“Speak for yourself. I’m still me. Meaning they’s nothin’ wrong with me. You, on the other hand, look like one hot messatude.”
“I almost burned up on a roof two days ago. I think that gives me the right to look like crap.”
“I don’t mean you look bad.” Kramisha cocked her head to the side. Today she was wearing her bright yellow bob wig, which she’d coordinated with sparkly fluorescent yellow eye shadow. “Actually, you lookin’ good—all pink like white folks get when they real healthy. It kinda reminds me of cute little baby pigs with they pinkness.”
“Kramisha, I swear you’re makin’ my head hurt. What are you talkin’ about?”
“I’m just sayin’ that you look good, but you ain’t
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” Stevie Rae said evasively.
“Yeah, I know that, what with Zoey totally jacked up and all, but you gotta keep your shit together just the same.”
“I’m tryin’.”
“Try harder. Zoey needs you. I know you ain’t there with her, but I got this feelin’ that you can help her. So you gotta be using your good sense.”
Kramisha was staring at her with an intensity that made Stevie Rae want to fidget. “Like I said, I’m tryin’.”
“You up to somethin’ crazy?”
“No!”
“You sure? ’Cause this is for you.” Kramisha held up a piece of purple notebook paper that had something written on it in her distinctive mixture of cursive and printing. “And it feels like a whole bunch of crazy to me.”
Stevie Rae snatched the paper from her hand. “Dang it, why didn’t you just say you were bringin’ me one of your poems?”
“I was gettin’ ’round to it.” Kramisha crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway, obviously waiting for Stevie Rae to read the poem.
“Isn’t there somethin’ you need to go do?”
“Nope. The rest of the kids is eatin’. Oh, ’cept for Dallas. He’s working with Dragon on some sword stuff, even though school ain’t starting again officially, and I do not see no need to rush things, so I do not get why he in such a hurry to go to class. Anyway, just read the poem, High Priestess. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Stevie Rae stifled a sigh. Kramisha’s poems tended to be confusing and abstract, but they were also often prophetic, and just thinking about one of them being obviously for her had Stevie Rae’s stomach feeling like she’d eaten raw eggs. Reluctantly, her eyes went to the paper and she started to read:
Stevie Rae shook her head, glanced up at Kramisha, and then read the poem again, slowly, willing her heart to please stop beating so loud that it would betray the guilty terror the thing instantly made her feel. ’Cause Kramisha was right; it was obviously about her. Of course it was also obviously about her
“See what I mean ’bout it bein’ ’bout you?”
Stevie Rae shifted her gaze from the poem to Kramisha’s intelligent eyes. “Well, hell, Kramisha. ’Course it’s about me. The first line says that.”
“Yeah, see, I was sure ’bout that, too, even though I never heard nobody call you that.”
“It makes sense,” Stevie Rae said quickly, trying to drown out the memory of Rephaim’s voice calling her
“That’s what I thought, even though there is that whole bunch of freaky ’bout the beasts and stuff. I had to look up the gird-your-loins part ’cause it sounded nasty and sexual, but it ended up just bein’ a way to say you need to get real ready for a fight.”
“Yeah, well, there’s been a bunch of fighting goin’ on lately,” Stevie Rae said, looking back at the poem.
“Looks like you in for some more—and it’s some bad shit, too, you got to be real ready for.” Then she cleared her throat meaningfully, and Stevie Rae reluctantly met her eyes again. “Who is he?”
“He?”
Kramisha crossed her arms. “Do not talk to me like I’m stupid.
