(I start school next week y'all😹🙄💕.)
Artist Sincere DuBois
January 3rd, 2020
It was 11:00 at night, and Evre had me outside at a fuckin cemetery.
Like fuckin white people searching for clues for a 1879 murder.
"Shit," I crossed my arms as I followed her through the field. "Evre, it's cold as fuck. Can we go sit in the car?"
She stopped by one of the headstones and shook her head, taking a seat. "If I come to Oakland, I gotta make sure to visit my brother—in person. Talkin to him all the way from LA not enough for me. You could go sit in the car." She offered.
"Nah," I shook my head, taking a seat next to her. "Fuck around and have a goblin come out the ground and eat cho face off and then what?" I muttered.
"Boy, shut up." She tittered, playfully slapping my chest, and I put my face into my hoodie, tightening the strings. Oakland cold was a different type of cold.
Evre sighed, turning to the tombstone as I took the time out to look at the markings.
"Hey, bro," she smiled. "I uh, ain't none' really been goin on in my life. I'm real borin." She smiled. "I moved in wit my daddy permanently, and now I'm goin out to a school in Palisades. But it's all good tho, my grades still good, and I got a couple scholarships waitin for me." She started.
"Me and all my siblings real close, that's how it's always been tho'. But can't nobody replace you," she assured. "Won't nobody ever replace you, you the only one a my siblings I got tatted on me, and that's fa' life."
I sat next to her and watched as she had a whole conversation with her big brother, telling him how he impacted her life on a daily and how she always thought about him. Giving him updates on her life and shit, and how she continued to work toward making him proud everyday.
She looked over at me. "You wanna say somethin?"
I scrunched my eyebrows and paused. The fuck was I supposed to say to that?
If I said no I look like a asshole.
But a nigga ain't really wanna say yes either.
"What I'm posed to say?"
She shrugged. "Anything you wanna say."
"Um," i breathed out. She lucky I fuckin like her. "Aye... bro."
"Never mind." She shook her head with a laugh. "We'll try next time." She turned back to the tombstone and laid her head against it. "You got my boyfriend all nervous." She said with a smile.
Fuck.
I'm boyfriend now?
Shiiit, I gotta stop my game up. Maybe I should talk to her dead ass brother.
It got quiet between the two of us, before she spoke up. "I remember this one time," she started off with a smile. "I had got into it wit some girls from my middle school, I think he was in like tenth grade at the time, and he came through and started knockin' bitches out wit me." She said with a laugh.
I raised a brow as I pulled a blunt from my coat pocket. "You used ta' knock bitches out? Nah, I gotta see that." I shook my head.
"Boy I boxed for damn near ten years. I got some videos on my phone, I'll show you when I get back to the house."
"Nah... I mean in person." I clarified.
She made a face, and then shook her head. "Nah, nah. That ain't me no more."
I raised a brow again. "Nah?"
"Nah." She replied with a smile. "I'm a changed person. I'm tryna do better. I can't be role model if out here fightin' all the time. I mean, unless it's a good reason. But I ain't never been the person to pop off like that. It take a lot."
I nodded. "That's understandable." She nodded. "You wanna hit it?" I asked, passing it her way when I sparked the blunt.
Scrunching her face, she shook her head back and forth. "Why you'on smoke?" I asked her. Every time I asked her to hit the blunt she always declined. She never gave me that smoker vibe either.
"Um," she tucked her lips into her mouth as I blew smoke out, away from her. "Why you smoke so much?"
I shrugged. I never thought about it. "I like bein' high. Help me keep my mind off shit."
"Like what?"
"My pops. We was real close. A lotta shit started goin' downhill when he died."
"Like...?" She urged, scooting up under me. We was really cuddled up in front of a tombstone, at 11:00 at night, in a fuckin cemetery.
And the crazy part was: I really didn't mind, cause I was wit E. And as long as I was with her, I ain't have to think about the bad shit, or the shit that could go wrong.
I'm really a fucking simp.
"When he died, I started skippin' school, fightin' more." I explained, and she nodded her response. "I started doin' B & E."
"Oh!" She exclaimed, sitting up. "So you did rob a nigga." She replied, referring to our earlier conversation.
I nodded. "Not the way you thinkin' tho'."
She frowned some, before nodding. "That's interestin'. You started sellin' weed too?"
I shook my head, blowing smoke from my nose. "I always sold weed. My pops the one that taught me how."
"Hmm." She nodded, and it got quiet.
"You wanna leave?" I looked down at her. "I ain't finna sit in this cold ass air as in no fuckin cemetery. That's how niggas be dyin."
"Boy! Ain't nothin' gone happen." She waved me off. "I used to come and spennanight here all the time."
"You used to spennanight in a cemetery?" She nodded and I stood up, dusting off my pajama pants. "Cool, so I won't feel bad leavin' you here by yo'self then." I said and turned to walk off.
"Uh- Artist!" She called after me. "Bring yo' scary ass back!"
"Man nah! Don't say shit when a skeleton come from out the ground and snatch yo ass to the underworld!"
She laughed, chasing after me, and we walked over to the car and got in, and I drove us back to her momma's house.
• • • • •
"Can you believe Amour really pregnant? Like... we really finna have a lil baby in our lil family, that shit crazy." Evre gushed, playing in my curls.
We had come back from the cemetery and laid down on the pull out couch. An infomercial was playing, but neither one of us was paying attention, just up talking to each other.
By this time it was about 12:30 something.
"Yeah." I nodded, laying my head on her chest. "That shit crazy." It got quiet. "You gone have my baby?" I looked up at her.
She bust out laughing, and shook her head. "Boy no."
"Uh- well damn. Why not?"
"I'm not finna have no baby at sixteen, first off. And ion want kids."
"Fa' real?" I felt her nod. "Why?" I had never ran into a female that ain't wanna have kids. That shit was new.
On top of that, Evre was good with kids. My lil brother loved her and all of her younger siblings treated her like she was they momma. For her to not want kids ain't really make sense to me.
"Cause," she shrugged. "I'on really think I'm the type that should have kids."
"Why?" She didn't answer at first, milling over her words as she played in my hair. I did a breath. "I had a girlfriend before I came out here."
"What?" She scrunched her face.
"Not like that," I calmed her. "Patience... Patience was special man. Like... that was the one I thought I was gone get married to, have kids wit and everything. My first love fa' real." I paused.
"When I got her pregnant when I was sixteen, shit was rocky. I had to struggle fa' money and shit, but I was bout to bring a baby in the world, so I figured everything was gone be worth it." I ran my hands down my face, and she held me a little tighter without saying anything. "When it came time for her to have the baby... rushed her to the emergency room and shit, she had some complications... and I lost her and the baby."
She gasped, and looked down at me. "Are you serious?" I nodded and she hugged me tight, laying on top of me. "I'm sorry."
"It's cool." I shrugged. "Ain't really much that I could I do about it now."
"Do you think about her?"
I nodded. "All the time."
She paused. "Do you feel like you betrayin' her? Gettin' wit me?"
I thought about it before I shook my head. "I mean, I think about it sometimes, but... she dead so..."
She tooted her lips and it got quiet before she spoke up. "I'm sorry you had to go through that," she wiped under her eye. "I couldn't imagine losing a baby."
"That's why you don't want one?"
She shrugged and nodded some. "Yeah, losing a baby would always be a fear of mine. But, I'm just not a good role model, and it's like, if you ain't gone be somethin for your kids to look up to, why have them?" She looked at me. "You get me?"
"Why you think you not a good role model? You goin' to a good ass school, you pretty, you know how to hold a conversation, and you workin' wit damn near all A's, and got scholarships lined up for you. That sound good to me." I shrugged.
"After my brother died," I sighed. "I just fell into a really dark place. I got into this one fight, in like ninth/tenth grade. And, I got charged wit Aggravated Assault, and went to juvie for like six months." She scratched her head through through the scarf she had on. "I started fuckin' wit pills." I didn't say nothing, and let her talk. But that shit surprised the fuck outta me. If she was able to pop pills why she was so fuckin skeptical about smokin a blunt? That shit seemed hella backwards to me. "I was at a party, and popped like three Oxy-"
"You was takin' Oxy?" I made a face. She nodded. "You know that shit like coke in a pill right?"
She let out a breath. "Yeah." She said lowly.
"So... fuck was you takin that for?"
She twisted her mouth from side to side. "It was just... a way for me to cope with shit." She sighed. "I saw my first lo- my best friend get taken away, three of my friends get kilt, my stepdad get kilt, and my big brother. And my other best friend moved to Africa-"
"Africa?" She nodded. "Fuck she move out there for?" She shrugged. "Oh," I frowned. "Ight keep goin'."
She took a deep breath, and I held her hand to let her know I was here with her. "I... was goin' through a lot. And then... my momma was goin' through a lot, I felt that seeing me sad was makin' her even sadder, and I needed to be strong for both of us. When I was on the pills I didn't think about my brother, my stepdaddy, or my friends... I was cool— sleep most of the day to be real, but I was cool, and I was able to help my momma out."
"I just feel like... it's a lotta steps, you coulda took before that one?"
"I mean... I was fighting a lot more than usual, but that ain't really land me no where but in juvie. And I won't even on the pills then."
"What happened?"
"And after a while, it became more of... "oh I like these" then it really was of "oh I wanna help my momma"." She explained. "I went out to a party wit some people I was hangin' wit, and OD'd." She said.
"Like... you died?"
"Do I look dead?" She smartly asked and I stale faced her. Her smart ass mouth was gone make me pop her in it. "I mean, I flatlined, but it was only once. But, yeah," she sighed deeply, playing with her fingernails. "I just feel like, I don't deal with my emotions in a healthy way, I'm aint sure if I ever will, and that's some shit I gotta work through before I ever think to have kids. I still got some shit I'm goin' through."
"Shit like what?" I squeezed her hand as she began to zone out. She had been doing that shit a lot since we got out here.
She blinked a few times before turning to me. "When I was nine I got shot right?"
I squinted. "You foreal?"
"Yeah." She waved me off, and then pulled her right arm out of her pajama shirt. "Stop lookin' at my nipples." She demanded with a laugh, showing the small scars. "This from when I was eight," she pointed towards her lower arm. "This from the next year. I was nine," she explained, pointing at another scar, near her shoulder area.
"What happened? I mean, like, how?" I shrugged as she put her arm back into her shirt.
"Well, the first time, I was comin down from the skatepark wit some friends. Some niggas started shootin at each other over a dice game," I shrugged. "I got hit wit a stray." She took a deep breath. "The second time... my sister did it."
My eyebrows furrowed. I was ready to send some niggas to her pops house, depending on which sister did it. "Which sister?"
"On my momma side."
"Dior?"
"Nah- nigga do dat make sense?" I shrugged. Shit, Dior was the only sister she had on her momma's side as far as I knew
"My older sister did it, her name is Journee."
"Shot chu how?"
She sighed. "When I was nine, me and my momma had moved outta my grandma house, they got into it, my momma refused to stay there. We ended up sleeping in our car for a few nights, before we ended up stayin' in a hotel. There, my momma flipped out—she bipolar," she explained before I had the chance to ask. "After her, slight episode, she sent me to live wit my grandad—her daddy—and my grandma—his wife. My sister's daddy was cool wit them, and was droppin' them off all the time, so we all ended up at the house together." She paused to pace herself. "They ain't like me."
"What chu mean?"
"Like, nobody in the house, nobody liked me. My grandma played favorites between me and my sisters, I was like Cinderella." She shrugged. "My sisters tortured me, and I mean tortured me." She emphasized.
"Like what?"
"Like," she chuckled some. "Journee pushed me down a flight of stairs one day," she paused and laughed some. "she would come in my room at night and try to suffocate me wit my own pillow. This bitch tried to drown me, in my bath water one day. We used to go to this summer program, and she would have her friends bully me, I mean, pourin' drinks and food and shit on me, jumpin' me in the bathroom one time. It was this one time I had come from spendin' a day wit my auntie, my momma was beefin' wit them at the time, which was why she sent me to live wit her messed up daddy in the first place. But anyway, I went, and spent a whole day wit her, and I came home and seen that her and her friends had cut my damn clothes up, like, all typa shit. It sound fake when I say it out loud."
"What the fuck you do to Journee?" I asked.
"I'on know." She shrugged. "To this day, I have no idea. All I know is she hated me. And she was only like... ten, eleven round this time."
I shook my head. "That's crazy, bruh."
She nodded. "We was at a kid party one day, and it end up gettin' shot at, and this bitch used me as a human shield," she chuckled bitterly. "This bitch really pushed me in front of her, while they was shootin'." She looked my way. "Crazy right?"
I nodded. I woulda never thought Evre had been through half the shit she been through. It really had me looking at her differently tho. In a good way.
"Where they at now?" I asked. "Y'all cool?"
"Hell nah." She made a face. "Fuck both them bitches for life." She promised. "After that summer, they Daddy ended up gettin' into a big ass argument wit my momma, and he got mad and took em."
"Took em where?"
She shrugged. "I'on know. He literally got in the car with them, and took off, won't answer the phone, don't nobody know where he at. And you know how the police is." She said.
"Damn." I said. Ian really know what the fuck else to say. "That's crazy."
"Yup," she nodded, and it got quiet between us. "You know, I had somebody like Patience."
"What chu mean?"
"Like," she held my hand while she laid on her side, looking into my eyes all romantically and shit. "Somebody I was posed to get married to, have kids wit. Before he went to jail we was really on the way to makin that happen. Yeah we was young, but we knew we was gone be together."
"That nigga you always caked up on the phone wit?"
"I'm not caked up. You the only nigga I cake up wit," she assured me with a roll of her eyes. "But yeah, we was posed to get married and have kids and everything... live out in a big ass house in Texas since he had family out there."
"What happened?"
She sighed. "A couple things: he went to jail, they transferred him to some far off ass location, I'on even know where the fuck it's at, so we can't do the visits no more." She sighed.
"What else?"
On some sappy shit, she smiled and looked into my eyes before saying, "I met chu."
• • • • •
Thoughts?
Y'all I am so sorry for this long chapter☹️I been tryna cut it down for the last two days but I felt that everything that was typed needed to be left just so we could get more of an insight on not only the characters relationship but themselves. I promise I'll try not to make the other chapters as long❤️
Thanks for reading😘
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