But I mean, his little brother stole his childhood sweetheart, so I’m a little understanding.
“I’ve always wondered if you were really about that rah rah in your raps. My daddy banned my little brother from listening to you.”
Grimey does a double take before lowering his gun and smirking. “Why you hiding, baby? I just know under them clothes is a problem.”
YT scoffs and turns around. “Save your breath.”
“This is YT. When it’s time to make a move on Sincere, she’ll be your contact. I just wanted y’all to have a face to face.”
“YT huh? What’s that stand for, beautiful?”
She glances before her before her lip curls. “Your Trachea, which is what I aim for.”
Grimey just grins wider before dropping it as he focuses on me. “She been straight? Her and her baby?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“What about Turk?”
“Yeah. I know shit is still fresh, but you should make amends and call him. Y’all all y’all got foreal.”
“I’ll think about it, cuz.” He leans into YT’s shoulder. “I’m looking forward to your call, beautiful.”
He jumps back when she shoots blindly at him, and cackles as he walks back to wherever he appeared from.
“He’s too much like me. That’s how I ended up in jail the first time,” she grumbles as I take the seat next to her again.
She turns, and folds her legs onto the bench. “Shaddy. Why did you bring me to meet Grimey?”
I glance at her, and she looks like a kid with her hood tied around her face like that. Almost innocent, and not the cold blooded killer I know she is.
Still, as much as I’ve accepted my fate, I can’t bring myself to say it aloud.
YT’s face scowls up at my silence, and in a flash she’s holding her gun to my temple.
“You know, I’ve had my suspicions… even thought about asking Deeze and DW. I mean, the more I looked into you–well, your brother, since you’ve wiped the internet of your existence–the sadder I got, so I could only imagine how you feel. But then you got so close to Deeze, I thought I was wrong. Guess not… You wanna die so bad? Let me do it. I can even make it look like an accident so no one will know. Because you think because they don’t notice, that they won’t care, but you’re wrong. They will care.”
Pressure builds in my eyes as I clench and unclench my jaw. “It’s not about them caring,” I whisper. “For the first time in my life, it’s not about anyone else but me, YT. I’mtiredbro… I just wanna be with my family. I just wanna stop–”
“Feeling like this? Right? You want the pain to go away, right? Yeah, dying is one way for that to happen. But living is another way, too.” She lowers her gun to her lap. “It’s the harder way. But it’s another way.”
She unties her hood and lets it down, running her hands through her blonde hair. My eyes zero in on the jagged scar that runs along the base of her throat. She touches her fingertips to it, as a lone tear travels down her cheek.
“I killed five people before I tried to hang myself. That was the most I’d ever done in twenty-four hours. I didn’t have rope, so I used serrated wiring, which is how I got these scars… the wiring broke at the last second. And I bawled my eyes out, peeling it from my skin. I was so sloppy with my last kill because I just knew I was going to die, that the police found me, but my neck got me put on suicide watch, and my lawyer was able to get me in the psych wing in prison. My family thinks it’s because my ex beat my baby out of me, since he was the murder I got popped for. They don’t know about the other four.”
She blinks away tears as she massages her neck. “Anyway, I’m here today because I found a reason to live. One single reason that kept me going, that I didn’t have before. And then one became two, and two became three, and now I have a bunch of reasons.” She wipes her face and ties her hood back up so only her eyes, nose and lips are visible. “You just need one reason, Shaddy.”
I wipe my own face and look away. “What was yours?”
YT is quiet for a long moment. When I look, she’s unfolding her legs and getting up. “Getting to know my little sister.” She squeezes my shoulder before walking off, leaving me with my thoughts.
By the time I make it to my therapy appointment, my once steel resolve is quickly crumbling.
I thought I’d come in here, tell this bitch something, and then go off to my grandparents’ house to off myself. Nut and Dal are in Fiji, and Mace blocked me on everything. I had about thirty-six hours before Set and Brina call to check on me, so I was kind of on a time crunch.
Now though, after seeing YT’s neck, and finding a little bit more about her, I don’t know what to think.
“Why are you here?” my therapist asks after five minutes of silence. It’s the first time she’s spoken to me. An older black woman with long thin locs pulled up on her head and secured with some African headscarf.
