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ONE
NATURAL BADASSERY
“I’m gonna go in.”
“Are youinsane? You can’t go in!”
“I’m just gonna have a look around.”
“What if you’re right? What if this guy is the actual guy?”
“Then I’ll call the police.”
“What if he sees you?”
I sighed. “Luna, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
“Exactly!” she cried in a Eureka! tone. “So, yeah, let’s talk about that, Raye.”
Sitting in my car, talking to my bestie on the phone and casing the house in question, I cut her off quickly before she could start in—again—about how she felt about what I’d been up to lately.
“I’m just going to wander across the front of his house and look in the windows. No biggie.”
Truthfully, I was hoping to do more than that, but my best friend of all time, Luna, didn’t need to know that.
We’d had chats about what she called my unhinged shenanigans, or my lunatic tomfooleries. Then there were also my deranged mischiefs (Luna read a lot and her vocabulary showed it).
But I did what I did because, well…
I had to.
Luna spoke into my thoughts. “Okay, so ifIkidnapped a little girl from my church, andIwas holding her for things I won’t even contemplate why someone would do that, and some woman I’d never seen in my neighborhood casually strolled in front of my house and looked in my windows, what do you thinkIwould do?”
“Sic Jacques on them, whereupon he’d lick them and dance around them and race away, only to race back, bringing his toys so they’d play?”
Jacques was Luna’s French bulldog. He was gray, had a little white patch on his chest, and I considered myself for sainthood that I hadn’t dognapped him yet. I was pretty sure I loved him more than Luna did, and the Tiffany’s dog collar I’d splurged and bought him (which she refused to let him wear because she said it was too bougie, like that was a bad thing) proved my case on that.
“This isn’t funny, Raye,” Luna said softly.
That got to me, her talking softly.
She was yin to my yang, Ethel to my Lucy, Shirley to my Laverne, Louise to my Thelma. Dorothy to my Rose/Sophia/Blanche (and yes, I could be all three, dingy, sarcastic and slutty, sometimes all at the same time, I considered it my superpower).
You get the picture.
We were opposites, but she loved me.
And I loved her.
“I promise to be careful. It’s gone okay so far, hasn’t it?” I asked.
“Luck has a way of running out.”
Hmm.
I struggled for a moment with the use of the word “luck,” considering I thought I was pretty kickass, but I let it go.
There was a little girl missing. And I had a feeling I knew where she was.
