Status

“Hey!” I called.

The light-skinned girl looked back for a second, turned and started working her long legs harder. She was nearly running now.

“Angela!” I screamed, picking up the pace in my step. “I know that’s you! Stop!”

But the girl didn’t. In her armadillo high heels, she was moving unbelievably fast. It was clear she was trying to get away.

I pushed on, breaking into a full run. “C’mere, ho! Don’t make me chase you!”

The girl ahead of me suddenly stopped from exhaustion. She turned around, planting her hands on her hips, fatigued. I halted when I saw the girl’s face up close. I gasped.

“Deja?” I uttered her name in confusion.

She looked at me as if she were tired—not just from running, but from hiding the truth.

“Go ahead and cry,” she said flatly.

As much as I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help it. The tears began to trickle, burning my cheeks.

“How long?” I asked her.

Sighing, she said, “We’ve been fuckin’ since the day after he got out of prison. Of course, he was with you the first day. But we’ve been writing each other before he got out.”

“Fa-real, Deja? Are you serious? Yall been makin’ me look like a complete fool. I can’t believe you! You put up this fake name on The Site, fake pictures, and that bitch has been you the whole time? I used to complain about her to you and you fuckin’ played along. What did I do to you?”

“He was mine from the beginning,” she retorted. “I told you I liked Rodrick back in high school. And not only did you steal him, you got pregnant by him too.”

I wiggled my hands in my tight pockets nonchalantly. My left hand found the brass knuckles my mother used to fight with in her gang days. My fingers prodded through the finger holes.

“You always thought you were better than me,” she went on. “You teased me about being fat even when I decided to start working out with you. I was always the fat friend. You’re little sidekick that had to sit back and watch all the niggas in school gawk over you.”

I eased my fingers back out the holes. “Deja, I wasn’t teasing you to be mean. I was trying to motivate you to lose weight. You always complained about being big and I wanted to help you. Look at you now. I helped you get there.”

“No, I did this!” she screamed at me, flowing her hands over her curvaceous frame. “Don’t try to take credit for this. That’s all you do is take. You took my self-esteem. You took my dignity. And you took my man!”

“Them bitches is fightin’!” someone yelled from behind.

I turned for a second, then—

Bam!

Deja punched me so hard I don’t know which side of my face she hit, as I found myself fighting with gravity. The wall of the building saved me from going down. Right when my eyes started working again, I saw Deja— clenching her teeth in rage—charging towards me. I covered my head as she swung at me again and carelessly struck the brick wall behind me. She howled in pain, and I seized the opportunity to grab her throat.

“Bitch!” I snarled.

She grabbed my throat too. We were choking each other.

Biting my lip in anger, I pushed her up against a parked car and made her do a back bend, slamming her head down against the hood. I squeezed harder and she started wheezing. Impulsively, she grabbed my wrists and tried to pry them off. She couldn’t.

I wanted to kill her. “I’m tired of people fuckin’ me!” I screamed. “No more! And it starts wit’ you!”

There was a crowd around us now. I could hear the taunts and the laughter. Someone yelled out, “Don’t break it up! I’m getting this shit on video!”

I grabbed her hair and slung her to the concrete. Deja looked furious. She kicked her heels at me but I got ahold of her ankles and threw them to the side. I dropped down on top of her and rained punches down on her savagely, with my bare fists.

The bridge of her nose split first.

Then her left eye turned bloodshot.

“Don’t break it up! Get back yall! Let ‘em fight!”

-

Fedbound Marley and 107 others commented on a video Tyesha816 was tagged in.

August 17^th, 2:00 p.m.

CHAPTER 10

Deja Michelle tilted her head back and let the second eye drop drip into her left eye. She blinked repeatedly as she dabbed the excess moisture with a tissue. Staring at her stark naked reflection in the mirror, she could barely recognize her face.

Her left jaw was swollen red. There was a half-inch gash on the bridge of her nose that was now sealed with a butterfly closure. On her neck, where Tyesha had stomped her, there was a nasty brown bruise. And her lip was busted.

She pulled her hair back and saw another bruise behind her ear. Titling her shoulder toward the mirror, she saw red scrapes on her back from the concrete. It looked like a tiger clawed her.

“I should press charges,” she said.

“Deja, don’t talk like that,” Rodrick said. “Yall fought. It’s over. Don’t bring in the law.”

She turned around immediately. Rodrick was sitting on the ruffled bed Indian-style, trying to figure out the operating system on his new phone. He didn’t have on any clothes either.

She quickly snatched the phone from him and tried to log into The Site.

He shot to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing?!” he said, as he wrestled the phone back out of her hand.

“I was changing your status!”

“You not about to change shit,” he retorted.

“Why not? You said you was, nigga! Are you gonna continue to make her think yall still together? Or am I the one getting played here?!”

He plopped back down on the bed and lowered his face into his palms, sighing.

“You need to make up your mind,” Deja said. “Is it gonna be me or her?”

He kept his face buried, didn’t say a word. She crossed her arms and waited. Since Junior High she had wanted Rodrick Brown to be her man. But he had never dated big girls back then. She waited until he got locked up, after he’d already had a child by Tyesha, to confess in a letter that she’d had a crush on him. To her surprise, he wrote back and said he’d liked her too. But not sexually, because he couldn’t see himself sleeping with her because she thought lowly of herself. He told her if she didn’t like herself, why should he? The very next day after she got his letter she started exercising with Tyesha. She saw improvements within a few months’ time, and when she sent Rodrick pictures, he gave her glowing compliments and motivation. He taught her that God’s Spirit dwelled within and that she simply had to let His spirit shine outward. What once was a crush became an intense desire to have his love. She sent him money weekly and went to see him every day Tyesha or his family wasn’t there.

Deja’s tear ducts began to well up.

“Me or her?” she asked again.