, he was travelling in his full pack—Jordan, Justin, and about three or four other boys. I’d planned on eating lunch with him, but seeing the rest of the guys there…

He waved me over to their table. As he did, I noticed the confused and even a bit annoyed looks on his friends’ faces. I didn’t want to have to sit there with them all staring at me, trying to figure out why Kevon would choose me for a girlfriend, but I had no choice.

I slumped down in the seat next to Kevon and nodded to everyone else at the table. They nodded back, and we didn’t hold further conversation. I liked it that way. If any of them had a question about me, they directed it to Kevon. It was easier for all of us. I didn’t want to speak, anyway. Not with Kevon’s travelling hands moving up and down my leg…it was hard to concentrate on anything else.

To my luck, lunch went by fast. Everything seemed to be going by fast. When I was heading to class after lunch with Kevon, I noticed Shandy walking through the halls hand-in-hand with Justin. Hmm, I thought, I guess somebody finally got what they wanted.

In Global History, as our teacher was handing out the assignments we turned in, she smiled at me as she placed my report on the American Revolution on my desk. That was the first A+ I’d gotten in a while.

Finally, school was over. But things weren’t going by as fast as I thought they would after school. I felt like a bomb was about to go off, and something bad was going to happen. But I ignored that feeling. I also made sure I didn’t hold Kevon’s hand when he walked me home.

“Wait,” I said before turning onto my block. I remembered Momma warning me not to come home until later, since she had business. “Can we go to your place instead? I’m not allowed home right now.”

Kevon smiled and nodded. “Sure.”

So we walked a few blocks down to Kevon’s house. It was almost as ghetto as the place Rakim took me to find Mango. There were boys with pit bulls, cars blasting thug music, and girls yelling on their cell phones. Everything was intimidating. My neighborhood was like this, but there was just less of it. Here, you couldn’t get away from it.