August – Two Months Later
Damon
The stalker and the death threat made him decide to change schools. New school. Fresh start. New attitude.
Damon smiled a blinding white smile at his reflection in the mirror as he walked by on the way out of the bathroom into his bedroom. Braces were a seriously fabulous invention. He’d had his removed this summer and still wasn’t used to his gleaming white smile. A scant year and a half ago he was a walking cliché. A fourteen-year-old bona fide big footed, four-eyed, bracket mouthed, scrawny, asthmatic bookworm geek. Nobody noticed him.
At sixteen, according to his mother, Damon ate a steak, got rained on, and the next morning a body snatcher had replaced her baby boy. He catalogued his features. His smooth, muscular chest topped very respectable broad shoulders. Tightly curled brown hair, smooth teak coloring, full lips with just a little dirt growing above to show that he was a maturing young man, long nose with slightly flared nostrils and slanted hazel eyes that girls seemed to go nuts for. But to Damon, it was just a face.
“Get out of the mirror, butthead.”
Barely dressed in boxer shorts and sleeveless t-shirt, Damon whirled around, and groaned. His little sister, Jada held the bedroom door in a half open, half closed position.
Damon grabbed a pair of jeans off his bed and held them in front of him.
“Can’t you ever knock?” he snapped.
“I saw it all before in the bathtub when we were little. You haven’t changed much,” said Jada, in a bored tone of voice. She leaned against the door frame.
“Get out of here.”
“Mama said hurry up.”
“I don’t know why I need to go,” he said. “I’m not some little kid. All she’s going to do is get what she wants anyway. We’ll be out shopping all day. I already bought my stuff.”
“Did you tell that to Mama?” she asked.
“No,” said Damon. “You tell her for me.”
“I’m not your messenger,” said Jada.
“You get on my nerves,” said Damon, with narrowed eyes.
“I guess I couldn’t get through life if I cared,” said Jada. “By the way, some girl called for you?”
“Who?” asked Damon.
“How am I supposed to know?” Jada replied. “She had the nerve to ask me, ‘who is you?’”
“Who is you?” asked Damon, frowning. “Did she call on the house phone?”
“Nah,” said Jada with a smirk. “Your cell.”
“Why were you answering my cell?” Damon asked, ticked.
Jada rolled her eyes. “You left it in the kitchen. The mindless ghetto head was blowing it up all day, so Mama said to answer it.”
“Oh,” said Damon. He was not about to tangle with his mother about answering his phone. She didn’t believe anybody had the right to privacy in her house. She was also the champion of the straight arm and body block take down when she got ticked off.
“What did you say to her?”
“I told her that I was your sister. She called me a liar,” said Jada. “I told her not to call back until she got some manners.”
Damon groaned.
“I don’t know why they like your weird behind, anyway,” said Jada.
She stomped off down the hall. Damon pulled the jeans over his boxers and padded in bare feet down the hallway to the kitchen to pick up his phone. He scrolled through his calls and found thirty-four from Shawn. He’d been at a party with Stump and Ephraim when she’d walked up and programmed her number into his phone. He called her once. Shawn didn’t pick up. Damon hadn’t been interested enough to pursue her.
Damon looked up as his oldest friend Ephraim opened the side door and stumbled in the doorway.
“Man, get your clumsy behind together!” The deep baritone voice belonged to his second oldest friend, Stump.
“Sorry,” said Ephraim, righting his tall slender body.
Stump pushed Ephraim the rest of the way through the door and came in, closing the door behind him.
“Was’sup, D?”
“Nada,” said Damon. “Getting ready for the first day of school tomorrow.”
“So, you ready?” asked Ephraim. Ephraim was a worrier. They all knew about the Dragon Dog situation. Staying out of the gang’s way was not that easy in a small city like Lansing.
“Man, it’s just a new school, not the army,” scoffed Stump. He grabbed Damon’s phone out of his hand, squinting at the name and number.
“So, who is Shawn?” he asked.
Damon shook his head and turned to walk back down the hallway to his bedroom, his friends trailing.
“Whoa! Shawn called thirty-four times, man?” said Stump, his tone incredulous.
Ephraim snorted. “Only your pretty behind would have a babe blowing up your phone like that.”
Damon rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”
Stump said, “Damon should write a book and call it ‘Stalker Girls Never Keep A Man,’”
They all laughed. Damon grabbed the phone from Stump. He thought about Sasha in a moment of déjà vu, shuddered and deleted Shawn’s calls and blocked her number. Shawn was starting out on the same wrong foot that Sasha had ended.
“Maybe we can write the book together,” said Ephraim.
“Yeah, you can write the pitiful dude trying to get a babe chapter,” joked Stump. He shuffled over to the bed and sat down on it. Then he leaned back against the pillows and surveyed the other two.
Ephraim suggested, “D-, you should start with the break-up chapter because you did it so ruthless.”
“Not happening,” said Damon.
“Man, you totally messed over that girl and she still came crawling back,” said Ephraim, dragging the desk chair around backwards and straddling it. “Much respect.”
Damon sighed. “Naw, I tried to be nice but she wouldn’t take the hint.”
“You think?” asked Stump. “Weren’t you still hitting it?”
“Dude,” said Damon. “A gentleman does not kiss and tell.”
That was his father’s mantra and Damon trotted it out, even though his boys knew the whole story.
“You know a gentleman?” asked Stump.
“It wasn’t like that,” protested Damon.
“Oh, yeah, it was,” said Ephraim. “She was still crying and begging to get with you even after you told her to be gone.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” said Damon. “She was crazy and
