Page 20 of The Impact (Parachutes #3)

“You know they got like programs? Like…free lunch?”

She watched Paige gulp. “My grandmother makes too much for free lunch.”

Tahli’s naivety piqued. “So, then you got money?”

Paige chuckled. “You know there’s an in-between right?

Everything ain’t black or white? My grandmother got mad people living with her.

She took me in when my pops put me out, but she barely got enough to keep a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, and dinner on the table at night.

But yeah…to the government, we ballin’.”

“Ya father put you out? Ain’t you a freshman like me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why he do that?”

“Lifestyle choices.”

“Where’s your mom?”

“Dead.”

“Damn. I’m so sorry. When did she pass?” Tahli frowned.

“When I was six. Cancer. You ask a lot of questions.”

“It’s how you learn,” Tahli shrugged, wise words from her father.

“It’s also how you annoy the fuck out of people.”

Tahli giggled. “Yeah. I can do that, too. Well, you know we can get our working papers now. So we can get jobs. My stepmother gonna get me a job at the nursing home.”

Paige leaned back in her seat. “You gonna wipe old people stankin’ asses?

I’m good. Fuck working papers. Somebody I know gonna bring me something after school.

Matter fact…you should come back to my crib, and I’ll pay you back.

I’ll get us some pizza. She bringing me like $100 when she gets off of work.

She got a full-time job. Car too… She’s grown. ”

“Somebody’s bringing you a hundred dollars?” Tahli quizzed questionably, and Paige nodded.

“A grown woman that works and drives?”

“Yup.”

“You so full of shit. Why would she do that?”

“Come to my house after school and I’ll show you.”

Tahli rolled her eyes.

She ended up following Paige home after school, but it was not for pizza or whatever else Paige was offering. As it turned out, they had their last period of French together and were assigned a partner project. Tahli agreed to join Paige at her house to get started on it.

“Yo, was it supposed to rain today?” Paige called out, holding a book over her head.

“Yeah. That’s why I wore my hood. Why you ain’t get the Northface with the hood?” Tahli called from under hers.

“’Cause it’s ugly!”

“Freak you,” Tahli laughed. “That’s why I ain’t the one getting wet.”

“Not yet,” Paige joked another dirty one that Tahli ignored as they dashed across the street, only to be frozen in fear.

In an instant, her life flashed in the speeding truck’s headlights.

Tahli was immobilized, hand to her chest and all.

Paige jumped in her sneakers, and the books she was holding scattered all over the wet street.

A Hummer truck screeched to a stop right in front of them.

“You motherfucker!” Tahli slammed a hand on the hood of the truck in reaction.

“You almost killed us! What the fuck is wrong with you? We have the right of way you idiot!” Her father’s lawyer talk flying out of her mouth.

As Paige picked up her dropped belongings, the driver opened his door, obviously to help.

He shielded his face with his hands, and it was raining too hard for Tahli to pick up any features.

But he was tall and muscular, built like a man.

A real one. From the Hummer sitting on big shiny rims, and the diamond chain glaring from his neck, Tahli knew what he was. A man she should be scared to curse.

“We got it! We don’t need your fucking help! Just watch where the fuck you’re going before you kill someone. Dumb ass!” She couldn’t help but add, frantic and still shaken up. As they crossed the street, Paige shook her head.

“Bitch, you gonna get us shot. That’s a tinted-out Hummer with rims. They probably some drug dealers.”

“Who cares? They some drug dealers who can’t drive.”

Paige’s grandmother’s tiny house smelled like Pine-Sol when Tahli followed her inside, immediately standing in the living room. There was a floral couch with plastic on it. A painting of white Jesus. Everything was neat.

“You can put your coat here. Take off your shoes. I don’t wanna hear her bitching.”

“She’s here?”

“Not yet. She’ll be off work soon.”

It was quiet. So, when she glanced up after kicking off her sneakers, Tahli startled.

“What’s up?”

“Leave her alone, Karl.”

A man in a dirty wife-beater stood inches from Tahli at the base of the stairs, his uncomfortable stare on Tahli.

“Who is she?”

“A friend. Mind your business,” Paige added after, moving past him. Tahli went to follow, and Karl blocked her with an arm to the banister.

I’m ‘bout to go in the basement and watch Friday. You wanna come?”

“No, thank you,” Tahli smiled.

“You got a boyfriend?”

“Nigga! She’s a freshman. In high school. You’re like 25,” Paige yelled from the top of the stairs. “Let her through.”

“Shut the fuck up, Paige. This my house. You just a charity case.”

“Nigga, this yo mama house. Bum-ass. Let her up. Before I tell your P.O. you out here trying to fuck 14-year-old girls.”

He gave Paige the middle finger but removed his arm barricade, grunting as Tahli passed by in her tight jeans.

“That ass ain’t 14.” Dirty. But she’d been dealing with dirty remarks from men before she was old enough to understand them.

Those big little things of girlhood no one spoke about.

The things girls were taught to excuse from men because they didn’t, or shouldn’t, know better.

“Have fun bumping ya little coochies. Call me if you want a fish stick.”

Tahli followed Paige into her bedroom with the creep’s eyes still making her ass itch, and his words making her skin crawl.

“He lives here?”

“Everybody fucking lives here,” Paige mumbled from the dresser as Tahli shut the door. Paige fiddled with a cigar wrapper. The smell was familiar; Tahli’s older sister had a boyfriend who smoked weed.

“You smoke?”

“You don’t?” Paige countered.

Tahli didn’t answer. But she was two weeks into ninth grade. Her father was a lawyer. Her stepmother taught Sunday School. Of course, she didn’t smoke.

“You wanna try it?” Paige urged, as Tahli chewed her cheek. “Scary ass.”

“I ain’t scared. I just…It’s just weed, right?”

“It ain’t fucking crack,” Paige chuckled.

It looked like a boy’s room as Tahli explored it.

Worn but clean sneakers lined the wall with a plastic cup and toothbrush next to them.

A poster of Mya in a bikini hung near the window.

A cage on the corner of the dresser seemed to house nothing more than a layer of woodchips until Tahli was close enough to spot the snake camouflaged within it.

“Ew. That’s your snake?!”

“That’s yo’ snake!” Paige imitated. “That little-ass voice went high as hell.”

They both laughed.

“Yeah, that’s my snake!” She imitated again. “I had it at my pop’s crib, but he made me take it with me when I left. My grandmother ain’t feeling it though. You in on this?”

Paige held up the blunt.

“Can I use the bathroom?” Tahli bought valuable decision-making minutes. She followed Paige’s advice on the short walk down the hall, hoping Karl was out of sight. But if not, she could handle him like she handled all men. Maintain the control.

The bathroom was clean, smelled of bleach, and overloaded with peach décor. When Tahli returned to Paige’s bedroom, the new girl with the cool boy demeanor had Nelly’s Air Force Ones filling the small bedroom as she moved smoothly in her socks across the carpet.

“Give meee two purrrr… I need two purrrrrrr…” Tahli muffled her laughter unsuccessfully. Paige pivoted mid-Harlem shake, catching Tahli with her hands on her mouth.

“Fuck you.”

“No,” Tahli held up her palms, laughing harder. “I’m…I’m not laughing at you. It’s cute…you were cute.”

Paige squinted long enough to steal Tahli’s humor.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ll tell you later,” Paige promised, making Tahli curious. “Shawty, you smoking or not? ‘Cause I ain’t peer pressuring anybody…into anything,” Paige added strongly.

“Umm…yeah,” Tahli snickered. “I’m down.”

Five minutes or five days later, Tahli scrubbed her fingers down her face.

“I can’t feel my skin. Do I still have skin?”

“You have skin,” Paige swore from somewhere far away.

“I mean, I know I still have skin. Because…well, I’m here.

Although…if I didn’t have skin, I could probably still live for like some hours or even days.

It really depends on the atmosphere, body position…

” Tahli rambled to Paige’s linty bedspread that they sat on.

“Which factors things like blood loss, infection…hypothermia. Although my overthinking behind would probably just go into shock from the realization…that I don’t have skin. ”

“Yo. You are fucking blowing me.”

“Why? I’m just talking about if the human body can survive without skin.”

“My high can’t survive this conversation,” Paige quipped. “Why do you talk like you’re thirty-five?”

“My dad is a lawyer, so I always read his legal texts. My stepmother recites the bible from memory, and my mother makes me study one black history figure every year, and then she quizzes me.”

Paige’s face of disgust made Tahli giggle.

“That’s like fucking child abuse. I thought I had it bad.”

“Why do you curse so much?” Tahli posed.

Of course, Tahli cursed. But she was fourteen. She didn’t know how to curse as fluidly as Paige. Now her friend Abby, Abby came from a household of vulgarity. She cursed like a New York rapper. Tahli would bet Paige and Abby together would curse up a storm.

Paige only shrugged. They huddled up in high silence for an unknown time. Tahli’s first experience with weed? The verdict was still out.

“Takeover was better than Ether.”

“Are you high?” Tahli warbled about Paige’s notion on the infamous Jay-Z and Nas beef.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” Paige chuckled, making them both laugh. “I’m high as hell, quite actually.”

“Takeover was one verse aimed at Nas,” Tahli sucked her teeth. “Nas made a whole track annihilating Jay.”

“Exactly. One verse that could go against that whole song,” Paige theorized.