Getting Played Read online

  Cash doesn’t say anything. He just keeps looking at me. His eyes narrow. It’s like he doesn’t expect me to take my father’s side or something. Idiot.

  “…what am I supposed to do for money…”

  “…get off your lazy ass and go get a damn job…”

  After that, the argument burst through the office doors. Cash and I both turn, seeing them. Neither looks surprised or embarrassed that we’d heard them arguing. They do put the fight on pause for a minute. Courtney glares at me like she always does. I glare at her, too. Ever since I smacked her, she knows to stay out of my face. She said I was too much like my mom. Yeah, that’s for damn sure.

  Technically, she’s just a few years older than me, but she always looks beat down, even when she’s so-called dressed up. No wonder my dad was stepping out again. ’Course it doesn’t explain why he stepped out on my mom with her in the first place. My mom was always looking good. But that’s another story.

  “There she is. If you don’t have it, then make her get up off that money. You know she got it. Her mother left her all those damn insurance policies. Get the money from her.”

  I am just about to say something when my dad turns to Courtney. Their eyes lock. “You need to shut up,” he hisses.

  Out of all the times I heard my dad and mom argue and now Courtney and my dad argue, I never actually saw it before. When he turned to her and told her to shut up, I thought he was gonna beat her down. He looked that furious. But my dad’s not a hitter. He will, however, walk out.

  Courtney ignores his warning, big mistake. She just keeps on. “She needs to sign some of those policies over to us.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I say, butting in. But the thing is, I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Nobody had ever said anything to me about insurance policies or having money. I never even thought about it.

  “Sign a policy over to us?” my dad repeats slowly.

  “Yeah, to us,” Courtney yells back. “I’m part of this, too. Me and my kids deserve something. We’ve been together for over five years and I haven’t gotten a damn thing out of it. You told me you had big money. So where is it? I know she got money and you keep giving her more. But me and my kids don’t have anything. We walk around here in the same clothes all the time, eating spaghetti and tuna fish, while she gets whatever she wants. I’m sick of it.”

  I try not to laugh at this point. Spaghetti and tuna fish is all she knows how to cook. And she can’t even do them right. But I think she expected to have a cook and a maid and a nanny or something like that when she moved in here. Reality check—she got nothing and apparently was still getting it.

  “Fine then, you can leave whenever you want,” my dad says to her. “And as for money, if you’d stop spending it on stupid stuff, you’d have something. Nobody spends money like you. You ain’t rich.”

  “I hate you,” she screams.

  “Yeah, whatever,” he adds, brushing her off. He walks over to me. He looks tired, but I can tell he’s still happy to see me. “Hey, there she is,” he says pleasantly, as if the whole argument thing never happened. We hug like we always do.

  “Hi, Dad, how you doing?” I say.

  “I’m okay. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing much. What’s she talking about, insurance policies?” I ask quietly, and then spare a glance at Courtney, who’s eyeing me like she could kick my ass. Please, as if.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing important. Everything okay with you, baby?” he asks, and then hugs me again.

  I am just about to ask him about Hazelhurst when Courtney butts in.

  “What do you mean it’s nothing important?” Courtney yells. “Why don’t you tell her what you told me?” I look at my dad. He shakes his head. “Your father thinks it would be best if we break up.”

  “That’s not what I said, Courtney,” he tells her. He turns back to me again like nothing was going on. “You gonna be around later, ’cause I gotta get out of here and take care of some things at the office.”

  “Oh, hell no, you ain’t going out of here until we get this straight. Your skank-ass whores are just gonna have to wait.”

  Nobody says anything for a few seconds. I think everybody is just shocked. Courtney has a way of sucking the air out of a room when she opens her mouth like that. I just decide to talk to my dad and get the hell out of there. “Dad, before you go, did you pay the tuition for me to go back to Hazelhurst?”

  “Ain’t this a bitch,” Courtney says rhetorically. “This heifer got the nerve to come up in here looking for a handout.”

  “Watch your mouth, Courtney,” my dad warns over his shoulder.

  She ignores him. “No, Kenisha,” she says bitterly, looking directly at me. “He didn’t pay your damn tuition to go to some damn Hazelhurst. What he needs to be doing is taking care of his real responsibilities here, in this house. But he’s not doing that, either.” She looks at him ferociously.

  I ignore her. “Did you pay it, Dad?” I ask.

  “Now, tell her why you didn’t pay her school tuition.”

  I look at my dad again waiting for him to say something. “We’ll talk when I get back later this evening,” he says. But I know my dad. This is his way of avoiding the issue. He’s not coming back tonight. “I gotta go.” He kisses my forehead and turns to leave.

  “Dad…” I begin, but get cut off.

  “James, are you gonna get up off some money or do I have to sue your ass for palimony and child support?”

  He stops, turns and glares at her. “You can try, but we both know you don’t want to do that, don’t we?”

  She opens her mouth, but then closes it instantly. Her eyes narrow in hatred. Okay, I don’t know what’s going on right now, but something definitely is. See, this is why I hate coming here. It’s always Jerry Springer up in here. I know this is my home and all, but putting up with Courtney and all this drama gets on my last nerve.

  “You know what, James…” she begins.

  “Courtney, why don’t you just chill,” Cash interrupts, speaking up for the first time since they walked in. We all turn to look at him.

  “Stay out of this, Cash. It’s none of your business.”

  “Courtney, just drop it,” he says.

  By now, my dad is walking out of the office. I follow him, brushing by Courtney as she’s talking to her brother. “No, I’m not dropping anything. He needs to take care of his responsibilities.”

  “Dad,” I say, still following. He stops and turns to me.

  “Baby girl, I gotta get out of here.”

  “Yeah, I know. I get that, but what about me? What’s going on with my tuition? I need to know.”

  “I’ll take care of it next week.”

  “Next week is too late. The new semester starts Monday morning. Are you gonna pay it or what? I need to know,” I say.

  He looks at me. I can see the struggle in his eyes. “Kenisha…” Just then Courtney walks up. Cash follows. She starts yelling about money all over again.

  “Tell her where your damn money is,” she insists.

  I look at her, shake my head and just start laughing. Seriously, she doesn’t have a clue. All she can think about is money. For some reason, she got it in her head that when me and my mom left the house, or rather got kicked out of the house, we took all of my dad’s money. What a joke. My dad knew, but he never said anything. He just kept letting Courtney think he had money. My mom told me the truth. I’m not saying that he didn’t have it at one time. I guess he did, but that was a long time ago.

  As for who’s got money now, that’s complicated. Jade told me that our mom put money into a money market account years ago. Then the stock market tanked. I don’t know exactly what’s in it ’cause it’s for me and Jade and I can’t touch it until I’m eighteen years old and enrolled in college. The alternative is when I’m twenty-two. Either way, nobody’s getting their hands on anything for a while.

  “I�
�ll tell her,” Courtney says vindictively. “He’s broke.”

  The baby starts crying. We all look at the monitor receiver on the living room coffee table. Cash walks over to Courtney. “Come on, let’s get the baby.”

  “You go, I’m staying my ass right here,” she says.

  “No,” he says adamantly. “Come on, Courtney, get the baby.”

  She glares at me one last time, then walks away with her brother. I shake my head. She is such a trip. I have no idea what my dad saw in her. But whatever it was, he sure as hell isn’t seeing it now. I look at my dad. I can see it in his eyes. What Courtney said is true. At least some part of it is. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” I ask him.

  “I was trying to work it out,” he says. “I know how much you want to go back to the school. And I know your mother would want you there.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “The stock market messed me up pretty bad. Work is slow and things are just all messed up at this point.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “You have to stay at Penn.”

  “No, not about me, about you, what happens with you?”

  “I guess I’m gonna sell the house.”

  I sit down slowly. This is all of a sudden too damn real. Selling the house, my house, this wasn’t supposed to happen. I know it’s not really my home anymore, but it was once, and I still feel connected to it. This is where I grew up and where my mom and I hung out. Selling the house seems like letting go of everything I loved and everything I had left of her. I’m not ready to let go. “Isn’t there something else you can do?”

  “No, the business is going down fast. I can’t compete with the big super chains. People just aren’t coming in like they used to.”

  “Change the business,” I say, “and make them come in.”

  He half laughs. “It’s not that easy. I wish it was.”

  “What about the boys and the baby? They’re your kids.”

  “I’ll provide for them.”

  “And Courtney?”

  “Her, too, although not as much as she wants or expects.”

  I nod. I know my dad will do right by his kids. He’s always been a good father. He’s a lousy husband and boyfriend I guess, but a good dad. I look over to the office door and think about Courtney’s brother and what he was doing on the computer. “So, what’s up with Cash?” I ask.

  “Courtney’s younger brother. He just served four years active duty in the Marines. He’s on leave right now and crashing here for a few. He’s supposed to do reserve duty for the next four years.”

  “So he’s staying here,” I say. Dad nods. Just then the boys bang on the glass door in the office. I immediately go back into the office. They see me. They start jumping and screaming excitedly. Their little faces are smashed up against the glass. I can’t help but laugh and smile. I open the door for them and they immediately grab my legs. “Hey, mashed potatoes, hey, creamed corn,” I say.

  “Kenisha. Kenisha. Kenisha.” They start jumping, dancing and screaming all over again. Anybody would think that I never come around to see them. But I’m here just about every weekend. Although, now that things are changing again, I don’t know how long that’s gonna be.

  “I gotta go,” my dad says.

  “Fine, we’re going, too,” I say, then turn to my little brothers. “Ya’ll feel like eating pizza?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Making the Rules

  “Just curious, who’s in charge when there’s nobody in charge? All this stuff going on and it seems like nobody’s watching. What the hell is everybody thinking?”

  —MySpace.com

  My dad takes me and my brothers to an early lunch. We eat at what used to be one of my favorite places. We’re having a great time. We’re like a mini family. The boys are crazy nuts and they eat like there’s no tomorrow. ’Cause seriously, if I had to deal with Courtney’s cooking, especially her spaghetti, I’d be starving, too.

  But even though we are having fun laughing and talking, it’s not like I’ve forgotten what he said about selling the house. And it isn’t like he’s forgotten his business is messed up. We just put all that aside and enjoy hanging out. We plan to talk about all that stuff the coming Friday. He’s going to pick me up and we’ll hang out. Later, he drops us off at the house and speeds out of there like the devil is on his tail. Maybe he’s right, ’cause as soon as he turns the car around, Courtney comes raging outside. He was driving out of there and she was running after him. It would be comical, if it wasn’t so damn sad.

  She glares at me. I give her my own defiant stare. I know she isn’t gonna say or do anything. She is a punk and she knows I know it. I hang out in my dad’s office the rest of the afternoon. It’s perfect. He has a refrigerator filled with junk and a full bathroom, so I’m cool. The boys hang with me. That always pisses Courtney off, so of course I encourage it. When it gets late, I go up to my bedroom to change for the mall. I open my bedroom door, turn the light on and go off. “What the hell?” I stomp down the hall to my dad’s bedroom. The door is open and Courtney is sitting in the middle of the bed polishing her toenails. “What happened to my room?” I ask. She looks up at me and rolls her eyes, then goes back to what she was doing. “What happened to my room, Courtney?” I say again.

  She doesn’t look up this time. “I needed the space to clear away some junk in the extra bedroom, and since you weren’t here, I moved everything into your room.” She looks up at me and smiles. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  I am so pissed off inside, but all I do is smile and nod. “A’ight, fine, you got this one. But know this, whatever you think I got, I’ll make sure you don’t get a damn penny.”

  She looks up at me again. Her eyes narrow. I know exactly what she is thinking and all the names she is calling me. But I don’t care. Letting her think she’s messed up getting money is enough for right now. “You don’t have anything I want,” she says.

  I smile. “Are you sure about that?”

  “You wouldn’t always be here begging, if you did,” she says smugly.

  I smile again, and this time I chuckle. “Are you sure about that? Why should I use my money when I can use my dad’s?”

  Her expression changes. This time it is obvious she isn’t so sure. She gets pissed all over again. I love it. “You know what, Kenisha…” she begins, but I close the door and walk away. I can hear her screaming as I head back to my bedroom. She is getting louder and louder. I start laughing. I love messing with her. She always thinks she can get the best of me, but she can’t. I go into my bedroom and look around. It is a mess.

  To make room for her brother, Courtney, the perpetual bitch, screwed up my bedroom by dumping a whole bunch of her stupid junk in here. There are boxes everywhere. Courtney is a TV-ordering junkie. She lives for it. Every stupid thing she sees, she orders. My stuff is still there, but her junk is everywhere on top of it. Okay, I’ll give her that point. But that’s the last damn point she’s gonna get. I change and leave after that.

  I see my girls for a hot minute Saturday night. But I’m not in the mood to go to the movies or to even shop. We just hang out in the food court talking. They were really rooting for me to come back to school, so I need to tell them what happened. “My dad didn’t pay Hazelhurst,” I say.

  “Is he going to?” Diamond asks. I shake my head no.

  “Are you sure?” Jalisa asks. I nod, then look away.

  “Shit.” “Damm,” they say, at almost the same time. I don’t know who said what.

  “Okay,” Jalisa says, already thinking ahead. “What about a scholarship.”

  “Yeah,” Diamond says excitedly, “yeah, a scholarship.”

  “Hell, no, I’m not doing that. You know that shit gets around. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Nobody’s gonna know.”

  I look at her seriously. “We always knew,” I say. Neither replied ’cause they know I’m right. We did always know and we pitied the girl on scholarship. S
he was like a poor relation coming to stay with a rich family. She never quite fit in, and we all kinda made sure of that. It was nothing we said, it was just there in the air. They knew it. After a while everybody knew and either shunned her or trashed her. I’m not really worried about being trashed. Ain’t nobody at Hazelhurst that crazy, not even Chili or Regan. And being shunned isn’t gonna happen as long as I have my girls with me. But I’m still not doing it.

  The truth is I’m not about to hear all my old friends talking about me behind my back, ’cause my dad couldn’t afford to pay the tuition outright. I’d rather stay at The Penn. A daunting chill slithers through my body. Staying at The Penn is hell, but I know I don’t have much choice. Even if I apply for a Hazelhurst scholarship, it won’t go through until my senior year. That means I’m at The Penn for now.

  “Hey, how’s Jade? Is she okay?” Diamond asks, changing the subject.

  “She’s fine,” I say. Diamond and Jalisa look at each other. I know that look. They know something I don’t. “What?”

  “It was online and on Facebook. They broke up.”

  “What, please, like you believe what you read online.”

  “It was on TV, too,” Jalisa adds. “Tyrece was with Taj. They were all hugged up talking about their plans. She was seriously pressed on him.”

  “Nah, they just work together. He’s starting his production company and she just signed with him. It’s all publicity,” I say. Diamond and Jalisa nod, only half assured. I said it. I heard the words and tried to believe them, too. But somewhere in the back of my head, I don’t. My grandmom asked about Jade earlier, and when I instant messaged her, she seemed distracted. But that was probably nothing, probably. “Jade and Ty are fine,” I insist, maybe more for myself than for them.

  “Kenisha.” I turn around. It’s Cash. He is standing behind me with two other guys. “Can we talk a minute?” he asks. The other two guys walk away. Diamond and Jalisa look at me. Jalisa’s jaw drops. I nod and stand to walk to the side with him. “Look, I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but we’re in the middle of the same mess with your father and my sister.”