“Miss Jones, how do you expect me to believe you do not know what happened between them or that you were not involved?” Mr. Richardson my vice principal questioned. I was sitting in a brown leather chair in his arctic cold office being interrogated. I guess he couldn’t tell I was trying to comprehend the whole situation too. It was unbelievable.
“Like I just said Vice Principal Ri-ch-ar-dson. I do not know!” I stressed through clenched teeth. I had been in this room for over an hour with this man asking me the same question. Somewhere between trying to punch Tamika and being in Pattie’s arms things went wrong.
“O.K. Miss Jones, if you really don’t know then leave. But you and the rest of your so called royal court are out for the rest of the week. If you guys get all of your community service hours done then it won’t go on your record as suspension.”
“Whatever Mr. Richardson!” I got up and walked out of his room. I took a quick right out of the main office and into the hallway where my girls were waiting for me.
“What happened?” Kristi was the first to speak.
I looked down at my pedicured toes and exhaled. Where to start? The fact that supposedly Travis had a baby mama two cities over or maybe I knew he had been cheating on me for about two months now? Or even the sad truth, things had gone rock bottom since I gave him my virginity on our one year anniversary.
“Yall wanna go to Chili’s?”I whispered trying to hold back tears.
Shanel being the big sister of the group hugged me. I placed my head on her shoulder and let the river flow. She stroked my hair and told me it was going to be okay. She always knew what to say. It was funny because I was the oldest in age, but everyone was taking care of me. It had always been that way. All my friends hugged me. Good thing the school was cold because otherwise it would have been a slave ship. I laughed at the thought then wiped my eyes. I got up off Shanel’s shoulder and walked down the hall with my crew. Damn they were the best. I didn’t even have to say a word, but they still knew.
An hour later we were scrunched in a booth at Chili’s. I looked around at the smiling faces and sighed. Pillow talk time!
“Derek and I finally make a year Saturday yall!” Shanel glowed excitedly. Derek was her main man and a freshman at Texas Southern University. He and Shay were the perfect couple, a real cliché. He was studying to become a doctor so you know he was gonna take care of his high-school sweetheart.
“Again?” McKinlee asked and her nosed scrunched up in mock disgust.
Kristi and I snickered. Shay and Derek had been on and off for most of our high school experience. We were seniors now so things had mostly settled between the two of them.
“Don’t do her,” Neveah backed her sister.
“Yeah! She couldn’t help that Derek was confused about everything!” Arleah added sarcastically.
Kristi and I laughed even harder. They were playing Shay bad.
“Whatever, yall just some haters,” Shanel whined defensively
I doubled over in laughter gasping for air and crying at everyone’s blunt behavior. They were too crazy. After we placed our order and the Sprites arrived, they dove right in.
“So why didn’t you tell us he was your new man?”
“Why did they fight?”
“Is Tamika just that stupid?”
“What’s this I hear about an STD?”
“Did you give up the goodies to Patrick?”
The questions continued to come until they were all either done or tired of yelling over each other.
