“Where y’all even get this from?”
Before Ghost could open his mouth, I stepped forward to answer the question. My tone was flat.
“If you ain’t interested, you ain’t got no reason to know.”
That hung in the air for a second. Chino studied me before nodding once.
“Aight.”
He backed up toward the door.
“Word of advice? Get rid of it fast… or don’t get caught with it at all.”
And just like that, he was gone. Once the front door was shut, silence filled the room again, but thicker this time. I dragged my hand down the side of my face while pacing off my frustration.
“Man… what the hell are we supposed to do now?” I asked.
Everything else we stole was easy to get off. But now things were different than our normal licks. We were sitting on ten bricks and suddenly had nobody who wanted them. Chino was high up on the street food chain, and if his ass said no, then I knew that everyone else would follow behind him. I looked at Ghost when he didn’t answer my question.
“We just supposed to sit on this?”
He didn’t look worried. He didn’t even flinch or bat an eye at the realization of what Chino had told us. Whoever this cartel was seemed like they didn’t play. And here we were, the dummies with their product.
“I’ll break it down,” he said simply.
I stopped pacing.
“Break it down?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah. We can move it ourselves.”
I stared at him for a second… then let out a short laugh.
“Nigga, you don’t know the first thing about selling dope.”
Ghost shrugged my statement off before responding.
“I watchedSnowfall.”
That caught me off guard. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
“Man, get the hell outta here.”
He cracked the smallest smile. I shook my head while still laughing a little, then I pointed at him.
“You ain’t even got clientele. Who the fuck are we supposed to move this shit to?”
Ghost looked at me like I was the slow one. Then he gestured around us.
“Have you looked around where we live, bruh?” He paused. “The clientele everywhere.”
That wiped the smile clean off my face because the crazy part was that he wasn’t wrong. We lived in one of the roughest neighborhoods, and the trap we stood in was a vacant house that we basically took over. The only thing I was worried about was that this product we now had was what some may call a rich man’s hobby. The crackheads in the hood around us didn’t have the money for this shit. We would have to broaden our horizons a bit if he wanted to get this shit off.
Two days passed, and once we made it back inside from a store run for some scales and baggies, it felt like we never left that trap house. Time blurred together. I couldn’t tell the daylight from the nighttime. The only thing that changed was the number of empty fast-food bags that started to pile up on the floor. Grease-stained wrappers, half-drunk sodas, and crumpled napkins were scattered on the dingy floor. All evidence that we were surviving off whatever was quick and close.
We didn’t even leave the house together. One of us stayed while the other went. That was the rule. I shook my head from side to side while leaning back for a second. My eyes were starting to burn from being up too long.
“Man… I’m tired of smelling this,” I muttered.
