The Deadline. KiKi Swinson

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      We couldn’t pull the car right up to the secret property that the detective had driven to, so we stopped down a road, where Kyle parked between some trees. It had taken a little maneuvering to get the car situated where no one could see it. Just the thought of what we were doing made adrenaline pump through me.

      “What now?” I asked. “We can’t see anything from way back here.”

      “Relax,” Kyle replied, digging in his center console. He pulled out a damn blunt. I watched him like he was losing his mind as he prepared his lighter to spark up his blunt.

      “I’ma smoke this, calm my nerves, and then we going to get out and sneak around back, once the outside coast is clear,” he told me.

      “Really, Kyle!” I shouted a little too loudly. He fumbled with his blunt and lighter, and every little movement he made was on my nerves. I rolled my eyes at him in disgust. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to be getting high right now? Don’t you think doing something as dangerous as this takes a clear mind?” I asked, seriously disturbed. It always annoyed me to see him smoke weed or drink until he was drunk. At a time like this, when I felt like he needed to be fully sober just in case anything went left, I was especially upset.

      “Listen, twin, if you want me to get you these exclusive pieces to build your story . . . you going to have to shut up and let me work. Go with the flow. There is always a method to my madness, and if anyone ain’t going to steer you wrong, it’s me,” Kyle chided, then lifted his blunt and took a long drag off of it. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke in my direction.

      I fanned the air with my hand and crinkled up my face. Shit, maybe Kyle is right. I was feeling so wrecked in the nerves that for a second I felt like I needed to smoke some weed. That thought quickly faded, though. I had never taken a drug in my life. I hadn’t even experimented with any because of the devastation drugs had done to my family. My father had gotten killed over selling drugs; and after seeing my mother addicted to heroin and crack and battle her way back from the edge of death, I felt there was no way I would ever do drugs. I sometimes wondered why Kyle even smoked or sold drugs. Like, what in his consciousness could allow him to even want to be within an inch of any type of drug was beyond me. He had been right there when everything happened to us. Just like me, Kyle had lived through the worst of times due to drugs. I turned my head and stared out of the side window, waiting on him, and that was a mistake. The sight of my mother overdosing flooded back into my mind, fast and furious, like the rushing waters of the Louisiana levees breaking during Hurricane Katrina. There was no stopping that memory. I closed my eyes . . .

      * * *

      I’d been hiding by the wall in our new apartment and watched yet another dude that my mother had brought home coax her into taking something.

      “Listen, I ain’t never sent you wrong before. Live a little. I don’t have to bend your arm to make you feel good. You know you want to get high like before. You been chasing this shit since the very first time . . . You know what it is,” the dude said to my mother, and then grabbed her arm and pulled her to our table.

      I came around the wall a little bit so I could see better. My little heart was pumping hard, and I remember curling my hands into fists as I watched.

      The man watched my mother. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing hard, like watching my mother readying herself to take the drugs had excited him. Who got that excited over drugs? For a quick moment I wondered if my mother would finally get some sense and refuse the man’s peer pressure.

      “Linda, baby . . . go ahead. I promise, you going to feel good as hell after this hit,” the man had urged, grinning slyly. From where I stood, I could see sweat beads on his forehead; every time he moved, they made him look shiny and evil. My mother had crinkled her face as if she wasn’t sure. I had watched her try to be happy after my father’s murder and she’d had a lot of seedy friends come through our place at the time, but I could tell in that moment she wasn’t sure that being with this man was worth trying something that might get her addicted. As young as I was, I could see the strain of apprehension in my mother’s face.

      “This is some new shit. Trust me, it’s the A-grade shit that you’ll love. I got it from my boy Drago. He always got that good shit. I’ll always be able to get my hands on this shit after today. Wait until you get a taste,” the man had said, urging my mother on and on.

      I bit down into my jaw and swayed a bit on my little legs. I weighed my options in that moment: If I rushed out and screamed, my mother wouldn’t take the drugs, but she also might be very upset and beat my ass. She had become really unpredictable at the time. Some days she was our loving mother that we recognized, and other days not so much. My mother was getting into drugs heavy. It had gone beyond her just smoking a weed joint, like she had done when my father was alive and they’d party. My mother was walking the line into heavy stuff that she’d always preached against to Kyle and me.

      “I don’t know about this. This is something different you talking now,” my mother had said, still not sure. “You know I like you, but I do this for fun. I can’t afford to get in too deep. Addiction is not what I need right now,” she said.

      The man grunted and sighed loudly. When he moved around the room to face my mother, I looked at him really good in the light. He was gorilla ugly, and he already looked like a strung-out fiend to me. I squinted my eyes as he dumped a small mountain of the drug onto the back of his hand. The man stood over six feet tall and his arms bulged out of the sleeves of his T-shirt. I would’ve been no match for that monster. He towered over my mother, who was even slimmer than before from not eating a lot since the murder. My mother’s skin was still pretty, but her eyes were sad and sunken now. Before she’d had the deepest, darkest brown eyes, with thick black eyelashes, that always caught people’s attention. But as I watched, I noticed that her eyes were ringed with dark circles and sad, very sad. Her thick, long hair was always in a ratty ponytail and she hadn’t let it down to flow since before my father’s death.

      I was eight, but I was smart beyond my years. Where other kids might’ve missed the stark contrast in their mother’s appearance and her overall deterioration in everything, I had definitely noticed. That night I felt my heart break a million times as I stood there and watched. It wasn’t that I hated my mother, but I was devastated that she’d let these outside forces interrupt her life, to reach this terrible point. She looked so weak to me. I had felt a flash of embarrassment and a stab of hurt. I kept watching her and thinking that if she continued using drugs, she wasn’t going to be so beautiful for long, nor was she going to be our mother for long.

      “Stop being scared, Linda. I’m not going to ask you again. You ain’t going to get addicted, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the man had shot back. “Now either you down or not? I can go find someone else to have a good time with.” With that, he placed his nose on top of the mound of white powder on his hand and inhaled like a high-powered vacuum cleaner. When he was finished, there was absolutely nothing left on his hand. Then he dumped out another mound of the stuff and pushed it toward my mother. I was screaming “NO!” in my head, and to keep from screaming it out loud, I clamped both of my little hands over my mouth. I watched my mother finally give in and she held one side of her nose and inhaled with the open side. My stomach had cramped up as I watched.

      “Ugh,” my mother had grunted as her legs buckled a little bit. I thought she would fall, but she just stumbled around, all the while keeping her balance. “Shit!” she had shouted, and then she started laughing, as though the man had told a joke. My mother started doing some crazy dance. She had jumped around like a fool. It was crazy to watch. After a few seconds, I guess, she remembered that the man was still there. She circled him like she was doing some mating dance. He СКАЧАТЬ