BROWN SKIN | BOOK 1

|| C H A P T E R . 28 ||

Let's play a game.

Tell me if you recognize this.

I'll give you five senses. It's not touch because it cannot be felt in dangerous hands. Running it on your wet tongue will not do you justice. It's unscented. Soundless even. It cannot be seen unless you look close enough, maybe. Maybe I'm speaking figuratively. It's kind of like the awareness of an unsettling heartbeat becoming more clear, lucid, audibly. You don't need a stethoscope for this one. The perspective of how small the world seemed with feelings twice as big. A state of exhaustion quickly inspired by acts of senseless violence. Coming to the realization that the main plot of life doesn't make sense anymore in the mind.

Guess. . .

Why aren't you guessing?

I'll wait.

You don't know? You know why you won't say the answer?

These are the emotions I've been feeling that I can't comprehend myself when it came to you.

A mess, I was. The wounds I thought were once healing peeled opened themselves to relieve bloody cries. Jewelz's grip on my wrist is probably what made me wail out at pain as she tugged my spiritless weight into the house. Jewelz didn't want people to see me like this. An embarrassment. The black girl with the intention of causing a scene and is now the center attention from being overdramatic.

I hate attention.

I was so engrossed in the circumstance at hand that the vehicle Beau was in already drove away leaving a mixture trail of dirt and dust. My eyes followed the police officer that took off with someone that belonged to me. The further I got away, she was still there, discussing the situation more as if she was there and saw something that happened. Her head nods were rigid and her fingers delicately laced over her elbows with a straight spine. I bet she felt like a detective, important with authority under her belt and information that needed to be hidden, left revealed.

Somehow our eyes caught each other in the midst of a long stare, but what I do know is

Simone looked at me like a crime scene.

Blood and all.

Simone had secrets of her own she couldn't keep and I wondered if the revolution and chaos lied solemnly in her hands. The ugliest meanest stare I could send emitted off of my pupils so she knew, this wasn't ending when she said so. Not until I could no longer stand on two feet.

Jewelz eventually shoved my shoulders back into a kitchen chair. With no self-control, I released the tension in my sore neck as it bounced back like an elastic strap, sitting flimsy with arms and legs dangling out the seat.

"Get up Ebonee! Right now, we have to go! Get up!"

Beau's words played like a favorite tune in my ear. It's scary when the bad moments are the most remember and the good ones kind of are stuck somewhere. Thought about, but not daily reminders. Flames were fogging up my vision and bullets of sweat were melting my face. I heaved a mouthful of air awfully into my chest and coughed when it burned. My frantic pupils dotted imaginary lines in our surroundings. Left. Right. Up. Down. They're coming for us. Whoever they are, whoever that is, because we are no longer safe.

The tenderness of Jewelz's delicate palms placed a lightweight on my shoulders for a second time. Her touch almost lifted away more than she could imagine right now, but it was not enough once she let go.

"Ebonee. . .Ebonee, sweetheart, you need to relax. It's going to be okay."

Was it really? Was it going to be okay when Beau got arrested for bringing me home like he promised and I hated him for lying to me but can't apologize now since he's gone makes it fine? Or when I really just want to be with him and nothing more but our situation is so fucked up right now? Are we okay when you say it's okay or you really just hate Beau so much, you had to get him arrested, that makes life better now?