Page 42 of Stay Dangerous

We hadn’t seen each other since she found out about Kisha. I meant what I said about giving her space. Plus, as much shit as I talked, I didn’t wanna give her no reason to really try to fuck with one of the Babies.

Niggas like them would fuck with a bitch just because they knew you did. Kilo and Lem didn’t think I knew they’d tried to fuck with Kisha on some dirty-macking shit. The only reason they didn’t try to outright take her from me or hurt her was because they knew my get down.

I didn’t even wanna give them the chance to do that with Snow. They’d been asking Fredo who she was, so this time away was needed.

Still, seeing her calmed my heart enough for me to know I did the right thing.

“Go to the front,” she said through the window. I didn’t walk away until she left her room.

By the time I rounded her crib, she was there, in a shirt and shorts that were for sure too damn small for her. She was retying her scarf as I breezed passed her, making a beeline for where I thought her room was.

It wasn’t pink like I thought it would be. Her bed was white, with a canopy and white iron posts. But that was the beginning and end of the girly shit.

Posters of different rappers and singers covered every inch of her walls. On her ceiling was the Native Sons, a local group thatmade it big. A desk and computer was on the wall closest to the door, a blue iMac with matching keyboard and mouse.

She pushed me more into her room before closing and locking the door.

“What are you doing here, Rico?” she asked, leaning onto her door.

I toed off my shoes and sat on her bed, facing her. “Where your parents? You not whispering.”

“Working. And Auty sleeps like the dead. So yeah, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with Kisha?”

“I’m hurting, Snow,” I whispered, holding her gaze. “Shit’s all bad. It’s fucked up, actually.”

I pulled my hoodie off of me and threw it on the floor.

“Can you keep a secret, Snow?”

She came around me, and climbed onto the other side of the bed as I lay down, too.

We were shoulder to shoulder, both staring up at PC and Trippy as they posed for whatever Hip Hop magazine she got the poster out of.

My mouth opened to tell her what the fuck just happened. But it couldn’t come out.

Not because Snow wouldn’t get it. By then, I knew all about her own parents and the fucked up games they played to put her against her twin. We’d talked about it at length, all night, more than once.

But in listening to her, I never got around to telling her my own shit.

At first, it wasn’t her business. Not even Peanut knew how bad shit could get with Ma. Now, though, there was so much I would have had to say. I couldn’t start off telling her Ma was… what she did. She wouldn’t get it.

I had to start from the beginning.

“My pops is a pimp. There’s a street in Lightning Heights, called Quixote Road. It looks like a dead end, but if you keep going, you eventually get to The Hive. There’s another way, but that’s the way to get there from the city. That’s his brothel. He stays there with his girls, and most of the important niggas in the state are his clients.”

I turned my head. Snow lay there, with measured breaths, digesting what I said.

“Is your mom his… worker?”

The corner of my mouth pulled. “You mean his ho? No. She knew what he was, but he never put her to work. He kept her away from his shit. She was his safe place, and I think he was the same, until he wasn’t. Because the type of shit he did, it always catches up to niggas. No one talks about what happened, but something did, and my Ma was never the same. Shit, none of us were never the same. Now, me and Fredo and Ma, we live with my Nan, and Pooh is at The Hive.”

“Pooh?”

“That’s why I’ll never call you Wynnie. Too close to my Pops’ name.”

We both snorted, but it didn’t make the heaviness of my words go away. I could practically feel the questions lined up on Snow’s tongue. Why, all of a sudden, was I so forthcoming, tonight of all nights?

But to her credit, she didn’t ask them. She shuffled closer, until our bare arms were touching. Snow had hairy arms for a girl, but I didn’t mind, not at all.