Needy Little Things(54)
“Look at this.” I push the laptop toward Jude with my foot.
He watches the video for a few seconds and browses the comments before taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Did Deja ever say anything about outrageous punishments?”
I take my laptop back, deflating a bit. “Am I grasping at straws?”
“If that woman is Ms. Jasmine’s idea of gold-star parenting, she definitely has some issues to work through. But I’m not getting child abuse, mistreatment, or endangerment vibes off her, Ri. All I’m getting is a forty-five-year-old woman who needs to take Facebook off her phone.”
“But what about the lock?”
“Wish we could just ask Deja.” Jude leans back and his stomach growls so loud I almost think it’s thunder.
“You don’t have to scream at me.” I laugh and close my computer, stand up, and stretch.
“Sorry.” He places a hand over his belly. “Skipped breakfast.”
I check the time. It’s almost noon. “No. That’s my bad. I’ll throw some pizza rolls in the oven, then we can go.”
While the oven preheats, I take a jumbo bag of pizza rolls from the freezer and dump the whole thing onto a baking sheet.
“To hold you over.” I pass Jude a bowl of purple grapes, which he starts in on immediately.
“What’s with all the pills?” He points at the stash of bottles under the cabinet by the toaster.
“Bold of you to ask. You could find out things you don’t want to know.”
“I want to know everything about you.”
He says it so casually, so easily. It makes me want to hide. But I don’t. I tell him about Jojo’s sickle cell and Mama’s depression, and more about my ADHD and migraines.
Josiah emerges from his bedroom right as I take the pizza rolls from the oven and grabs one of the exploded pockets right off the pan.
“It’s hot!” I warn, but he shoves it into his mouth anyway.
Jude and I look on, laughing as Jojo chomps at lightning speed, mouth open, sucking in huge gulps of air, and fanning his face. A moment later, we put ourselves through the same torment because did you really eat pizza rolls if the roof of your mouth is intact after the fact?
* * *
There are people waiting when we return to our spot at Five Points. The sight ties a few knots in my stomach. The guy from Chefly is back, and he’s brought friends. Malcolm was right about attracting gnats, and it’s not that I doubted he would be, but I didn’t expect it to happen so fast.
“Bag lady!” the tall man from yesterday shouts. “What you got for me today? Any lotto tickets in that stash of yours?”
I grip Santa Bag protectively.
“We can leave,” Jude whispers.
We could, but he paid well yesterday and is waving a few twenties.
“I don’t have anything for you,” I say. It’s the truth. I sense no fresh need coming from him. “But you—” I point at the woman next to him and draw a tea candle from the bag.
The man elbows her a few times, grinning widely. “Your lucky day. Wait and see.”
She studies the candle like I handed her a piece of garbage, but the man stuffs two twenties in the tip jar on her behalf. “Name’s Tim, by the way.”
I thank him for the tip, then scoot by to find an open bench where Jude and I can look like we’re innocently waiting for a train. The others follow.
“You ain’t going to tell me your name?” Tim asks as I give an empty cookie tin to a woman from yesterday and a baseball cap to her friend. No sooner than she tries on the cap, a pigeon in the rafters poops right on her head.
“Well, I’ll be.” She inspects the liquid waste. “You some kind of magician?”
“Something like that.” I smile and pass a roll of gauze to an onlooker. Jude makes sure everyone gets a Deja flyer.
“What’s your mobile pay info, sugar?” baseball cap lady asks.
I give it to her and my phone dings with a five-dollar tip.
“I said, you ain’t going to tell me your name?”
I’d forgotten Tim was still standing there. I pass a little boy a small stuffed frog. Jude studies it, then tells Tim that my name is Tiana.
I squint at him. He thinks he’s cute. “And this is my partner, Frog.”
Jude’s face drops, and it’s impossible for me to hold back my smile.
“What kind of name is Frog?” Tim asks.
“She’s joking. My name is Naveen.”
“Well, what kind of name is Naveen?”
Jude frowns. “Tim, I think you might be throwing off Tiana’s focus.”
I glare at him, but play along, rubbing my temples.
Tim looks unsure, but backs away, only to lurk nearby for the next hour until the MARTA police catch on and shoo us away. We pass him on our way to the escalators.
“Picking up on anything now?”
“No, sorry.”
“When can I see you again?”
“What?” Jude snaps, and I appreciate it. This guy is doing way too much.
“I mean, when will you be back?”
“I’m not sure.” I made one hundred and forty-eight dollars and twenty-seven cents this time. That, plus yesterday’s earnings, and everything in my piggy bank is enough for Jojo’s camp dues, but not enough to make a sizable donation to Danny’s medical fund. And definitely not enough to help Ms. Jasmine get a PI. If that’s even what she really plans to do with the money.