Brielle nodded her head and left the table.
Damon
“I hate you!!!”
The door to Damon’s bedroom slammed open and his sister catapulted into the room, still screaming. Damon had been laying on his bed, listening to music on his IPOD, trying to block out the world. He jumped up when the door slammed open.
“Get out of my room,” he yelled.
Jada stumbled over a pair of sneakers that he’d left on the floor by the door and then launched herself across the room to grab him by the front of his shirt. She smacked him hard across the face, causing his glasses to fly off. Damon grabbed for her hands and wrestled her onto the bed.
“Stop it,” he said, breathing hard. His sister was no light weight, fluffy female. One of his boys had used a popular song to describe her, five-five, brown eyes, thick thighs. She was muscular, athletic and enraged. He struggled to pin her without hurting her. He tussled with her for a few minutes before he finally subdued her.
He landed half on top of her and held her down until she stopped struggling. He wondered where his mother was and why she hadn’t heard the noise and come to investigate.
“Get off me,” Jada snarled. She caught her breath and started straining against him. He held her fast.
“Not until you calm down,” he said, through clenched teeth. After a few minutes she gave up the struggle. He let her up cautiously and when she didn’t swing at him again he got up off of the bed and went to retrieve his glasses and IPOD from the floor.
“Are you crazy?” he asked. “What is wrong with you?”
“Brielle is all upset over you,” snapped Jada. “You and your stupid slut of a girlfriend have wrecked everything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mama and daddy said they have to rethink letting me date at sixteen and I wanted to go on the Spring Spanish trip to Mexico with the school and they said no, because they will have unexpected bills, so they can help you take care of this baby,” said Jada, words flying out her mouth like sparks from a welding torch.
“I didn’t ask them to do anything like that,” protested Damon.
“They are going to rethink me dating because you got some skank pregnant!” snapped Jada. She narrowed her eyes. “It’s not fair.”
“I didn’t know,” said Damon.
“You never know anything,” said Jada. “But, I know you get to do whatever you want to and I have to pay the consequences.”
“I’m really sorry,” said Damon. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“No, of course not,” she sneered. “You jack up everything you touch. Brielle couldn’t even talk to me, she was crying on the phone so hard, when I called her after you broke up with her. I could hear her in the background.”
“You talked to Brielle,” said Damon, his tone appalled. “She was crying?”
“I talked to Kyzie, fool,” said Jada. “Didn’t I just say Brielle couldn’t talk for crying?”
“How did she find out?” asked Damon.
“Find out what? You broke up with her, didn’t you?” screamed Jada. “Or did you send one of your boys to do it?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Damon. “I thought you meant about Sasha being pregnant.”
“You think it’s a secret that you got that stupid girl pregnant?” said Jada. “Or that you broke up with Brielle? Everybody knows.”
Damon just stared at her, aghast.
“I knew that crap you talked about A.C. Green and secondary virginity was junk. You are poison. The devil. You take these girls and use them and when they are all into you, you drop them.”
“No, I don’t,” said Damon.
“Yes, you do,” snapped Jada. “You know all these girls like you. You used the crazy girl for sex and then when you got tired of her you dumped her. Then you used Brielle to make you feel better. So you could pretend you weren’t scum.”
“Jada,” said Damon. She threw up a hand to stop him.
Because she was saying things he’d already thought about himself, he could hardly defend himself from her verbal beat down, so he fell silent.
“And then you got a baby on the way. So you dumped Brielle. Because you got something else to catch your attention, now. You just dabble with people and their feelings like they are some kind of toys.”
“No, I don’t” said Damon.
“It’s like when we were kids and you had to have every toy, even the ones you didn’t want to play with,” said Jada. “You’d just leave them on the floor but didn’t want nobody else to touch them. Except that people are not toys, you selfish punk.”
“Jada,” said Damon.
“Don’t speak my name,” snarled his sister.
She stomped to the door and then turned back towards him.
“I just got one question for you?”
“What?”
“When do you think you’ll dump this kid?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Damon, appalled. “I’ll never dump my child.”
“It’s not here yet,” taunted Jada. “How do you know nothing more interesting will come along?”
Damon was enraged. He reached for his sister. Jada took two steps to Damon’s book shelf and knocked the entire top shelf of books onto the floor.
“Get out of my room,” said Damon, grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving her towards the door. “Get out, now.”
Jada stomped towards the door. On the way out she picked up a shoe and threw it as hard as she could at Damon. He dodged out of the way and hastened over to slam the door closed behind her.
Brielle
“She’s pregnant,” Kyzie announced dramatically. She’d just gotten off the phone with Jada and run to Brielle’s room to tell her the news.
“Who’s pregnant?” asked Sammie. She was perched next to Brielle on the bed, painting her toe nails a loud fuchsia. Brielle looked up from her perch on the bed and said nothing.
“Sasha Anderson,” said Kyzie.
Tears sprang to Brielle’s eyes. The break up was real, now. It was final. It had been final for about three weeks, but she’d been able
