American Oxygen

Two

RIHANNA POV
Police Station
Norfolk, Virginia
3pm EST

I hadn't seen the inside of this police station since high school- February of my junior year. Chris had gotten into a fight after school in the gym with some of his friends, but it wasn't over a foul or a basketball game. It was over me. He had dealt with the way his friends and just about everyone else had been talking about me since Homecoming, not that he liked it. There was a special connection between us now, whether we liked it or not. He was more protective over me now.

Rakim Mayers, one of Chris' friends and someone I had begun tutoring since Homecoming, was playing Chris and a few of their mutual friends in basketball when I suddenly became the topic of discussion. Rakim announced that he soon planned on really locking me down as we'd begun getting closer with the amount of time I spent with him rather than with Chris, Michael, and Mijo.

All of the boys seemed to laugh it off, even Chris. Chris was her best friend and the man who had taken my virginity. He was irreplaceable and I think he knew that.

Rakim went on to describe how soft my lips felt on his and how the skin between my legs had been marked many times by his hands and his lips. At first, Chris didn't believe him, but when Rakim continued, describing the small heart-shaped birthmark on my hip, Chris lost it. He had claimed that skin, that birthmark, that me as his own.

Chris and Rakim began fighting. While Mijo, Michael, and their other friends tried to pull them apart, the anger radiating off of Chris was vicious and unstoppable. It took five teachers to finally pull the two boys apart.

After watching Chris being taken away in the back of a police car, I called her father, hoping he would help. Going against his better judgment, my daddy met us in the station and with a little string pulling, he got the case thrown out.

Chris wouldn't speak to me our whole drive from the police station to his house, but eventually he asked me one question, why I had given Rakim that kind of control over her body. I was blindsided, not only had I not touched Rakim, but I had never wanted to, but of course, Chris wouldn't listen. It was a simple explanation. Rakim had been at my house for tutoring and I had just finished working out with Daddy. I was wearing shorts and a sports bra. It wouldn't take X-ray vision to see my birthmark, only eyes.

"Seven, there are seven unsolved robberies in another area with a similar motive to the current ones." Aubrey said, scanning through the desktop as I shoveled a fork piled with food into her mouth.

Covering my mouth, "Any witnesses?"

"Kelly Wright and her son both came home during the robbery as well as James Bishop, his wife, and their two children on another occasion." Aubrey clicked through the files looking for the addresses of the two families. "It says the thieves- three of them- showed little to no violence during the robbery.

I leaned over Aubrey's shoulder, looking through the files with him. "They barely took anything." I stopped. "Bring that up."

All seven of the robberies had been committed in lower middle class neighborhoods and strangely, the thieves had left handwritten apology letters at all three. Letters written with paper found inside the house. It was odd to think the same men who had been breaking into houses without mercy now, had once felt sorry for their actions. Why?

"Pay them both a visit?"

"Couldn't hurt."

"Hol' up." Aubrey typed their names into the computer, accessing the Department of Motor Vehicles' records to find the addresses for both families. "Split up?"

"With your eyes? I think you should stay with me." I cackled before returning to my seat. "Besides, I have a way with people. They just love to tell me things."