caught up in their anger and self-hatred. A slap for the parents who weren't there for her. A punch for the system of poverty that enslaved them. A kick for the teachers who didn't give two fucks for her. An elbow to the gut for her even being in this place. A rake across the face for the police baton across her back. Fights were neighborhood sport as long as you weren't caught up in them and as long as folks remembered to use their fists. Folks were too quick to settle things with guns, escalating things to levels past what they needed.
But King didn't like the… energy… of this brouhaha. There was something in the air, an undercurrent of violence and hate. It looked like a couple ladies beefing, probably over some man, fueled by the need to show out for their girls. But something else was at play. The ground too warm. As if the earth itself spread into the crowd, a cloud of methane waiting for something to spark it. One looked like she had some Mexican blood in her. The other… King's heart tugged at him. The girl, medium-skinned and serious-faced, drew him in, filling his spaces, voids he wasn't aware he had. Not wanting any harm to come to her, he found himself moving toward her. His grim strides turned into a jog.
A strong set of hands grabbed Lady G by the shoulders and lifted her up, freeing her from the entanglement of Alaina. With regained leverage, Alaina unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks. Lady G, prepared to defend against them, clawed and kicked in her direction. The man who held her spun her away from Alaina's assault and took the blows himself as he backed away. Bodies jostled against them, but they seemed to bounce off the man. He put himself between her and them, unasked. Then the shots rang out. He wrapped his thick arms around her, his hard muscles cocooning her as he scooped her along.
'You OK?' he asked, his voice breathy, not from the exertion but from speaking in low, controlled tones as if crazy shit wasn't jumping off all around him.
'Put me down and mind your own. I got this,' Lady G said.
'I know you do. I'm worried about them if I let you loose.'
The crowd moved like a tangled swarm of cicadas, limbs intertwined and flailing about trying to gain leverage or hold their ground. Girls pulled at each other's tops and hair extensions. Despite the screams and shouts reaching a cacophonous pitch, they couldn't drown out the report of shots ringing out.
The fight degenerated into a storm of scratching and clawing and folks wilding out on folks just for the sake of doing so. Part of her thrilled at this. It was exciting, sexy, and dangerous. And made her feel alive. If only for a few moments, she felt.
Jockeying for position. A hardness in her eyes, she'd quit caring. She held onto the emptiness she always carried inside her. The crowd darted toward her, spilling into the playground, kicking up wood chips in their wake. The mood of the crowd turned uglier. The instant chaos.
No one needed to yell 'gun!' The reports scattered the crowd and the people charged from every direction.
Rhianna found herself separated from her girl. The melee was like a riptide, pulling folks caught in the undertow of bodies away from the action. If Rhianna stopped moving, she might have been trampled.
His head lowered, hands raised above it as if he were shielding himself, Percy waded through the bodies. Without trying, he pushed people aside. Heedless of his own well-being, all he knew was that her bloodless face was etched in pain. Despite no foundation, no lip gloss, no nail polish, no blush, no eyeliner, she was as beautiful to him as ever. He was embarrassed to stare at her for too long.
He stood there, not touching her. Not crowding her in any way. But he remained between her and the danger. He took any blows purposeful or accidental without so much as a wince.
Two bodies were left in the wake of the gun shots. Alaina, one eye a pocket of darkness with much of the back of her head missing; her mother shot in the belly. The news would go on to speak of the violence, the irony of Alaina's mother giving birth to one child as she lost another.
The cops put a knee into Percy's back, dropping him to the ground. Rhianna screamed at them to let him go. Blows rained down on him. Bloodied, but without complaint, he laid on the ground.
'What's the problem here?' Detective Burke said.
'Just securing the scene.'
'He's a suspect.'
'He was threatening the girl.'
'No he wasn't. He was looking out for me.'
'That true, son?' Detective Burke asked.
'I'd never hurt Rhianna.'
'Let him go.' Detective Burke's eyes softened. 'But we do need to get control of the situation and secure this scene.'
'Yes ma'am.'
'And get an ambo up here.' Angry and controlled.
Another in a trail of bodies leading back to the Phoenix Apartments, it was like a poisoning of the souls emanating from there. A tension settled on the west side of town, an ugly, frenzied spirit of darkness threatening to smother them.
CHAPTER TEN
The police questioned everyone for hours. What facts they could piece together from the jumbled statements was anyone's guess. Folks recounted little past fists flying and barely remembered glimpses of faces here and there.
Lady G hadn't left King's side since the attack. Though he towered over her, a tremor of fear ran through him. Instinct fought against the connection he sensed with her. His gut told him to move along — run if need be — that she was trouble waiting to hurt him. Many times he'd encountered women like Lady G. Women who took one look at a darker brother and cast him aside like a lesion best scraped off. But maybe that was him being unnecessarily defensive. There was a familiarity to her, a piece of a puzzle he never knew was missing. Too much of that had been going on in his life lately, like a game was going on and everyone had a copy of the rulebook except him.
'Can we get out of here?' Lady G slipped her gloved hand into his, soft, gentle, and unassuming. Struck by the mystery of the affection, King didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't wholly unpleasant.
'Yeah, I only live a few blocks down.'
Lady G hesitated. She read his tone see if there was the hint of proposition, or worse, the expectation of one. The invitation wasn't what made her uncomfortable. It seemed genuine and despite there being little about his day to justify her feeling safe, she nevertheless did. No, what made her uncomfortable was being seen. Most times, no one saw her. People may have had a sense about homeless folks, the same way one could be in a darkened room and know that they weren't alone. People knew when to walk around them or speed out of the way of a possible solicitation of a handout.
Like hunting deer, one didn't look for the deer themselves, but rather trained their eyes to detect movement or some evidence of presence. With homeless teens, one checked what didn't belong. Like wearing long sleeve shirts on an eighty degree evening. Why? Because it got cool under bridges even at night. Or duct-taped shoes. Or conspicuous backpacks, containing all of their earthly belongings. Nothing definitive, only clues to a greater story, once you know what to look for. If you bother looking at all.
But King saw her.
Lady G hiked her backpack onto her shoulder.
'We ready to go?' Rhianna strode over to them, cutting a dagger-filled glance at Lady G's hand in King's. Percy, bruised and bandaged, followed behind her.
'Nah, I think I'm all right,' Lady G said.
Rhianna continued to study King, wondering — though not having to guess too hard — what this oldass dude (he was what? Probably twenty-eight or something) wanted with her girl. 'Where the spot be at?'
'Round the way.'
'So is it just y'all or is there room for a few more?'
'It's tight as it is.'
'It's like that?'
