Page 74 of Grown

“Hey, what’s going on?” Tony says.

“Miss! Where are you going?” the officer shouts.

I fly into my room, rushing to the connecting suite door, wild thoughts chasing me.

It’s my fault, it’s all my fault! He’s killed himself because I wouldn’t listen. He said he would and I didn’t listen.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no. Please, please, please.”

I burst in, running straight to his bed, slipping on something wet and rubbery, like a jellyfish.

“Korey!” I scream, diving toward his pillows, and turn on the light.

“What the fuck?” Korey roars... as Amber’s head pops up from under the covers.

All the air charges out of my body.

The police are behind me now. Korey is enraged. Words are exchanged. Amber wraps a sheet around herself; it trails behind her as she shuffles into the bathroom.

“What the fuck are you doing? You let them in here?”

I can’t feel my feet. And I don’t know what to do with the icicles that used to be my hands.

Voices swim around me.

“Suicide pact? Hell no, there’s no fucking suicide pact. What are you even talking about?”

I back away, noticing a used condom on the floor by the bed.

The very one my bare foot slipped on.

The smell of fried fish, mac and cheese, and baked ziti roasting in the kitchen downstairs makes me want to climb the walls.

I’m so hungry.

Jessica brings me two meals, usually fast-food takeout, burgers with cold fries and flat Sprite, which only makes me crave my purple drink. Jessica doesn’t talk despite being the only human contact I’ve had in over a week since we’ve returned to Atlanta. My room is the tiniest fish tank I’ve ever lived in.

But I can hear Korey. I hear his music leaking through the vents from the basement. Hear the parties he throws downstairs with at least a hundred people, including strippers. Hear him having sex with Amber... right next door.

The walls of my room are thin. Thin enough to feel like I’m with them.

So, I sit beside them, watching what he does to her body. Watching him call her sweetheart and her call him daddy.

I vomit in my bucket, yearning for the same attention he used to give me yet sickened by it.

Korey serves me a second cup of purple drink. I guzzle it, fast and desperate.

“If I can’t have sex with you, I have to have sex with someone else,” Korey says, stroking my cheek. “It’s your decision to wait, and I respect that. But I’m a man, baby. And a man has needs.”

That was his explanation for Amber. He tells me we will be our own kind of family now and that we are following God’s will.

“Men in the Bible had many wives. It was written by Jesus.”

I listen, his words slowly soaking in as I slurp more drink.

“I know you upset about Amber. But you need me and I need you. Your folks, they not gonna want you, not after all this. They were never gonna let you go. They would’ve had you up in that house, taking care of all those kids forever, when you were meant to sing. I saved you. You don’t need them no more. You got me. You, me, and Amber, we’re our own family. Just us. No one else. Family over everything.”

I nod and hold out my cup, my voice slurring. “Can I have some more?”