Page 4 of Stay Dangerous

She smiled at me, a genuine one, before her eyebrows furrowed, her mouth went slack, and her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

She began to seize so violently that she kicked me off of her bed.

My screams alerted the nurses, who pulled me out of the room.

That was the last time I saw my sister Summer.

She didn’t get to tell me she loved me back.

Luney Tune

Rico, age 12

“Here,putthison.”

I stood up from double knotting my laces and faced my twin. He slathered vaseline all over my face, and then I took over rubbing it in on my cheeks, chin, and neck.

Fredo liked to wear his hair down, but that day, it was braided down like mine. Six straightbacks that my homie Reem’s mom did for us, in exchange for going to the grocery store for her.

“You sure?” I asked my brother.

He set the jar of vaseline on the dresser and sat on his bed to tie his shoes. “Ma not moving back home, which means we not moving back home. I’m not starting back school and niggas wanna get active, and we unaffiliated.”

“Unaffiliated? Our dad is Pooh Bear,” I spat, folding my arms.

Fredo double knotted his laces, too, before standing up and leveling me with a glare. “You always say he don’t give a fuck about us. You think these niggas give a fuck who our dad is? Peanut got put on in camp. It’s our time now.”

He walked out of the room, knowing I’d follow him. Even if I wasn’t sure. Right or wrong, it was me and Fredo until the end.

We’d been back living in the Birch since the start of the New Year. Our uncle Rone got word to Ma that her sister, Aunt Aree died, and she tried to kill herself again.

Pooh didn’t even bother calling the police this time. Told her if she was that committed to it, then he’d help her.

Nan stepped in, like she always did, and that’s how we ended up back in Tower Two. We took apart the old bunk beds we had since we couldn’t agree on who would take the top bunk, and only brought a few clothes and our video games.

The Birch always felt more like home to me anyway.

It’s just the Birch Babies I wasn’t sold on.

Pooh only ever stayed long enough to check on us. He didn’t hang outside, and when we asked him why, he said all the real niggas were either dead or in jail.

And before we moved away permanently one summer, we didn’t really go outside too much when we’d be at the Birch, either.

Pooh set us up in a modest crib close enough to the Birch to where we could be watched, but then his friends started getting picked off, one by one. He got paranoid, and finally convinced Ma to move us back in with him when we were ten.

And it worked. Especially when Aunt Aree and Uncle Rone took off with Ty-Ty. People were dropping left and right, and Pooh always rambled about an exchange of power in the Birch.

He was sick that we were back here. Even sicker that Ma wasn’t fucking with him. Wasn’t fucking with anyone, really.

Her room door was closed tight, and we knew she’d be in there, like she’d been the last week.

“Don’t worry about me, okay? Just focus on staying up,” Fredo gritted.

I narrowed my eyes. “How I’m supposed to know you can handle yourself if you never wanna slapbox me? You know I’ve never seen you fight, right?”

Fredo grinned as the elevator doors opened on the main floor. “I’m you and you’re me. If you got the thumps, so do I, nigga.”

I grinned back, shaking my head as we left the building and walked into the parking lot.