The Scammer(79)

I click down the hall, running into the nearest student bathroom next to the closed café. Every stall, thankfully, empty.

“Relax,” I mumble to myself, in the first mirror. My trembling hands hold tight to the porcelain sink. When I can control my breathing, I wet my lips and pat my face dry. It’s time to find Nick.

The door swings open and a group of girls file in. One by one, staring at me through the mirror. They have the same look in their eyes everyone has that follows Devonte. Cold, vacant, just the husk of someone that was once there. My lips begin to quiver.

The last one to walk in is Kerry. She smiles and locks the door behind her.

Consequences!

They make a small semicircle around me without uttering a word. My mouth goes dry. I can’t move. Even if I could, move and run where? They have me surrounded.

Time ticks as I wait for my fate. Maybe this is just a bluff. A tactic to scare me. They wouldn’t do anything to me in here, on the main campus, for everyone to see. That’s when I notice one of them is holding a pair of scissors.

How far could my scream carry?

I don’t have a chance to find out. The first girl steps up and slaps me across the cheek. The second girl clunks at my head, pain radiating down my neck, as the third girl shoves me into the wall. I try to keep my balance, to fight back, but it’s impossible in heels. Another girl punches me right in the eye and I let out a scream that the first girl muffles with her hand. I bite and kick, but that only makes them hit my face harder.

Finally, the girl with the scissors approaches. I thrash and buck like a wild animal, desperately trying to cry out, imagining the blade slicing into my neck. But the other girls hold me steady as she chops clumps of hair off my head. Strands rain down my face and shoulders, blanketing the floor. I scream and scream, tears blinding me until Kerry shoves me hard into the stall door. My head bounces off the toilet and the entire world fades to black.



* * *




I cuddle the fluffy down comforter, the color matching my curtains, eyes locked on my sparkling canopy. Outside, it’s pitch-dark, but the stars seem so bright, like twinkling diamonds. Living in the middle of nowhere helps. In the distance, dishes clink and water runs. I stretch out of bed, a furry rug tickling my toes. Kevin always teased me about having a dead polar bear in the middle of my room. Every few days we’d have text message meme wars about it. His always being the funniest.

For weeks I thought my phone was broke when he stopped texting, stopped answering my incessant calls and FaceTimes, until I realized he was avoiding me. College had separated us in ways I could not fathom.

I pad barefoot down the stairs and into the kitchen where I see him, dressed in that orange sweater I bought. We were so used to wearing gray and navy to school every day that any pop of color added to our wardrobe was welcomed.

Kevin stands over the sink, washing dishes. A tall, brown-skinned string bean, sprouting patches of a beard on his baby face, his hair long and clumpy. That should have been my first sign that something was wrong.

He looks up and gives me a small smile.

“Hey JoJo.” His voice is so calm, so resolved. I didn’t realize how much comfort it brought me until I heard it.

But I purse my lips, slipping into the leather barstool facing him. “You know Mom and Dad are gonna kill you when they get home, right?”

He shrugs, unimpressed. “I’ll be gone before then. Tea?”

“Yes.”

Kevin turns to the glass kettle already boiling.

“You know you could’ve just asked for the money. Why steal from them?”

He shrugs, setting two white mugs on the counter. “How much did I take?”

“You don’t know?” I snap.

“No. I’m not sure,” he admits without looking at me. He takes the oakwood tea box out of the cupboard. “You seem like in a mint kind of mood tonight, old lady.”

Kevin was always good at guessing the type of tea I needed. Whether it was tea that felt like a hug, tea to cure a heartbreak, or tea to calm my frazzled nerves when I felt I had no one to talk to, no one to understand the pressure weighing me down.

He did, though, because he was under the same pressure.

I watch him dunk the bags in, where he’ll let it steep for two to three minutes, then will add cream, then honey.

He knows me. He was the only person who knew me. I thought I knew him. Until he went to college.

“Kevin, are you on drugs?”

He chuckles. “No. High on life.”

I smack the counter. “This is serious.”

We lock eyes as he pours the steaming water into the mugs, a shadow crossing his face.

“No,” he says, his voice deep. “This is a dream.”

I swallow, watching the wall behind him ripple like a breeze teasing a smooth pond.

This is a dream, a snapped shot that plays on a loop in my nightmares. The last time I saw him. The last time he was alive. He came home in the middle of the night, talking nonstop about HBCUs. How they’re a utopia for Black people, our very own mecca, wishing he had gone. Wishing he had done things differently, insisting that I do it instead. The craze in his eyes made me nervous. He had to be on drugs, that’s the only explanation for the lunacy.

Now he stands in front of me, calmly fixing my tea.

“I thought you wanted me to go to Frazier.”