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CHAPTER 1
Jasmine
It was one in the morning on a Friday, and I had been sitting in Shabazz’s condo since ten o’clock that night. I was bored and broke, a combination that always turned me into a brat and a bitch. What made matters worse was, Shabazz wasn’t picking up his phone nor returning any of my text messages, so I didn’t know what the fuck was going on.
I did know, though, that I was getting tired of his bullshit and his disrespect. I was tired of playing with my pussy and watching movies by myself and falling asleep while waiting on his ass to come home from running the streets. I knew Shabazz was going to come home wanting to fuck, and then after we fucked, he was going to have a new excuse about why his money wasn’t right. And, more than anything, I was way past tired of hearing why his paper was fucked up.
When I heard the keys jangling in the lock, I put the remote control down, stood up from off the couch, and walked toward the front door, where I stood with my bare feet, wearing my pink wife-beater and my black leggings. I had my hands on my hips, in a defiant position. I was ready for war, ready to confront Shabazz and have him explain to me why he couldn’t at least return a fucking text message.
I shouted at Shabazz as soon as he pushed open the door, “Can you tell me why the fuck”—I paused in the middle of my yelling, and my mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Shabazz hobbled into the living room, his hands, his shirt, his pants, and his sneakers all covered in blood.
“Oh my God! Baby, what happened? What happened to you?” I asked, panicking as my heart pounded through my chest.
“Them LeFrak niggas killed Skeen!” Shabazz was hyperventilating as he spoke. He stripped down to his underwear as quickly as he could.
“Are you serious? Did you get hurt? What happened? They shot you?” I tried my best to see if I could tell where the blood was coming from.
Shabazz dropped to one knee, wincing in pain.
“Nah, but I think I broke my muthafuckin’ ankle!” he said and yelled out in pain. In frustration he punched his living room floor three times and left a bloodstain on the white oak hardwood floors in the process.
At that point Shabazz’s phone started to vibrate, but he didn’t pick it up.
“Baby, just chill and try to relax. I’ll take care of you.” I ran off to the bathroom and grabbed some towels and hydrogen peroxide. By the time I came back to the living room, Shabazz was on his feet and limping toward his bedroom.
“Baby, what are you doing? I told you to just chill! Look at your leg!”
“Jasmine, I gotta get dressed. We gotta get the fuck up out of here! I don’t know what’s up, but something ain’t right. I can feel it. It’s like niggas set us up or something.”
“Shabazz, calm down! Look at your leg. Just sit for a minute and let me clean that out first.”
Shabazz turned his head and saw the gash in the back of his thigh. He shook his head, his lips curled in anger. “I got grazed and didn’t even feel that shit!”
“This won’t burn, but it’ll help clean it out so that it won’t get infected.” I poured peroxide onto one of the towels and then applied it to the gash.
Although Shabazz was wincing in pain, I could tell that he was finally starting to calm down. But, at the same time, he was still very much on edge and kept saying that we had to hurry up and leave his condo.
“You wasn’t answering your phone or your texts or nothing. I mean, I see why now, but oh my God! What the hell happened? Tell me everything. You scared the shit out of me, coming in here covered with blood like that!”
“My ankle is killing me.”
At that moment his phone began vibrating, and it seemed like it wouldn’t stop.
“You not gonna answer your phone?”
Shabazz looked at me, but he ignored me. I had him sit down on the couch, and then I went and got a bucket and filled it with water and ice so he could soak his foot and his ankle in it. After a few minutes of having his foot in the ice water, he finally began to tell me what had happened.
“We was out in Pomonock all day, and around nine o’clock, I hit up Skeen and told him to come through with the re-up. He was in Brownsville when I hit him up, so he didn’t get to Queens until after eleven. So when he gets to the building, he called me, and I came down and met him outside in front of his truck, and we both walk back into the building together. But when we get into the lobby, I see this nigga name Brandon from LeFrak posted up on the wall near the elevators, and he’s like, ‘Yo, Skeen, you know what this is,’ and he pulls out the ratchet and aimed that shit at us.”
“What did Skeen do?”
“Skeen looked at me like, ‘What the fuck!’ I knew by his look that he wasn’t strapped, so I ain’t even hesitate. I pulled out my burner and I go to let off, but my shit jammed.”
“What?” I asked in disbelief.
“Exactly. So I’m like, ‘Ahhh, fuck!’ and I start backing up to get the fuck out of Dodge. I was still tryin’ to fire, but the shit just locked up on me. Then Money just starts letting off at me and Skeen—Blaow blaow blaow blaow!—and the gun blasts is echoing and ricocheting and shit, like crazy, in the lobby. So I dip around to the other side of the elevators, made it into the stairwell, and ran up like three flights. And the whole time, I’m trying to fire my shit to un-jam it, and it finally fires.
“As soon as I knew it was firing, I was straight. I ran back down the three flights and I tripped. That’s when I fucked up my ankle. By the time I get back to the lobby, I see Skeen laid out in front of the elevators, bleeding crazy, and he was barely moving but his eyes was open. By that time Brandon and his punk ass was gone, and people started flooding into the lobby to see what happened.
“I picked Skeen up and he was spitting up blood, and he had that look like he knew he was about to die. I carried him to my truck and put him inside, and I fly to Jamaica Hospital. When I got there, I grabbed a wheelchair and I pulled him out of my truck and put him in the wheelchair. Then I wheeled him in, and I just left him in the lobby of the emergency room, and I bounced.”
“You bounced?” I asked, not fully understanding why.
“Yeah, I had to. With my probation, my ass would be locked up. I couldn’t take the chance.”
“Y’all had beef with this dude or something?” I asked.
“Nah, I mean he’s from LeFrak, and LeFrak niggas always bump heads with Pomonock niggas, so that’s nothing. But he probably watched how we move and he caught us slippin’.” Shabazz shook his head.
“So it was just a stickup?”
“Yeah, whatever. I mean, I don’t know. H
e got the re-up, so it seems like a stickup. But, at the same time, that shit seemed like a setup.”
At that point his phone began vibrating again. And when it stopped, it started again. It seemed like it wasn’t going to stop vibrating until he answered it.
“This muthafucka Nico! I don’t wanna hear this nigga’s bullshit.” Shabazz reluctantly answered the phone. “Yo!” he shouted into the phone after putting it on speaker mode. His hands still had dried-up blood on them, and I figured he didn’t want to get the blood on the phone.
I nursed his ankle while he spoke.
“Shabazz, you a’ight? Where’s Skeen? Niggas been blowing up my phone telling me y’all got shot. What the fuck happened?”
“I don’t wanna talk on the phone. Where you at? I’ll come through.”
“Don’t worry about where I’m at! What the fuck happened to Skeen?” Nico barked through the phone.
“I dropped the nigga at Jamaica Hospital. He ain’t make it, though. I could tell he was gone before we even made it there.”
Nico was quiet, and I could just sense his anger through his silence.
