Get Ready for War

Book 2: Hollywood High

by Ni-Ni Simone, Amir Abrams

Genres: YA Romance

Synopsis

They have everything their parents' mega-celebrity can give—but when the Pampered Princesses of Hollywood High take aim at each other, the last girl standing will have everything to lose. London Phillips needs a time-out from her mother's rules, and from her crazy clandestine romance with hottie Justice Banks. To keep her cool, and keep her secrets, she turns to her parent-approved billionaire fake boyfriend. But unexpected romantic sparks ignite a firestorm of their own. . . Rich Montgomery wants to start fresh with her true love. But the web of lies she's created is pushing her past the edge, spinning her into battles she can't afford to lose. . . Teen TV star Heather Cummings never thought she'd land in rehab. Resuscitating her career means getting clean. Yet, she never thought she'd find a counselor who'd redefine what abstinence means. . . Spencer Ellington is so done losing besties and boyfriends. Good thing she's been keeping track of a stash of scandals. Now she's ready to begin a media feeding frenzy even Hollywood High's in-crowd may not survive. . .

Release date: April 24, 2012

Publisher: Kensington Teen

Print pages: 433

Sample

Who the hell needed enemies when you had hatin’ media hoes and bloggers maliciously tearing you up every chance they got and a bunch of selfish, backstabbing whores as friends.

Oh no. My enemies weren’t the ones I needed to keep my mink-lashed eyes on. It was the Pampered Princesses of Hollywood High Academy who kept me dragged into their shenanigans, along with the paparazzi that lived and breathed to destroy me. Hence why I was wearing a floppy hat and hiding behind a pair of ostrich-leather Moss Lipow sunglasses.

I was a trendsetter.

A shaker ’n’ mover.

A fashionista extraordinaire.

I was London Phillips.

Not a joke!

And my name had no business being caught up in any of the most recent scandals with Heather’s (aka Wu-Wu) Skittles fest. If she wanted to overdose on her granny’s heart medicine, then she needed to leave me out of it.

My reputation of being fine, fly, and eternally fabulous was etched on the pages of magazines and carved in the minds of many. And I was one of the most adored, envied, and hated for all of my divaliciousness. It came with the territory of being deliciously beautiful. And I embraced it.

But being on top didn’t mean a thing if you didn’t know how to stay there. Reputation was everything at Hollywood High. And up until three days ago, I was perched up on Mt. Everest in all of my fabulousness, looking down at any- and everyone who followed me or aspired to be me, but could (or would) never be me. Yeah, it had been a cold-blooded climb to the top. But so what? A diva did what she had to do to get what she wanted and needed. And I had made it.

But I wasn’t in New York anymore, reigning alone. No. I was in Hollywood. And I had to share the mountaintop with three skanks who were supposed to be the “It Clique.” And they had been. And we had been. But now we were about to lose our crowns as the Pampered Princesses of Hollywood High if Heather, Spencer, and Rich didn’t get it together—quick, fast, and in a hurry. Their antics were destroying my reputation. And theirs!

The media and bloggers were having a field day tearing us up in the headlines. Kicking us in our crowns and branding us last week’s hot trash. Not respecting that we were the daughters of high-profiled celebrities. Naming us this week’s flops. They really thought we had fallen off our white-horsed carriages. And from the looks of things, we had. Here I was, again, in the midst of Rich, Spencer, and Heather’s bullshit. But enough was enough.

I was determined to handle Rich first. I had to get her focused. But this wench, who I thought was easy and gullible, wasn’t playing along the way I thought. No, she was too busy chasing behind some boy whom she seemed obsessed with and hell-bent on being with. And that was a problem—for me!

Shoot. Can I get my life?

As I walked through the school’s café doors, pulling out my cell, it was eerily quiet, but I had no time to figure out why. I needed to get in touch with Rich. where r you?

A string-bean-thin girl with a pink-and-black Mohawk, black eyeliner, and black lipstick stepped up to me and handed me a FREE WU-WU T-shirt being distributed by Wu-Wu’s many stalkers, gawkers, and fanatics. I stared the walking toothpick down. “Beanpole, who told you you could get up in my space?” I snapped, tossing the shirt in her face. “Go hang yourself with it. And make sure you get it right.”

Her eyes popped open.

I was sooooo not in the mood. I needed to know where the hell Rich and Spencer were. I already knew where Heather’s wretched self was. But Rich and Spencer were both unaccounted for. This made the fifteenth time I had pulled out my phone today to check for any messages or missed calls from Rich because I had been calling her and texting her and leaving her messages since seven o’clock this morning. Sweating her; something I don’t do. And still there was nothing from her.

Zilch.

Nada.

Not a damn thing!

As I was walking and texting Rich another where-the-hell-are-you message, I couldn’t help but notice the noise level in the café. Normally it was full of chatter and laughter and all types of music.

Not today.

Dead silence.

All I heard was a bunch of clicking from cameras. And a few comments like “Uh-oh, it’s about to go down now” as I made my way farther into the center of the café. Suddenly I knew what all of the silence was about. There was a group of girls sitting at our table. You know. The one that has, or had, the pink tablecloth and a humungous RESERVED FOR THE PAMPERED PRINCESSES sign up on it. Yeah, that table.

Screech!

Everyone knew on this side of campus that the Pampered Princesses were the ruling clique. And no one sat at our table. No one!

I pulled up the rim of my hat, inched my shades down to the tip of my nose, and peered at them.

I blinked.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The group of girls had on uniforms. And judging by the colors, I knew they absolutely did not belong on this side of the campus.

This has to be a mistake.

I marched over toward them, then stood and stared at the group of chicks who had foolishly parked their behinds and taken up space at our table. These preemies had our table covered with a fuchsia tablecloth. And they had the nerve to have the table set with fine china and a candelabra in the center of the table, as if they were preparing for some kind of holiday feast. And they sat pretty as they pleased, as if they owned the room.

They all wore their hair pulled back into sleek, shiny ponytails with colorful jeweled clips. I ice-grilled them, expecting them to scatter like frightened roaches. Not! They didn’t budge. Didn’t even blink an eyelash. Nope, those munchkin critters defiantly stayed planted in their seats and continued on with their chatter as if I didn’t exist. And at that very moment, I felt like the whole cafeteria had zoomed in on me. I quickly glanced around the room to assess the situation. They had. And it was turning into a nightmare. All eyes were clearly on me! Cameras clicked.

I cleared my throat.

They continued talking and laughing.

Did they come here to bring it?

If I wasn’t so pissed at their disrespect, I would have been impressed. And truth is, they were adorable. But that was not the time, nor the place, to give props to a bunch of bratty Beanie Baby sluts trying to serve me drama. I had enough of that with my own clique, so I sure wasn’t going to tolerate it from a bunch of ninth-grade peons in navy blazers, green-and-blue plaid pleated skirts, and black Nine West pumps.

I picked up a fork from the table and tapped one of the glasses with it. “Umm, excuse you. Excuse you, excuse you.”

The chick sitting at the far end of the table craned her neck in my direction and stared me down. She had beautiful skin and an oversized forehead. “The name’s Harlow. H-A-R-L-O-W. And whaaat? You want my autograph? ’Cause I don’t do groupies.”

Oh no, now I knew that them being at our table was not a mistake. Those tricklets had strutted over to this side of the campus purposely to bring it. All in the name of getting it crunked.

Now, along with the media, we had teenybopper freshmen trying to bring it to us!

Oh, hell no! They really don’t want it. Apparently they don’t know what they’re asking for.

I took a deep breath. Determined to keep it cute, calm, and collected. I couldn’t afford to dish out another hundred grand for tearing up the café, again. Daddy would kill me for sure. “Sweetie, I don’t know who misplaced your lunch period, and I’m sure this is your nap time. But this right here”—I patted the table—“is not for you.”

She smirked. “And you are?”

I tilted my head. “About to become your worst nightmare in a minute if you-all don’t get up from this table.”

The four of them stared at each other, then looked around as if they were searching for something. “Umm, excuse me, Starlets,” the Harlow chick said to her little Cheerios crew. “Do any of you see a name tag with the name Buffalo Hips on it?”

“Creature from the wild . . . ,” the three others sang out.

“Is looking for someplace to sit,” a golden-brown chick sitting next to Harlow added.

Stay calm.

Just relax.

Let me try this again.

“Umm, where’s your babysitter? Because apparently there’s been an escape from the nursery; toddlers gone wild...”

“Umm, excuse me, Miss London,” one of the white-gloved servers said, coming to the table with two trays. I blinked. He set a platter of burgers and milk shakes in the center of the table, then walked off, eyeing me.

Then those little disrespectful chicks had the nerve to snap open their napkins and lay them neatly on their laps.

Oh, this had gone too far!

I placed a hand up on my hip and tossed my Fendi hobo bag in the center of the table, disrupting everything on it. They jumped.

“Eww...”

“Ohmygod . . .”

“Did someone dump their garbage here? How gross is that.”

“Isn’t that last year’s bag?”

“Exaaaactly, Arabia,” Miss Forehead said, tossing her ponytail. “Old head’s tryna serve us. Now get your fashion right.”

Wait. Did Forehead just call me an old head?

They waved their arms up in the air and snapped. “Mmmph, exaaaaactly.”

The other two sitting across from Harlow and the Arabia chick snickered, like two cackling backup singers. They really didn’t understand. I was trying to spare them from a beat-down. Truth is they reminded me of me, and my old clique back in New York when we were their age. But that was then. And this was now! Still, they had heart. And they were sassy. Their diamonds sparkled. And one of them I knew for sure had money. I could smell it all over her. But that had nothing to do with all four of them being totally out of line.

I leaned in and spoke real tight-lipped. “I don’t know if you four little bimbos are trying to be cute, or intentionally trying to work me over, or if you simply banged your oversized foreheads on the monkey bars during recess, but obviously you all missed the memo on which clique reigned supreme here.”

They burst out laughing all hard and crazy, then stopped abruptly. “Hmmm”—they snapped their fingers—“Not!”

The Harlow chick turned to me and said, “No, ma’am, we didn’t miss the memo. We didn’t miss the blogs either. Let’s see. If we’re not mistaken, they all say”—she glanced over at her posse—“drum roll, please . . .”

“Losers!” they shouted in unison.

The cafeteria erupted in laughter.

My face was cracked. I couldn’t believe that a pack of toddlers in cheesy uniforms were trying to set it off and disrespect me to my face. Cute girls or not, this was a problem!

Cameras continued clicking.

The Harlow chick was clearly Miss Mouth Almighty—and the appointed ringleader. “Page twenty-seven in Hot or Not magazine”—she started flipping through the tabloid—“says that you gutter hoes have fallen apart.” She eyed me, putting a hand up to her chest. “Oooh, look at Heather . . .”

“Junkie,” they sang out.

Another said, “Aaah, Wu-Wu’s in the house.”

“Not!” they all said, snapping their fingers again.

Harlow continued. “Black beauties, baby . . .”

“Crushed and ready to go . . . ,” the backup singers sang out. “Got it on lock . . .”

The Arabia chick said. “Oooh-oooh . . . don’t forget about the fakest of ’em all.”

“Who, Rich?” Harlow smirked.

“Boom bop, make it drop,” they all said in unison. “Pop pop, get it, get it . . .”

“Yeah, a baby,” Harlow sneered.

“Clutching pearls, clutching pearls,” her three cheerleaders mocked, placing a hand up to their necks.

The café went wild.

It was clear that these girls had been watching us hard. Mmmph, even the young broads trying to jock our spots.

Harlow rolled her eyes. “Oh, puhleeeeze. How tired is that? Clutching pearls. Who says that?”

“Has-beens,” one of her giggling sidekicks snorted.

“Mmmm, exaaaaactly!” Harlow and the Arabia chick snapped.

“Oh, wait,” Harlow stated excitedly, clapping her hands together. “Let’s not forget Spencer . . .”

“The dizzy chick,” they said. “Smells like cat piss . . . smells like cat piss . . .”

“Somewhere . . .”

“Down on her knees. Down on her knees,” they all chimed in.

“Mopping the floor and making videos,” Arabia added.

“Nine-one-one, this is an emergency . . . this is an emergency...”

I was hot! Rich was somewhere knocked up, Heather was somewhere drugged up or going through withdrawals, and Spencer was probably somewhere neck bobbing. And, once again, I was the one getting dragged—alone!

Harlow eyed me up and down, curling her lips up into a dirty sneer. “And you, London . . .”

Ohhhhkay, here we go!

“Freak!” they all yelled out in unison. “Caught up in the matrix... Caught up in the matrix . . .”

I blinked.

And before I could catch myself, before she could get the rest of her sentence finished, I backhanded her so hard she fell backward. And spit slung from her mouth. They all screamed as I swung that little Gerber baby around the café and gave her the beatdown of her life. Then, in the midst of all the cameras clicking and tables being tossed up, the other three Romper Room hookers jumped up on my back and tackled me to the floor. And the only thing I could think about was being stomped down by a bunch of Crenshaw Crippettes in cheap, pleather pumps. This was a state of emergency!

I was clearly behind enemy lines. And it was all Rich’s, Spencer’s, and Heather’s fault because they didn’t know how to handle their scandal.

12 A.M.

I couldn’t sleep.

Couldn’t eat.

All I could do was think...

And I didn’t wanna think.

Thoughts, and memories, and maybes, and could’ve beens, would’ve beens, and should’ve beens were as useful as a pile of knockoff Louis V. bags. A bad attempt by my mind to redesign what I knew could never change. And no matter how hard I tried to hold back tears or swallow the ache in my throat, I knew that when the sun rose, my world would still be the same. Tumbling down.

I settled into the soft white Egyptian sheets that covered the hotel’s king-size bed and did my all to outrun my thoughts . . .

2 A.M.

I prayed hard that I’d slept for more than two hours. But as usual my prayers failed me . . .

And now I was having another round with coulda, woulda, and shoulda wreckin’ my flow. Ugh! Feeling sorry for myself was so thirteen hours ago!

4 A.M.

I was going stir-crazy. Insane. This was not where I was supposed to be. Not again. The first time maybe . . . but not this time. This time, I was supposed to toss everyone who didn’t agree with me the peace sign, while telling them to kiss my . . .

Ugh!

I should leave...

I sat up in bed. Walked over to my hotel suite’s Juliet balcony and looked out at the crimson-clay colored mountains. I was in the middle of nowhere . . . Population two hundred and eight. A three-hour plane ride away from civilization. The perfect place for affluent teenage girls—who didn’t stick to their parents’ scripts—to leave behind their most scandalous secrets on the town’s only—and very well paid—ob-gyn’s cold steel table.

Maybe...

Know what? Screw maybe.

6 A.M.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night. My thoughts were haunting me. This was so not the plan.

The plan was designer diaper bags, matching pink diamonds, Swarovski baby baths. The plan was blistering love between me and my man. Pushing a baby carriage. Having my publicist—something we all had for no other reason than to keep us relevant in the news—flood the media with pictures of my blue-blooded offspring. Maybe a shot at reality TV. Oh, and somewhere in between droppin’ it and poppin’ it and making my last rounds through a club or two was to be the royal marriage of the billionaire music mogul’s princess and the low-money-millionaire commoner.

And no, I wasn’t settling.

And yeah, I knew it sounded crazy.

And no, there was no way for me to help who I loved. Trust. My mother tried to stop me from loving him. And all it did was make me want my man more. Heck, I even tried leaving him alone. Twice. But all it did was leave me with two missed periods and two secrets to keep. So there was no fighting it. Knox was the only one I wanted. I had to have him. Period. No negotiation. No waving a white flag. I loved every inch of his six-foot, athletic-built, sexy-caesar, paper-bag brown deliciousness. And yeah, umm hmm, he was all of that.

Snap. Snap.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, I could have any man that I wanted—with way more money and surname prestige. Heck, I was astoundingly beautiful: skin like chocolate silk, a Chinese bob that lay flush against my sharp jawline. Perfectly straight teeth encased by seductive, pouty lips. And my body was hella crazy: D-sized melon cups; molded, exquisitely round and dimple-free black-girl booty; hourglass hips; thick thighs; and luscious long legs. I was the embodiment of sweetness. Candy come to life. Swizz chocolate in human form. So there was no mistake I had it going on. Nevertheless I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted Knox.

Even if I was mad at him and was too stubborn to answer his calls and tell him that.

This was way too much drama to only be sixteen.

According to my mother, the Know-Ev-ver-ry-thing-Queen, by the time I was grown, only God knew what kind of fresh-azz skeezer I would be.

I resented that.

Apparently my mother missed the memo: there was no more time for me to be grown. I was already grown. And I wasn’t a skeezer—I just wasn’t a virgin. Clearly there was a difference.

But did she care? Hell no. All Logan Montgomery cared about was what she had planned for me, and what I wanted didn’t matter. My mother was such a dirty bitc—

Know what, I won’t even say it, because truth be told, my mother was way worse than any female dog in heat.

What kind of person blackmails their daughter to come to the middle of nowhere by placing a gun—loaded with two lawyers, a Tiffany pen, and a threat to donate my trust fund to the humane society (How inhumane was that?)—to my head, if I didn’t do what she said?

She left me with no choice. I had to come here and wait for the doctor to call the hotel suite and tell us when it was time.

She had me by the throat . . . but after this I was done with her. Finished. Because apparently she had me messed up. I was born with the platinum spoon; she was the ex-groupie. And her husband, the high school dropout turned rapper, turned billionaire CEO, was even worse than his wife.

I was sick of these people. And I was tired of my decisions being tied to their money. My life was bigger than that.

I was Rich Montgomery. Socialite extraordinaire. I walked on diamonds. I was the chick who put the It in the It Clique. I was the reason the Pampered Princesses could be considered pampered. I was that chick... Now all I needed was to feel like it...

12:00 P.M.

White sheets, stirrups, blue scrubs, and bright lights...

“Close your eyes and count backward. By the time you get to three you will be asleep . . .”

Nine... seven... five.. .four.. .three...

2:30 P.M.

I ran my hands across the cool white sheets. My palms were in search of Knox’s hard, brown body. My fingertips needed to cup his muscular pecs. I needed his heat. His passion. His kisses. His love. To make love and erase the pain I felt easing into my chest and settling there. I needed him, but my palms felt nothing. No heat. No passion. Nothing. He wasn’t there. A steel fist balled in my throat.

I opened my eyes and tears lined the rims. They slipped down my cheeks. I wasn’t with Knox.

I was at the exclusive doctor’s office.

Seated across the room on the left side of my bed, with her legs crossed and her eyes scrolling the pages of O magazine, was my mother—the dirty...

Tears continued to run down my cheeks. I reached for a Kleenex and my mother looked over the magazine she leafed through. “Oh, Rich, please, not the tears.”

If I could get out of this bed I would slap her face. I narrowed my eyes and swallowed the fist in my throat. “Do you know how hard this was for me?”

“Considering that this is the second time we’re here, I thought for sure that this had gotten easier.”

“You don’t even care!”

“You have about two seconds to drop that tone at least two octaves.”

“Why, Ma? Are you scared someone may hear me?!” Instead of dropping my voice two octaves I raised it by two. “I swear you are sooo confused!”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really, and you know it. You think that my life belongs to you!”

“That’s right. That’s exactly what I think.” She lowered her eyes back to the magazine and flipped a page. “I’m glad you realized that. Perhaps this’ll be the last time we have to fly to this godforsaken place and pay way too much money because you refuse to use condoms and continue to sleep with the hired help’s herd. You really need to stop acting like a spoiled, self-centered brat and appreciate how lucky you are. Now, enough. Get some rest because in a few hours we are out of here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mother. Forgive me for not appreciating how you keep making me get abortions. I really apologize for the inconvenience—surely you’d rather be at the spa spending Daddy’s money.”

My mother stared at me and closed the magazine. I knew I was teetering on the edge, but I didn’t care. Everything was not about her and what she wanted. And she needed to know that. I was sick of this control freak. This was my life and from this moment I was going to live it. My way. So, I returned the same nasty look that she had given me and at this moment we were mirror images of one another . . . until she rose from her seat and I felt like a five-year-old about to get a spanking.

Don’t be scared . . . you got this...

She crowded my personal space and hovered over me, nose practically to nose.

“What did you say?” my mother asked. Her coffee breath blew in the center of my face. I blinked and she leaned in even closer.

“With all due respect, Ma. I really need you to back up. Literally and figuratively.” She arched a brow and I continued. “I don’t need you sweatin’ me right now.”

“Sweatin’ you?”

“Yeah, you’re way too close. And another thing, since we’re going there, I don’t want to hear any lectures about what you think is best for me, especially since you’ve never asked me what I want.”

“Because what you want doesn’t matter. Yo’ azz,” she said with her Southern California drawl in full effect, “better want what da hell I tell you to want.”

“Okay. Since that’s how you’d like to have it. I tell you what: after today I’ll be your little robot. Will that please you?” I folded my hands in a prayer position and said in a sweet, sarcastic whine, “I won’t get into any trouble, Mommy. I’ll stay off the blogs, go to an Ivy League university—”

“And they would never have you.”

“Oh, you’re right.” I placed one of my manicured hands over my heart. “Forgive me for that, too. From this abortion on, I’ll be the born-again angelic virgin. Your little princess. Who keeps her legs closed and gets good grades. As a matter of fact, I’ll be more like you. I’ll leave the hired help’s herd alone and instead I’ll head to dressing rooms and stalk rappers and NBA players.”

Smack!

My mother’s hand sailed across my face and burned my cheek as it landed. I almost fell out the bed as my head jerked toward the guardrail.

I quickly collected myself and as I tried to sit up my mother’s hand flew through the air to smack me again, but this time I caught her wrist, flung her hand away from my face, and gave her a look that dared her to bring it.

For the first time in my life I felt I could fight her. Like I could take her down.

My mother snatched her hand away and scanned my eyes. “Oh, you wanna fight me, huh? Okay. You think you can beat me now, is that it?” She took a step back, walked over to the door, and locked it. “Is that what they’re doing in Hollywood High—little girls fighting their mothers?”

“That’s the problem—I’m not a little girl. I’m a woman.” All I could see was red. The voice of reason went out the window, and at that moment I didn’t give a freak about the consequences. If she whopped my azz so be it, but one thing was for sure and two things were for certain: I would fight for what I wanted.

“A woman?” my mother said to me as she removed her wedding band and twenty-karat engagement ring.

“A woman.” I swallowed any and all fear that crept its way up on me. She had raised me to be a lot of things, but a punk wasn’t one of them. So the look I gave her all but told her to try me.

“A woman. Okay.” My mother gathered the drapes and the light in the room dimmed.

It was on.

“A woman,” she repeated.

I scooted to the edge of the bed. I was sore, but I was also willing to ignore the pain to prove my point.

My mother walked back over to me and said, “Let me help you out a bit. A woman has her own money and pays for her own abortions—actually a woman doesn’t get pregnant by every Tom, Dick, and Knox she lies down with. A woman uses a condom and doesn’t have to hold her mother’s hand to the doctor’s office—”

“I didn’t ask you to bring me to the doctor’s office!”

“Then you shouldn’t have come. You’re grown. You got this.”

“It’s too late now.”

“You’re right. It is too late, because if you keep runnin’ your mouth, I’ma kill you.” She sounded as if she’d just stepped off the streets of Watts. “If I were you—”

“You may as well be; you’re making all my decisions.”

“Oh, okay.” My mother removed her earrings. “I see I’ma have to go to jail again.”

“What? Jail?”

“Oh, you didn’t know that, did you?”

I swallowed.

“Don’t get scared now, sweetie. You wanna buck, so let’s do this, homie. ’Cause see, obviously I need to reintroduce you to who I used to be and am only two seconds from becoming again: Shakeesha Logan Gatling. Grape Street Crippette. I put bullets in chicks’ heads for less than the ruckus you just brought me.” She positioned her right hand like a gun, put it to my forehead, and as she mushed me in my forehead she pulled the trigger.

I felt a slight nervousness try to sneak up on me, but I swallowed.

“Too late now,” my mother said as if she’d read my mind. “You better shake that off. What, you need some Vaseline? Take your earrings off.” She quickly reached behind my ears and unfastened my hoops. She placed them on the table and said, “So you want babies, huh? You wanna be a woman. You wanna be with Knox. You’re willing to get beat down for Knox? You love him that much—”

“Yes, I love him! And that’s not going to change. I don’t care how many times you want to fight me, your own daughter.”

“Oh, now you’re my daughter—was that before or after I told you I’d put a bullet in a chick’s head and you realized that I wouldn’t be afraid to put one in yours? You’re right, you’re my daughter, and before I let you beat me I’d walk away from all the diamonds and the dollars and I would kill you. I don’t have a fear of prison. I already know what it’s like. Four years. You better Google me.”

Prison? She really went to prison?

“Hell yeah, I went to prison.”

Prison? For what?

“For manslaughter,” she continued as she paced the room, pounding her fist into her palm. “Because when I was sixteen I thought I had all the answers. I didn’t have money, my mother was getting high, and I had no idea who my father was. And my brother wasn’t in college like yours. He was doing life in prison for droppin’ bodies, and I was following in his footsteps. There was no Hollywood High, private school. I was gettin’ schooled in the streets. My family was the hood and my GED was courtesy of California State Prison. And the day I was released, I dropped Shakeesha, became Logan, reinvented myself, and yeah, I stalked basketball players, and I stalked rappers. Because I had beauty and I had a body and I wasn’t going back to prison.

“I knew there was something bigger than tossing up gang signs, drive-bys, and bustin’ caps. And all of that I had erased from my mind. I snagged my husband, gave birth to the perfect son who never gave me a problem. Never back-talked. Did exactly as he was told and what was asked of him. Now, RJ could get whatever he wanted because he knew how to listen and play by the rules.”

“Oh yeah, perfect Prince RJ.”

“He is perfect. But you. You wanna raise up. You wanna bring it.” She stopped pacing and leaned into my face. “Go ahead and take your best shot. Just know that whatever decision you make you better be able to lie down by it, because that’s what women do. Lie in the beds they made. Now let’s go. But just know that if you hit me, I’ma murder you. And I will do my time in peace. Now buck.”

Smack! Crack!

My mother threw the fir. . .