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"We need to talk," I said, grabbing Alaina's arm and pulling her off to the side in the hallway.
"You need to stop putting your hands on me. We don't have anything to talk about!" she snapped at me.
"Oh, I think we do. You set Diamanté up with Isaiah?" I asked curiously.
"What the hell? No!" she said, looking offended. "And this is not the place to talk about this," she said lowering her voice.
"You know he was here, right? With her at the football game last Friday," I said, ignoring her last statement.
"Yes, I know. I saw him," she said folding her arms.
"So what was up with that?"
"Why are you worried? Scared he's gonna spill some shit about you?" she asked raising her eyebrow.
"We both know if anyone should be scared, it's you. You mean to tell me you didn't know at all that they were communicating? Y'all are like best friends."
She sighed.
"I knew, but I didn't know for sure. She told me about some guy named Isaiah, but there's a lot of guys with that name. I didn't think it was him."
"Well someone needs to dead that situation. I think it should be you since you have a habit of interfering."
"Listen, Malik, I-"
"What are y'all doing?" a familiar voice said causing us both to look away from each other, only to set our eyes on Trey.
"Discussing some homework," I said. "She said she was gonna let me get the answers but apparently she ain't do it."
"I'll give it to you this afternoon," she said before linking her arm with Trey's.
"I'll catch you later, bro," Trey said to me as they walked off.
...
Mrs. Anderson had scheduled yet another after school play practice, but this time everyone who was participating had to be there. Of course I still didn't want to go, but I thought maybe I could talk to Diamante.
I walked into our school auditorium that had a few students scattered here and there, waiting for Mrs. Anderson to start the official practice. I spotted Diamante sitting by herself playing on her phone, so I walked over to her.
"Hey," I said. She didn't respond or look up at me.
"I said hey," I reiterated, causing her to huff in annoyance.
"What do you want, Malik?" she said with a flat tone.
"I just came to speak to you," I said, sitting down beside her.
"That seat is taken."
"Word? By who?"
She stayed silent.
"That's what I thought. Look, I just want to apologize."
"For?"
"The way I've been acting. I know it ain't been ideal, but I just have a lot of stuff going on, and I've been letting things get to me."
She finally put her phone away and looked at me.
"Yea, but I didn't do anything to you, so there was no reason for you to act the way you've been acting towards me."
"I know. It wasn't you. I was mad at other things that made me project my anger onto other people. I'm sorry. Can we start over?" I extended my hand to her to shake.
She rolled her eyes right before a smile crept up on her plump lips. She took my hand in hers.
"Damn, you got some small ass hands," I said, looking at her dainty hand and fingers that had white painted nails.
"I already know this," she said laughing. "Are you actually staying for this practice, or did you just come here to annoy me?"
"What? Is that what you think of me?" I asked, pretending to be offended. "I'm actually staying thank you very much."
"I hear you," she said, looking at her phone again.
I saw that she was texting Isaiah. There were a lot of emojis being exchanged. Before I could read what the actual texts said, my own phone started to vibrate in my pocket.
I took it out, seeing that Kelvin was calling me.
"Yo," I answered.
"Where you at?"
"At school."
"You might wanna come to the spot," he said, sounding serious.
"I'm at practice," I said, leaving out the word 'play' to make him think I maybe meant basketball. "Something up?"
"I think we may have a lead on who killed your father."
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