I’m Mo and I cannot wait to go to therapy, but I’m chillin. Southern Black USAmerican Millennial, 30something. Harry Styles and Tyriq Withers enthusiast. Upcoming author. Horror lover; the ultimate final girl. Still swinging on depression & anxiety. a 21+ space. Read my horror story? [theblvxher.wordpress.com]
bite down; in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and broader hip-hop slang means to bear the pain, push through a difficult situation, or keep going despite hardship. (via google search)
an original southern HBCU horror story. feat. original characters who may or may not be *****/*****/**** coded. your girl is finally starting her author journey! i appreciate & love y'all so much.
what is bite down?
A love letter to the American South, to Millennials, to the HBCUs, to black horror stories, to candy paint and big rims, to grillz and gold teeth, to knotless braids and pre-stretched hair, to locs and kinks and coils, to waves and fades, to black voting power, to the Willie Maes and Gradys, to the subs and Black Ice car fresheners, to beatin’ down the block, to the cookouts, to the uncs and aunties, to hoodoo, to the sea, to our ancestors. To my home, South Carolina. Most of all, love to you, fellow Southern Black American.
ready?
[ meet the big six · the big ass bite down playlist · story graphics (1, 2, ) · my author site ]
NOTES
Bite Down features a fictional college, and original Black characters. These characters use AAVE/ebonics. It’s ridiculous to need to mention, yes! But as I’ve said before, let’s normalize appreciating stories centering people that don’t look or sound like you. This is a huge issue in fandom spaces, though Bite Down is not fanfiction; however, I am constantly inspired by my muses in some way, shape, or form. I don’t respect respectability politics, nor am I willing to compromise authenticity. Good storytelling is honest.
That said, you will encounter drugs, sex, blood, profanity, death, the occult/the supernatural, and then some in the story. I’m not big on content warnings, but here’s one anyway! Don’t worry, there will never be any 'weird in a bad way' content.
I write this story in my spare time. I am an adult with a low-paying job and bills, so if you feel so inclined to help me & Bite Down continue on the smoothest course, feel free to leave me a tip via Ko-Fi! I’d greatly appreciate it.
Bite Down will be free to read. I may offer early access and bonus content via Patreon in the near future, if it makes sense to do. You’ll be the first to know if/when that is available.
I love engagement and questions, so do take the time to get to know Ariana, Paris, Jada, Cairo, Megan, and August. These characters are a culmination of everyone I’ve ever known, loved, hated, missed, created, or lost. Ask away. Again, thank you for your time and energy. I hope you’ll enjoy the story.
Bite Down is not on a set schedule for updates, but I’m shooting for weekly chapters. Which means, in Monique-speak, it could be anywhere between one/two weeks between updates depending on… well… life. But I promise that I’ll try my hardest to be consistent.
·
ch1 - HOMECOMING.
ch2 - welcome to poinsette-clark state university! [NEW!]
ch3 - but not ha ha funny, funny weird... [future]
bite down; in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and broader hip-hop slang means to bear the pain, push through a difficult situation, or keep going despite hardship. (via google search)
an original southern HBCU horror story. feat. original characters who may or may not be *****/*****/**** coded. your girl is finally starting her author journey! i appreciate & love y'all so much.
what is bite down?
A love letter to the American South, to Millennials, to the HBCUs, to black horror stories, to candy paint and big rims, to grillz and gold teeth, to knotless braids and pre-stretched hair, to locs and kinks and coils, to waves and fades, to black voting power, to the Willie Maes and Gradys, to the subs and Black Ice car fresheners, to beatin’ down the block, to the cookouts, to the uncs and aunties, to hoodoo, to the sea, to our ancestors. To my home, South Carolina. Most of all, love to you, fellow Southern Black American.
ready?
[ meet the big six · the big ass bite down playlist · story graphics (1, 2, ) · my author site ]
NOTES
Bite Down features a fictional college, and original Black characters. These characters use AAVE/ebonics. It’s ridiculous to need to mention, yes! But as I’ve said before, let’s normalize appreciating stories centering people that don’t look or sound like you. This is a huge issue in fandom spaces, though Bite Down is not fanfiction; however, I am constantly inspired by my muses in some way, shape, or form. I don’t respect respectability politics, nor am I willing to compromise authenticity. Good storytelling is honest.
That said, you will encounter drugs, sex, blood, profanity, death, the occult/the supernatural, and then some in the story. I’m not big on content warnings, but here’s one anyway! Don’t worry, there will never be any 'weird in a bad way' content.
I write this story in my spare time. I am an adult with a low-paying job and bills, so if you feel so inclined to help me & Bite Down continue on the smoothest course, feel free to leave me a tip via Ko-Fi! I’d greatly appreciate it.
Bite Down will be free to read. I may offer early access and bonus content via Patreon in the near future, if it makes sense to do. You’ll be the first to know if/when that is available.
I love engagement and questions, so do take the time to get to know Ariana, Paris, Jada, Cairo, Megan, and August. These characters are a culmination of everyone I’ve ever known, loved, hated, missed, created, or lost. Ask away. Again, thank you for your time and energy. I hope you’ll enjoy the story.
Bite Down is not on a set schedule for updates, but I’m shooting for weekly chapters. Which means, in Monique-speak, it could be anywhere between one/two weeks between updates depending on… well… life. But I promise that I’ll try my hardest to be consistent.
·
ch1 - HOMECOMING.
ch2 - welcome to poinsette-clark state university! [NEW!]
ch3 - but not ha ha funny, funny weird... [future]
An emotional Harry after breaking the record amount of nights at Wembley Stadium Together, Together Tour - Wembley Night 11 - July 3, 2026 (via shelbs0o)
bite down ch 2. - welcome to poinsette-clark state university!
[main story page]
+
Sunday, October 4th
+
“Could you please slow this Altima Hellcat down? Why are we acting like this road ain’t steep? Ari, baby, you won’t have to worry about your parents. You might not make it back to them with Jada flyin’ like a bat out of hell.”
“That sea level situation in NOLA traumatized you, because we aren’t even up that high. Calm down, I learned how to drive in Atlanta,” Jada said with a sweep of her long, mahogany waves, checking her mirrors before flipping the Nissan’s turn signal. She slid into the left lane to pass a gold Corolla that wasn’t traveling the winding mountain roads quickly enough.
Megan checked her seatbelt again, peering at the driver. “That’s the issue, Jada.”
Ariana didn’t say a word. She gripped the ‘oh shit’ handle and prayed that she wouldn’t die in Jada’s back seat.
At the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in upstate South Carolina sat Poinsette-Clark State University, an active, sprawling campus. The school was named for the ‘mother of the movement’ as coined by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., esteemed activist, educator, and South Carolina native Septima Poinsette-Clark.
The concept of a historically black college in their small city had initially frightened local non-black residents; they’d taken to the streets to violently protest its opening.
Despite this, PCSU opened its doors in 1925, met with what would become constant threats of more violence and hatred. There had even been arson during Ariana’s first year there; the school’s main arts building had mysteriously gone ablaze.
Only the culprit wasn’t a mystery at all; the deed had been carried out by a radical white supremacist who’d driven all the way up from Myrtle Beach. He was rotting away in prison somewhere in the midlands.
Thankfully, the fire hadn’t spread beyond the building; there had been no further damage to the surrounding southern gothic architecture, renowned designs by brilliant, innovative minds committed to campus pride. PCSU had done a fine job with the upkeep over time, never mind the kudzu reclaiming its territory along the sides of several buildings.
Landscapers be damned, there was no getting around that in the South.
The destroyed Arts Building had been rebuilt bigger and better, then renamed Boseman Hall in honor of the late, legendary SC-born and bred actor and HBCU alumni, Chadwick Boseman. She loved that building, and the SNS Club met weekly in one of its coveted meeting rooms.
Ariana had all but begged her parents to stay on campus following the fire; her dorm room trumped her household bedroom – which she loved – simply for being an hour away from her parents.
They were back on the same bullshit, talking about forcing Ariana to return home as if she wasn’t an adult following poor Sade’s demise. Ariana was her dormitory’s main residential advisor. She couldn’t abandon that, nor the Safety Net Sanctuary Club, especially not at such a crucial time.
The students were terrified. Mental health resources were more necessary than ever. She was all too aware of the kinds of things that put fear and justification hand-in-hand.
According to the whispers, Sageville Police weren’t any closer to finding the culprit, though Sade had been murdered a week ago.
“You do know they can’t actually make you do anything, right?” Jada asked Ariana as they sped toward a local box store. Aside from grabbing supplies for the candlelight vigil planned for later that night, the girls could restock their general supplies and always did so together, splitting packages and trading necessities. Nobody ever lacked Top Ramen, sanitary products, mascara, lash glue, dill pickles, or press-on nails.
Being broke college students didn’t determine their baddie status, Jada always said. Baddies did the best they could with what they had, in the words of the great Mariah Carey. Incidentally, her song ‘Breakdown’ blared through Jada’s rattling speakers.
“And you don’t wanna hurt Paris’s feelings, do you? You know he’d lose his mind if you moved off campus,” Megan added, staring out of the window and twirling the amethyst pendant she always wore between her fingers.
While she did have her own dorm room as an RA, she resided at home between semesters, and Paris still wasn’t allowed back there. Amir had caught them making out in Ariana’s bedroom when they were eighteen and threatened to castrate Paris if he ever showed his face again. Paris hadn’t come within a block of the place since.
“I’m not worried about him,” Ariana lied while wondering what he was doing. She had considered a ‘wyd’ text, but he hadn’t texted either. But if he was on her mind, wouldn’t it make sense to reach out? Then again, did she want to get involved in the back and forth with Paris Graham again?
“Lying ass,” Jada guffawed, briefly catching her friend’s eye in the rear view mirror.. “I’m clockin’ you. ‘Cause y’all were doing the most at the concert. Like I was almost embarrassed, it was getting that kinky.”
“Oh my god. Fuckin’ tequila, man,” Ariana groaned, covering her face, her cheeks warm. “I knew it. I really hoped I had just dreamed that.”
Megan smiled, her hands clasped and rested over her heart. “Dreamed it into reality. Aw! That’s so sweet. You and KiKi need to quit playin’, and get back to it already. Y’all are cute together. I love love.”
“Love. Please. Says the one in a marriage of convenience," Jada pointed out as she coasted the car into the store’s parking lot and whipped into a parking stall, narrowly avoiding an old couple standing near their Buick.
“This bitch gon’ kill us,” Ariana mumbled, fully expecting her life to soon flash before her eyes. “That’s sort of true. I’m sorry, Meg, but you act like you don’t even like August half the time. And I know for sure your parents don’t,” she added, still holding tight to her seat belt until Jada had powered off the engine.
During Megan’s parents’ first and only campus visit two years ago, Ariana had sat with the others through a painfully long, awkward dinner littered with mindless small talk at a restaurant downtown where fancy dress was required, and the regulars knew which fork to use when.
Things had taken an uncivilized turn when Megan’s father, Craig, had nearly come to blows with August. Craig Deschamps of Metairie wasn’t the most enlightened man, but he was usually the first to offer an opinion.
Though Megan knew the difference between table and salad forks, she didn’t really care and had long ago dismissed it as bullshit. She sighed, running her fingers through her hair, shaking out loose curls she’d just dyed ginger. “That’s not it. I do like him. I’m in love. And you’re right about my mama and daddy, but they’re ignorant as hell. He’s just so fucking… D1 sometimes.”
“I had one of those in high school. Tragic,” Jada said, grabbing her beloved black Coach bag from the back seat. She placed it in her lap and paused, pulling in a deep breath. Ariana had almost forgotten that Jada had lost a sister, she’d handled the loss with such grace. ”Lord, give me strength. Let’s go do this for my girl.” She forced a smile as her friends’ comforting hands landed on her shoulders and arms in an act of grounding.
“Let’s backtrack. What does acting D1 actually mean?”Ariana asked as the girls emerged into a chilly, wet, overcast afternoon. She’d heard the term before, but never bothered to dive deeper.
Megan’s head bobbed between Ariana’s and Jada’s shoulders as she drifted between her much taller friends. “Say if Paris played football, was kind of an asshole, and knew he’d get drafted eventually. Imagine how a man like that might act. Arrogant. Slutty. Entitled.”
“Oh yeah. That sounds like a nightmare. Paris is very slutty, by the way,” Ariana said, tugging an old PSCU hoodie over her head. “Not to slut shame, but…”
“No, I get you,” Jada said as they passed a group of classmates wheeling a shopping cart full of food and alcohol cases toward their car. “I’m not shamin’, either. This is coming from a factual place.”
Ariana scanned the faces of the students, pleased that she didn’t recognize them. She hated to bust up anyone’s party, but couldn’t ignore it in good conscience as a residential advisor. However, she couldn’t prove those seltzers were headed for campus, much less her dorm building, and minded her business.
“All three of ‘em are ran through, even August before you locked in,” Jada laughed as they breezed through automatic entrance doors and into a controlled climate. Well, somewhat controlled. There was a matter of a complete lack of control fostered by three children in hoodies, basketball shorts, long socks, and slides. Only these children were over twenty-one, at least six feet tall, and named Cairo, August, and Paris.
Cairo sat low on a tricycle intended for an actual child, his knees bent and chopping upward as he pedaled, cackling like a wild man. Rounding the corner from the next aisle over was August steering a small bike as he threw up gang signs, which may or may not have been related to any actual gangs; he was trailed by Paris, who rode a ten-speed and wore sunglasses with the tag still attached. They weren’t concerned with disturbing nice families doing their weekly grocery shopping.
“Look at their big asses on those tiny…” Ariana started, covering her mouth as Paris crashed into a display of round stuffed animals, its cardboard folding inward as the bike’s tire rammed into it. Paris’s massive frame flew over the handlebars and landed among the plushies. He shrieked the entire time, barely audible over Cairo and August’s screams.
“Record it, record it!” August said, cackling as Cairo whipped out his phone to capture the scene for all of his followers to see as Paris scrambled to free himself, getting nowhere fast as he shouted at the duo to stop filming. Never mind the other shoppers milling around, some amused, others mostly annoyed with the damn college kids.
“If I see this on TikTok, I promise we ain’t friends no more!” he shouted, a stuffed penguin headlocked.
“They are literally embarrassing as hell, oh my god,” Megan said as she walked in the opposite direction. “Let’s get what we need and get out of here before they see us.”
Wishful thinking. They’d grabbed baskets and buggies – yes, buggies– and shopped quickly. Groceries. Art supplies. They were almost done and hastily browsing the newest Wet n’ Wild shades when Cairo approached. He shrieked and threw his arms around Jada’s and Ariana’s shoulders, laughing as they screamed. “Y’all wasn’t gon’ say hey?”
“You scared the shit out of me,” Ariana muttered through clenched teeth, shoving her elbow into his side, knowing she was being a bit dramatic. But hell, was she? There was a murderer on the loose, no biggie. Her already rapid heart rate climbed higher as Paris showed up, brows knitted as he focused his phone. She prayed he wouldn’t sense it as they shared a customary side hug, which was always a little bit awkward. “Hey, you.”
“Wassup, baby, how you?” he asked, a smile spreading across his face.
Ariana hated herself and her weak ass knees. Baby. He called everybody that. It didn’t mean anything.
… it didn’t mean anything…?
“Hell no, we weren’t saying hi. Why would we?” Jada asked, shrugging Cairo’s sinewy arm from her shoulder. “We saw that silly shit y’all were doing.”
“Because we’re friends, and y’all shouldn’t be out here alone. Also, I could’ve caught a ride. AG thinks he’s funny doing all that Hellcat business, burning tires and shit. Who drove?”
Megan held two bottles of black nail polishes side by side, trying to decide which brand was the darkest. Ariana wouldn’t mention that they appeared the exact same shade. Megan nodded with a distracted hum. “Jada did.”
August had caught the tail end of the question as he’d approached and hugged his girlfriend’s slim waist as he received the answer. “Y’all were in danger either way, then.”
Jada plastered on a wide smile and flipped her middle finger in his direction. “Eat my ass, Saint. How long have y’all been in these people’s store playin’ around?”
“Like thirty minutes. There wasn’t shit to do on campus, and ever since Sade? The energy is dark as fuck, y’all. Like this shit ain’t over or somethin’,” he said, brows knitted. He wasn’t alone in that belief; the administration had implemented a temporary curfew of eleven PM and sent daily campuswide emails about buddy systems and campus safety.
Campus police presence had increased, sleek black SUVs with guard grills on guard at every entrance. Local news crews had damn near set up camp just off university property, and ignored the school’s warnings against interviewing students. Of course, far too many students had agreed to talk, enticed by the infamous fifteen minutes.
“Now you sound like this one,” Ariana said as she nudged Megan. She was their official ‘woo woo’ friend, and for all of their teasing, Megan’s discernment had proven itself time and time again.
“Y’all keep laughin’. When one of y’all wakes up bald, I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Wait a minute,” August said, fiddling with the tips of his beloved hair. “Would you really do somethin’ like that?”
“Don’t piss me off, and you’ll never have to find out,” Megan said, patting her boyfriend’s cheek as he pouted. “I know what you mean, ‘Ro. I still can’t believe she’s dead.”
“Her parents are torn up, real bad. That was the craziest thing ever. Like what the heck? What if that game had been in real time on tv?” Jada asked. A mere twenty-two second broadcasting delay had prevented the entire nation from witnessing the spectacle live on CSN, the College Sports Network. They’d pulled the plug at the sounds of a disturbance, the thud of Sade’s body crashing echoing through the stadium.
“Ain’t nobody seen Sergio in a week. I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped out,” Cairo said with a sad shrug. Sergio was a close friend to both him and Jada, and both of their lights dampened a bit whenever the doomed couple was mentioned. “He lost the love of his life, you know?”
“It’s fucked up, man. I feel bad for him and Sade. She was a good girl, she didn’t deserve that,” Paris said. He’d been questioned multiple times following the incident, seeing as how his call had been the last to reach Sade’s phone. He'd been cleared of any wrong doing – thank goodness for constant surveillance… right? – but Ariana knew it was eating him up inside. Which was why he’d been avoiding prolonged eye contact to prevent her from reading him.
Ariana’s bad night had paled in comparison to Sade’s. Shit, it’d been a cakewalk. Her parents had just pissed her off a little. The other girl was lying in a soft, fresh plot underground. It was astonishing and surreal, a dead body on campus. Poor Sade. Poor damn Sade. Ariana made a mental note to grab some flowers. They’d never truly formed a friendship outside of niceties, but she still deserved proper mourning.
“I’m still seeing that shit in my nightmares, I swear,” August said. “If I think about it too long, it starts to mess with me, and I had to come to the store anyway, so. Here we are.”
“I definitely wasn’t driving three hours to the Chuck just to come right back. You know Sundays are boring on campus. That Christian chicken place ain’t even open.”
Sundays in the Bible Belt meant heavy traffic, hour-long waits at local restaurants (unless you went to Cookout or something), and packed church parking lots. Not to mention, the students returning in droves from weekend parlays; everyone was always exhausted and recovered quietly indoors, and in turn, the campus became a ghost town. PCSU students hailed from all over the South; aside from the Carolina natives, others enrolled from Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and even as far as Texas. A PCSU degree was a heavyweight continentwide.
“That chicken is not that good,” Paris said, sinking down into the empty basket of an ownerless shopping cart. He was, as Ariana said, always just doing shit. “My mama’s chicken is better than that.”
“You would say that. You wouldn’t know decent seasoning if it punched you in the head,” Jada teased with a laugh.
Paris made a face. “Hold on now. My mama uses seasonings. Heavy on the Lawry’s.”
“Lawry’s is law. And that Slap Ya Mama stuff,” Cairo said, doing a poor job of hiding the fact that he was watching Jada’s every move with fascination shining in his bright eyes. “My grandpa won’t use anything else.”
“Wait. That Jesus chicken is your holy grail?” Ariana asked Jada, who was testing out polishes on her bare nails.
Jada shrugged. “I didn’t say that. I was just wondering how he’d know.”
“Now don’t do that,” Ariana said, losing the battle not to be first to defend him. Sometimes, Jada didn’t think before she spoke. Well, most of the time. The truth usually just projectile vomited itself from her mouth. Her truths, anyway. “Ms. Brianna’s chicken is good!”
Paris rolled his eyes, letting his head fall back against the cart’s rail as he sighed. “No, because if I’m keepin’ it a buck, I’m tired of you acting like I’m diluted or something.”
“Oh? I never said anything like that,” Jada said, leaning back as the tension expanded the space between them. “It’s just jokes, friend.”
“Well. That got awkward fast,” Ariana stated the obvious, anything to keep from rehashing a long-running, slightly tired discussion that usually triggered high tempers. “Let’s move on.”
“Thank you, Ariana,” Paris said, nodding in her direction. He then turned a pointed look onto the group, bringing his fingertips together. “Between this and KiKi, I might snap,” Paris barked with zero bite. Not only was he not going to snap, he was also immediately distracted by the petite girl with waist-grazing locs politely skirting past in fitted yoga pants and cropped tee, a cloud of Victoria’s Secret Bombshell lingering as she walked towards the Afro combs and boar-bristle brushes.
“Excuse me,” she said softly, smiling as she glanced at Paris, her smile spreading as she shyly giggled and locked eyes with him. Ariana pitied her. Another one bit the dust.
“Damn,” Cairo uttered under his breath, briefly distracted as his gaze followed her too before quickly returning to Jada as if she’d demanded his attention, though she hadn’t uttered another word.
August stepped into Megan’s space. “Paris ain’t gonna do nothin’. Especially since he just saw somethin’ he likes. Babe, don’t you wanna cook for us tonight?”
“No.” Megan looked directly at each one of her friends, physically leaving those sad puppy faces on read. “Now y’all are draggin’ it. No, you beggin’ bastards! And we should probably get out of this aisle having discussions about chicken for so many reasons. Dumbass ones, but reasons all the same,” she said as a group of students from a different local college roughhoused down the main aisle, cackling and jostling one another around. Wofford College, according to the ringleader’s t-shirt.
Ariana tugged her sweatshirt’s hood over her low ponytail, and then down onto her forehead. She had the best friends in the world. The absolute best at triggering ‘The Office’ style glances into an imaginary camera multiple times per gathering.
“You right. It’s a choice, and I’m ready to get gone anyway,” Cairo said, pushing up from where he leaned against a shelf housing Carol’s Daughter, Luster’s Pink Lotion, and Cantu bottles, a nearby jar of Blue Magic tumbling to the floor from the movement. He bent to retrieve it, and only Ariana noticed the embarrassment warming his cheeks. He’d restored his game face when he stood upright. “If Miss Jada here is done, that is.”
“I’m done,” Jada said, dropping the last of a handful of nail polish bottles into her basket, their glass surfaces clinking. She’d do magic, paint a Picasso with two dollar nail polish. It wasn’t about the tools, she’d always say. It was about intention. And from the day a thirteen year old Jada learned the value of social capital and decided that perfection was the cheat code, she’d moved accordingly.
August leaned in and peppered kisses to his girlfriend’s freckled cheek. “I’ll pay for it. Dinner and drinks on me. We’ll make Cairo help you,” he said, offering up his friend’s services. August rolled his eyes as Jada handed her over her basket, which was packed to the brim.
“Since I did touch up his hair for free last week. Let’s go get the rest, so that our generous big homie can pay for that.”
“I work at Foot Locker. What the hell do I look like? The Monopoly man?”
Paris was wiggling his way free from the cart, huffing and puffing. “Sometimes when your eye gets to leanin’ after you’ve been drinking–”
“Paris, shut the fuck up.”
Paris laughed as he landed on his feet, hands stuffed into the pouch of his Virginia State hoodie while he strolled toward the aisle’s end to get to know Miss Bombshell better. Ariana shook her head, storing away the jealousy burning her insides. Especially since she didn’t truly have any right to be. She pretended that the phone in her hand was the most interesting thing around after meeting Megan’s empathetic gaze.
“Y’all, don’t piss AG off, because I don’t wanna hear him whine all night. I do want a wine cooler and a nineties r&b mix, stat,” Cairo said, two-stepping and snapping to the soft rock playing at a reasonable volume over the store’s speakers.
“It’s still funny that you get lit from a couple of wine coolers,” Ariana said, extending her arm and noiselessly placing a few shades of eyeliner into the basket in August’s hand while his attention was elsewhere. She then joined Cairo’s dance party, bumping his slim hip with her fuller one to the song’s beat.
“I need a boost when the vibes are as fucked up as they are now. I don’t know, man. I skinny as hell, it don’t take much,” Cairo said (in Charleston-Speak) with a resigned, melancholic sigh as he checked out his own tall, thin frame. Jada brushed against said frame as she headed for the end of the aisle, texting. Cairo’s entire body perked upon contact, his lips pursed as his eyes fluttered closed. He was never beating the Jada Simp allegations.
Megan reconsidered August’s offer – especially after he’d successfully Ratatouille’d Paris too – and nudged the shopping cart toward him with a sweet smile. Yet had come the day Megan Deschamps would pass up free food or alcohol. She was known as The Bourbon Street Bandit. The tourists were especially generous toward the locals, drunk on liquor, lore, and a good time. She saved her own money for Westbank. “Well, in that case…”
+
“Gas is too high to drive two cars to the same place just to flex on each other,” Jada said, shaking her head as Paris carefully closed the door to his beloved 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, its rose gold candy paint and gold Dayton wire wheels known campuswide. An alarming amount of women wanted to ride shotgun. Many had tried, few had succeeded. Then there was Ariana, who had driven it countless nights when he’d had too much, or wanted to play passenger princess.
“That would mean he was capable of flexin’ on me,” August said, whistling as he took the shopping bags from Megan’s hands, then closed his own car’s door where it was parked in reverse beside the Cutlass. He then clicked the fob to lock his baby, a two year old hunter green, supercharged wide body Dodge Challenger Hellcat on midnight black rims. Specks of rain, gnats, and dust swarmed through the illumination of the high-powered headlights. “And he ain’t, so…”
“You are still so delusional. It’s sad to see, baby, for real,” Paris drawled, locking the older model with its key. He’d inherited the Cutlass from his uncle Mike and had logged the man hours to fix and maintain it, the car in pristine condition in Brianna’s brother’s memory. “Ol’ Hot Wheels headass boy–”
“Unc, please don’t start with me.”
“Unc? Nigga, you’re older than me! That’s aight. We’ll settle this later,” Paris decided as he helped Ariana out of the passenger seat. She’d decided that his driving was less likely to harm her than Jada’s. Cairo had been all too pleased to trade places. Also, Ariana had just really wanted to ride with him. Their music choices had always aligned and ranged from Future to Fleetwood Mac. Not to mention Paramore. Fucking Paramore.
“How many times are we gonna have to hear this argument?” Ariana questioned, met with blank stares and silence before they resumed bickering. “Oh okay, just fuck me, then.”
“We can’t take y’all nowhere,” Megan said as she marched behind Jada and Cairo toward Jada’s off campus apartment building. She turned to the boys. “Come on, and be quiet. Act like you’ve been outside the slums, hear?"
The building, like the majority of the campus, partially sat on former plantation land, a fact that Ariana’s bones never let her forget. She followed Megan as the odd cries of barred owls sounded, owls whose talons were wrapped around jagged branches, keeping them hidden among the trees. Its screech sliced through the crisp air while the earth crunched underneath sneakers.
The dark blackgum trees surrounding the property were allegedly alive, haunted by restless, justifiably angry spirits of the enslaved. Those who hadn’t been able to escape. Those to whom freedom had been completely denied.
Some swore they heard their desperate, anguished cries in the woods. Others heard rabid, angry hounds howling, the cracks of rifles ending lives, the clanging of rusted lanterns and slams of running boots to the ground. The ‘ting’ of iron railroad spikes being hammered into the ground by shackled Black hands. The chains and rustling of shackled Black feet.
There were even reports of faint whistles from ghost trains; the railroad tracks running parallel to the forest had long ago gone out of commission.
The soft grounds were still soaked from sporadic bursts of rain that had poured throughout the day, darkened sidewalks covered in loose leaves that retained traces of harvest yellows and greens and browns. Acorns were scattered here and there, which the infamous campus deer pack would graze in the dead of the night.
That was usually around the time that the crew left, unless the girls stayed behind to sleep over, which was often. Jada hated to be alone. Ariana’s overnight bag had been in the guest bedroom for the last few days; she’d spent more time at Jada’s than at her own place. An especially rough week would culminate that night.
August and Paris were still arguing when they’d filed into Jada’s two-bedroom place. Visitors were greeted Leo-style by bold florals and animal prints, bursts of yellows, oranges, and golds throughout. Ariana loved that she kept the place spotless. She could learn a thing or two from Jada about organization, given her cluttered dorm room.
Compartmentalization had never been Ariana’s strength . Everything at Jada’s had its place. Shoes were left at the door, and deviation from her rules would be met with profanity.
“Cairo, put your fuckin’ feet on my couch, and I’ll end you,” she said, emerging from the bedroom wearing her comfort uniform, an Atlanta Hawks t-shirt and bicycle shorts. The rest of the group slipped out of their shoes in the small foyer while gripping each other’s arms for leverage.
“Damn, she’s strict,” Cairo said, wincing as he sat down. He grabbed the remote, did some clicking around, and then the Living Single theme song blared from the television. “I wasn’t gonna put my feet on nothin’!”
“Ooh, in a nineties kind of world–
I’m glad I got my girls!”
Ariana just watched as Paris sang along, giggling as he climbed an octave. His voice was anointed. He’d transformed the sitcom theme into a hymn. And wasn’t it gospel?
Culture channeled through a queen? Wasn’t the silhouette of the rooftop dancer a show of praise? This was why Ariana had called some things into question. If it was divine, wasn’t femininity involved? Why was the church so patriarchal?
And though Ariana had tried to dismiss any recollection of the homecoming concert, she could never unhear the music that was the way he groaned her name when she had kissed his neck.
Jada headed for the kitchen. “Paris, come on. Megan needs help. We only have a few hours to get everything done.”
Paris had cooking skills. She blamed him for the Freshman Fifteen she’d held onto for the last three years. As the fourth and middle child of seven children, poverty had bred his creativity early. The family had never had much to work with, so he’d learned early to stretch very little into enough for his three brothers and three sisters.
Though he wasn’t the oldest, he had been the most responsible when it counted, and their parents had worked full-time jobs. Brianna worked days, and Tyler was on the night shift. Paris had been (and still was) mom or dad, whichever role needed fulfilling. Three of his siblings were still in high school.
Paris looked up from his phone with pursed lips, dazed and confused. He blinked hard. “Why am I being volun-told what to do?”
Cairo yawned, rubbing his eyes while he slouched on the couch. “AG offered your services while you were talkin’ to homegirl at the store.”
“I just came to eat,” he said, but complied, joining the kitchen sink hand-washing line; the trio would prepare a Sunday dinner that Ariana would spend the next week fondly remembering. On the menu? Fried chicken, Carolina red rice, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, and collard greens. Her stomach growled. No wonder Erica was so damn mad all the time. Deprivation was difficult.
“Hurry up and go, man, damn,” August said, ducking as Paris swung his fist on his way past. “That memorial ain’t too far off, we can’t miss that.”
Jada and Cairo, along with the band and the Greeks, had planned a vigil for Sade beside the lake near the chapel. PSCU’s students had been invited to join in honoring Sade’s life. Her family had buried her two days prior in her hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina, but it felt appropriate tethering her to a place where she’d lived so much life. Last week’s classes had been canceled, but they’d resume the next day, and life would go on. It seemed cruel that the world kept spinning.
“You’re back on the field Saturday, right?” Ariana asked as she settled onto the love seat beside August. Understandably, the football team’s last game had been rescheduled, considering that the stadium had been a crime scene.
“Yeah. It’s gon’ be weird as hell,” August said, rubbing his chin as he shook his head, sorrow in his dark eyes. “Whole team still fucked up off the whole thing. I figured they would wait a lil’ bit longer, but college football is money.”
Capitalism trumped the right thing usually. Homecoming would be forever marred by the tragedy. And although Ariana felt the need to pay her respects, that memorial was the last place she wanted to go. Roaming campus without being gawked at was impossible. Where there was Paris, there was Ariana, whether she actually was or not, and being questioned by police was reason enough for people to make up their damn minds.
“Damn, every video I see is about PSCU,” Cairo said, lying on his back as he scrolled social media timelines.
“Well somebody did die, Cairo.”
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Saint, thank you. I just still can’t believe it, and people won’t leave me alone. I had to turn off my damn comments.”
“I’m sorry, ‘Ro,” Ariana said, frowning as she leaned over to hug him. The band members spent a great deal of time together, and were all clearly close. She couldn’t imagine being in Cairo’s shoes. Not that she wasn’t getting her share of bullshit comments on social media, too.
He returned the hug, patting her back. “I ‘preciate that, but I don’t wanna think about it. Wine coolers, I’m on that. Ari? Go ahead and roll up, big dawg.”
Ariana glanced at the box containing ‘the shit’, Tales From the Hood-style. Jada kept her stash full for her friends, though she rarely smoked. That was trust. That was love.
“You know I’m not very good at that.”
“And you ain’t gon’ get no better unless you practice. Let’s go,” he said, snapping his fingers before darting out of reach. He strolled toward the kitchen to retrieve his libations. And to get yelled at for being in the way and unauthorized food sampling too, probably.
“Come on. I’ll run through this with you one more time, Ariana,” August said. He, like Jada, rarely smoked. Yet nobody rolled a tighter blunt. “I need a fuckin’ buzz.”
Ariana sighed as August gathered the supplies and set up to run the tutorial back. “Why don’t y’all just use those Raw cones?”
Cairo laughed when he returned carrying a strawberry wine cooler and a handful of grated cheese, catching the end of Ariana’s question. “Our people don’t do that. This ain’t Furman.”
Megan poked her head in from the kitchen. “We are not a monolith. We don’t have to all do the same things–
Paris groaned, his head falling back as he paused grating the cheese, as he’d been Cairo’s victim of choice. “Political Science, please give it a damn rest!”
“Y’all be wantin’ me to shut up, but can’t ever say I’m wrong, though!” Megan pointed with the knife in her hand as she turned on him. “And I don’t know who the fuck you think I am, but lower that tone, Paris–”
He glanced warily at the knife’s tip that was precariously close to his nose, then swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his eyes met Megan’s. “Hey, real quick. Reach the top shelf, and then I’ll consider shuttin’ up.”
August shook his head. “That boy got balls of steel.”
“Shut up, August. And you,” she said, turning back to Paris, “do you wanna get cut?” she asked, twirling the knife.
“Show me!”
Ariana tuned out the ensuing argument as she slid down to the floor and resumed her seat beside August, crossing her legs. Rolling materials were spread on the glass coffee table. She could do this. How hard could it be? The boys could do it. But then again, they were teaching her. Annoying.
“Those cones burn too fast, fuck up the rotation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, girl,” August said with a laugh. “But they are good when there’s one or two people.”
Cairo had started rolling a second one. Sessions were that much more effective when the rotation was constant. “I still wanna know how you roll the tightest blunts this side of the Mississippi, but don’t even really smoke.”
“I’ll tell you,” August said, waiting until Cairo sat up straight with wide eyes. Would they finally get an answer? A glimpse into August’s past?
Ariana doubted it, but still sort of hoped they would. Even she waited with bated breath for August to speak. He took his sweet time, however, deliberately tearing open a pack of Backwoods.
“I’ll tell you the same shit I said last time,” he started, clearing the guts into a waiting ashtray. “That’s my business.”
Cairo rolled his eyes and waved him off. He then watched Ariana struggle for a while under August’s guidance. “That’s a shame.”
August rubbed his hands tiredly over his face as Ariana did the exact opposite of what he’d just asked her to do. “I say roll it this way, girl!”
“Yell at me again, AG.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should’ve started with Swishers. Y’all are doing advanced rolling, that ain’t even her ministry. Y’all know her mama and daddy wasn’t leaving her alone long enough to sniff a blunt, much less roll one.”
“What’s with everybody clockin’ me lately? Like damn, let me live,” Ariana said, her upper lip curled as she turned on August. He leaned back, hands raised in surrender.
“I didn’t even say it!”
“Your silence was compliance,” Ariana said. The truth was anybody that crossed her path could catch it, nobody was safe. The problem was that when Ariana took it there, she genuinely dragged it. By the time she was satisfied, she’d gone too far. Repression and shit, according to Melanie, her last psychiatrist. “Shut up, Cairo. That’s the only warning you get.”
“Always you quiet ones people gotta watch,” Cairo said, casting a wary, sideways glance at his fuming, fire-eyed female friend. “You not gon’ hit me, are you?”
Paris barrelled through the kitchen door on his way to the restroom, humming to himself. He surveyed the scene, eyes darting between his friends until they rested on Ariana. Her cheekbones were especially pronounced, her dark eyes filled to the brim with emotion.
“Now which one of y’all done pissed her off?”
“On God, it was him,” August swore, pointing at Cairo, drilling the tip of his pointer finger against Cairo’s temple. “I didn’t say nothin’ about her parents, this one went that way–”
“You took it there. Mm. Wow. Ariana, baby, come with me,” Paris said, reaching for her hands, pulling her onto her feet as her palms met his.
Ariana stood still, a barely contained rage simmering just beneath the surface. She heard Paris making demands, but didn’t truly listen. It was only once the damp breeze brushed her cheek and the twinkle of wind chimes hit her ears did she register that she was outside on Jada’s balcony.
Damp leaves littering the balcony crunched underneath her feet. She glanced to her left, rejoining reality as she absorbed Paris’s presence. He was lighting up a RAW cone, pulling just enough to ignite the ember, and immediately handed it over.
“It’s yours–”
“Hit it, Ari.”
He wouldn’t have to tell her twice. The biggest indicator that she was losing it? The fact that he could tell her to do anything at all and expect her to listen. It didn’t feel like a battle worth choosing, so she pulled, orange tip glowing in the dim balcony lights.
August had been right. The effects hit almost immediately. Sure, she was a lightweight, but it had burned much faster. With those in existence, what difference did it make if she ever learned how to roll?
And why the hell had their usual back and forth made her so mad?
“It’s getting bad again,” Ariana said after her third hit, returning the joint as she exhaled smoke, watching it curl towards the dusky sky. “And I’m probably imagining it, but you kind of smell like Bombshell, and that’s pissing me off, too.”
“What the hell is Bombshell?”
Ariana swallowed the lump in her throat, thanking her lucky stars he didn’t follow. She’d have never even brought the girl up in her right mind. “Never mind.”
He pinched the front of his t-shirt and lifted it, sniffing. “Well, wait a minute, now. I quit using that aluminum-free stuff–”
“It’s not a bad smell. Forget it, P,” Ariana said with a tired laugh. Of the many sides of her emotions soaring so high? The descent was a motherfucker. She took another pull, then returned the cone to him. “Thank you.”
“Are you taking your meds, Ari?”
“Yes. You don’t have to ask me that, I know what I have to do–”
Paris’s gentle, slow, southern cadence cut into her budding tirade. “Honey, it’s just me.” He wasn’t the enemy. He never had been.
She was sick of being in the dark. Or being in the gray area, anyway. It wasn’t bipolar disorder. It wasn’t ADHD. Generalized anxiety disorder and depression were mixed up somewhere in there, but her doctors still hadn’t pinpointed a damn thing.
“I just wanna know. You gotta take care of yourself.” Then, he smoked some more.
A few minutes more into the session, he was humming. He had the smoothest rasp that had hit Ariana square in the center of her heart from the moment she’d heard it. Back after the homecoming dance during high school sophomore year while they sat on the curb in front of their school waiting for Tyler to pick them up.
Slouched to the right, his head in hands, and bored out of his mind, Paris had sung Leon Bridges’ ‘Coming Home’ and instead of laughing, Ariana was impressed. Where’d he get that voice from?
He’d taught her to project. To breathe, to sit up straight and use her diaphragm. She’d taught him control. Slightly fewer vocal runs (and god, were his smooth and effortless), more exploration of his range, because it was wider than he realized.
He sang ‘I Belong To You’, his grandmother’s favorite song. Ariana sang with him as they smoked the joint down. Their ranges? Matches made in heaven. It was fun. It was easy. It assured Ariana that she and Paris would always, somehow, be okay.
By the time he’d launched into his loudest and most ridiculous Rance Allen impression, she was laughing to tears. “Stop!”
The funniest part? He sounded damn good.
“What? I thought we was doin’ this shit.”
“Mmhmm. We were, then you had to do the most.”
“I’m good at that. Real good,” he said with a smile, nodding his head. “What did Cairo say?”
“That’s the thing. He's always saying shit like that, and it doesn’t usually bother me,” she said with a shrug, raising the sleeve of her hoodie to scratch her arm. The light drag of her fingertips was her newest method of self-soothing. It was better than the last method. She could still feel the faint scars on her wrists. “It just got under my skin.”
“Whatever you do, please don’t do that,” he said as he reached out to touch her wrist, gently rubbing his thumb across the scars. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking; that same horrified, disturbed look was on his face like it had been a year ago. Ariana had been almost fully under that night as the blood seeped from her wrist, but had caught a glimpse just before she’d passed out.
The last time she’d taken a blade to her arms, she’d cut too deep. A worried Paris had shown up at her dorm just in time to find her bleeding out after she’d ignored his calls and texts all day. She’d been in and out of consciousness the entire time, but some things within the chaos would forever live in her head.
Like Paris repeatedly asking the paramedics if she was going to live, pajama-clad Megan and Jada running across campus to get to her as she was wheeled from the building, the roar of August’s engine as he and Cairo had sped into the parking lot, jumping out before the car even fully stopped. Why had Paris sent an SOS in the group chat? Why had he called everyone multiple times?
“She tried to kill herself. Why the fuck would she do somethin’ like that? I’m bouta lose it, bruh. I gotta call her mama.”
Ariana sometimes wondered if Paris had known that she’d heard his frantic voice tearfully explaining to August as they loaded her into the ambulance. She’d broken his heart, and a brokenhearted Paris was especially tragic. The weather often aligned with his mood. Rain had poured the entire five days she’d spent in the hospital.
The armchair next to her bed had never been empty. Though Amir and his long-running grudge had tried to keep him away, he couldn’t outright ban him from a public hospital, and Paris had spent every night by her side, holding her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said like she had a thousand times before. There wasn’t enough remorse in the world. She’d never be sorry enough, she realized. Though the incident was over a year behind them, it lingered like an unrelenting ghost.
Even to the day, he had never responded to that phrase. Paris wasn’t much of a liar, and he wasn’t open to accepting that apology. “I’m just glad you’re still here.”
“You know, you never tell me it’s okay when I say that I’m sorry for that.”
“Because it pissed me off that you felt like you didn’t deserve to be here. Still does. So keep it,” was all he said.
Ariana had long ago accepted that. “I have to get this under control. I don’t want everybody to feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me.”
“If I can help, let me know,” he said, quiet until she’d finally granted him attention. “I’m serious, Ariana.”
“I hear you.” Truthfully, she was terrified at the thought of losing herself again. And being all alone if it did happen.
“Looks like they’re on the way to the chapel,” he said as a group of Gamma girls lugged supplies down a nearby sidewalk. “I feel for Jada. She loved her some damn Sade.”
And while Ariana knew that no, he hadn’t been in love with Sade, her death affected him a bit more than he let on. The recollection of the suicide attempt definitely hadn’t helped. Not to mention that Paris had initially been pinned as a person of interest given that the last calls from and to Sade had involved him somehow. He’d been cleared, but the damage was done. “What was she like?”
“Mean,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head. He leaned forward, his free hand rubbing his neck. “At least until you got past that, then she was cool. Funny. She knew what she wanted out of life, for sure. I see why she got along with Jada. ”
“I’m sorry you lost her, too,” Ariana said, reaching for his hand, giving his palm a squeeze.
“Thank you.”
A moment later came the Sigmas, carrying folding chairs by the armload. Where there were Gammas, Sigmas weren’t far behind. Of course, they were just as involved; they’d lost one of their own. Ariana didn’t know many of the Greeks personally, but she recognized a few of them.
There was Inez Gibson, Sade’s lifelong best friend and another head majorette, carrying bags of long, tapered candles. She walked beside Josiah and Josiah’s friend, Reece Polite. Like all Sigmas and Gammas, they were conventionally attractive. The standard was unwritten officially, but unofficially, stood a better chance of being chosen if they were good-looking.
“I’m surprised Jada didn’t come and cuss at you for not being in the kitchen.”
The patio door flew open. “Paris! I already told you I have shit to do. I gotta get these boards together for the vigil. My printer smells my fear, and it’s not working. What are you doing?”
Paris sat back, chuckling. “I’m too high for you to hurt me, Jada.”
Ariana cut in. “It’s my fault. I needed a minute, and he helped me out.”
“Oh. Well, okay then. We do need to hurry up, though. Come come,” Jada said, twirling on her heels to go inside.
Paris stubbed the cone in a nearby ashtray. “See how she do me? Let me go be useful. I’ll distract them.”
Ariana especially hated being perceived post pop-off. Those moments were few and far between, but the shame lasted forever. Hell, it wasn’t as if Cairo had been lying. Her parents had never given her much room to breathe. Maybe the fact that he hadn’t been lying was why she’d blown up?
By the time she worked up the courage to return, the boys were knee-deep in a nineties tv show debate. August had crowned The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as the winner. Cairo was passionately disagreeing.
“I’m telling y’all Moesha was the shit, okay? If I played that music that comes on when she writes in her journal, bet you’d lose your mind right now.”
“Fair enough,” August said.
“... Aye, that lil bop is kinda smooth, though, won’t lie,” Paris said, making his way to the kitchen.
“What bop?”
“Moesha’s diary music. When she’s all introspective and what not.”
“Oh. Yeah, that beat slaps,” Jada agreed.
“Dude!” Ariana cried as Paris detoured, rushing past her and toward the bathroom.
“I had to pee like twenty minutes ago!”
Ariana crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall adjoining the kitchen, watching her friends prepare food. For all of her complaining, Megan’s labor was one of love every time she fed them. Ariana recalled friendless grade school days when they’d written off the girl who always wore black and weird jewelry as a weirdo and started a smear campaign that had followed her through high school graduation.
She wasn’t entirely convinced that the campaign was finished, but in her friends’ presence, none of that mattered. They loved and accepted each other, and Ariana still couldn’t believe her luck.
Jada set a probing gaze on her as she approached the nearby fridge for the milk. “You good?”
“Yeah. I overreacted, but I’m good now,” Ariana said, and accepted the hug that Jada slipped around her shoulders. “I’m fine.”
“Alright, as long as you’re good. But you know we’re here if you’re not.”
Ariana smiled. “I know.”
She caught sight of a tri-folded sheet of paper stuck to the fridge with a magnet from a local law firm. The notice swung closer as Megan opened the refrigerator's door. The power company’s name and the words ‘overdue’ printed in red ink caught Ariana’s attention; she quickly looked away. Jada would absolutely tweak if she knew that she’d been found out. She wondered how to ensure that Jada knew they were there for her, too, without stepping on Jada’s pride.
Half an hour later, the food was almost ready. They were just waiting on the cornbread to bake. Then, it was chow time.
While they waited, the backwoods went into rotation. They’d swapped Living Single for YouTube, and GoldLink’s ‘Crew’ played instead. The patio door was cracked just so; smoking wasn’t allowed in the building. They’d spent the last three years carelessly breaking that rule.
Jada sighed. “Let me hit it.”
“Hit what?” Megan asked, glancing between Jada and the blunt in her hand.
“The blunt, Meg!”
“Since when?”
“Dire times, man. I need to be high to deal with this,” she said as she perused Sade’s photo. The photo was months old, taken during a fundraising car wash they’d organized in hopes to afford new uniforms. Sade had never even gotten to perform in hers; at least not without someone pulling strings. Who’d puppeteered her over that scoreboard? “There’s so much going on. I’m struggling.”
The confession hung in the weed-tinged air. Jada didn’t have problems, as far as anyone knew. Well, as far as she’d let anyone know, anyhow.
“You?” Cairo asked.
“Me,” Jada said, replacing the cap of the marker she’d been using to etch Sade’s name onto the poster board she was crafting and accepted the blunt Megan handed her. “I’m the head majorette now, and that comes with its own set of problems. Then, everything keeps going up. My 529 is fightin’ for its life.”
“I get you, because I’m doin’ Sergio’s job now. Do you need help with anything?” Cairo continued, choosing his words carefully as he probed with empathetic eyes. “You know I got you…”
Jada smiled at him. He seemed just as surprised as anyone else that she hadn’t snapped. “Thank you, Cairo. That’s sweet. I’m good for now,” she decided, taking a hit and holding the smoke for a few seconds before exhaling. “I’m just talkin’.”
“I’ll go check on the food,” Megan said, glancing out of the windows as she walked past. “I see people goin’ to the chapel.”
Jada sat up after hearing this news, yanked back into reality. “I need to be one of them in about an hour. I’m supposed to meet up with Josiah.”
August’s features screwed up in disgust. “I don’t like his ass.”
Cairo finished his second wine cooler and sat the bottle down beside his socked feet, wiping his mouth. “What did he do to you?”
“He knows better.”
“Then what is it?”
August shrugged with crossed arms, shaking his head, one side of his mouth lifted in repulsion. “He just rubs me the wrong way. I ain’t the most humble dude, I know that, but goddamn. He might actually think he’s God.”
Cairo shrugged, mainly because he couldn’t refute that well and widely-known fact. “He asked me why y’all didn’t pledge when I did.”
“Because I hate that mufucka, next question.”
Paris shook his head. “Don’t even look this way. I love it for you, but that frat shit just ain’t for me.”
“You don’t want brotherhood, brother?” Cairo asked with a hard slap to Paris’s shoulder. He jerked backwards as Paris winced and bucked at him. With raised hands, he grinned. “I’m on a mission to piss everybody in this room off at least once today, sorry.”
“Don’t forget that I have three brothers, miss me with that brotherhood shit. I hate them bitches, too. Glad they went back to Alabama.” Paris’s family had decided to return to Birmingham during his high school junior year, but he’d begged to stay with his uncle in Sageville instead.
Though Michael’s trailer had been old and small, he’d welcomed his nephew with open arms, as well as Ariana whenever she visited. His uncle Michael had been the sweetest man. Meals on Wheels, soup kitchens, shelters… poverty had never become between him and volunteering time and energy into those things.
His untimely death had tipped Paris’s already unbalanced, homesick scale; it’d been the catalyst to his decision to leave Virginia State. Ariana understood why Paris missed Michael so much.
Paris’s brothers Andre, Rodrick, and D’Wayne had always been assholes. He always said that his big brothers had never fulfilled that role, instead becoming his first bullies. The youngest of the four boys, Rodrick, hadn’t hesitated to push Paris into the fire in order to save himself from the heat, and often joined the attacks. Ariana understood why Paris loathed them so much.
“The Sigma parties be lit. They basically run PCSU. I don’t get why y’all wouldn’t wanna be involved,” Cairo said, shaking his head. “Ask Jada.”
August stroked his chin as if he pondered a deep thought. “I’ma go out on a limb here and assume you really tryna join because Jada’s a Gamma.”
“That’s not the reason, but it don’t hurt. Paris, your ho ass should be first in line, ‘cause girls will fall into your lap.”
That sort of hung in the air for a while.
“Please excuse me from the narrative.”
August had never been as nice. “Fuck them, okay?”
Cairo rubbed his stomach and burped obnoxiously. “That’s all right. Don’t ask me about the guest list when I’m finally on the money team.”
August looked up from blocking yet another nosy ass person asking inappropriate questions in his DMs. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they really had a guest list.”
“They really do have a guest list,” Jada interjected, laughing. “They can be extra, but they’re harmless.”
Paris’s head whipped toward Cairo in delayed offense. “Hold on, did you call me a ho? Let’s not, community dick–”
“Don’t start none, won’t be none!” Cairo shouted, pointing his finger, raising it once more after Paris slapped it aside.
“Honestly, both of y’all should keep MyChart results on hand,” Ariana said, snickering as August let out a long, ignorant howl. She laughed harder as both boys mugged her.
Megan leaned in from the kitchen. “The cornbread is finished. “Babe, you want everything?”
“I do. Thank you, baby,” August said, catching his breath, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“I’ll come help,” Jada said, slowly getting to her feet. “Whoo. Shit’s spinnin’. I hope everybody wants some of everything because that’s what I’m putting on these plates.”
“...I‘m not in the mood for cornbread or greens at this time, but I’m really scared to say it now,” Paris told Ariana, who offered a sympathetic shoulder pat as she listened and didn’t judge.
“Hey. Megan be fixin’ your plates?” Cairo asked August.
“Yes?”
“I thought she was a feminist.”
August rolled his eyes. “This is how I know you don’t know what a feminist is. You think I ain’t learned nothin’ from being with her?”
“Then can somebody explain it to me like I’m five?”
“What don’t we already have to explain to you like you’re five?” Ariana asked, cracking herself up in the process. In turn, she got Paris started, August cracked, and then the three leaned on each other laughing their asses off.
Cairo watched his friends in disdain, sneering. “It ain’t that fuckin’ funny, now.”
Megan sighed as she returned with a loaded plate. “Feminism is about equality and freedom to choose. If that girl doesn’t want to be a wife and/or a mother, that’s her business. If that girl does, that’s her business, as long as nobody’s judging each other. I wish ‘em both the best of luck, as someone okay with either fate. Besides, I do this kind of thing for him because he does them for me.”
“You so smart, boo. Please tell him. Thank you,” August said, accepting the plate and Megan’s kiss to his cheek. “You need to get you a woman, let her teach you somethin’. Accept that they know more than us.”
“I’m tryin’! She don’t want me,” Cairo added with a whisper. A mostly pointless whisper. Everybody knew he was in love with Jada Cunningham. Including Jada Cunningham.
Paris re-lit the nearest blunt. “You ain’t movin’ right. If you wanted to impress her, you’d be in that kitchen helpin’ her out.”
“My grandma always says that laziness gon’ be the death of me. I should go, right? I’ma go,” he said, stumbling on lightweight-drunk legs as he stood and wandered into the kitchen.
“Pray for y’alls boy,” Ariana said with a sympathetic shake of the head. Patience was not Jada’s strength, and the ultimate Patience Tester had just hunted her down.
Thankfully, he survived and the group enjoyed a meal together. Jada only fussed once, and it was at Paris, whose cornbread and greens remained after he’d smashed everything else.
“But I don’t want ‘em!” he whined.
“It’s wasteful.”
“Why y’all always on me? If you had asked to start with, this wouldn’t have happened. The way I see it, it’s your problem.”
“I’m giving you problems as soon as I finish this piece of chicken, I promise,” she said, shaking a Texas Pete Hot Sauce bottle over her drumstick. “You fried the hell out of this, though, gotta give you that, too.”
By the time Ariana finally made it to the restroom, the problems had started. Paris was screaming, and it was like any other Sunday night at Jada’s. Everybody was always on him because his reactions were the funniest, and he hadn’t had that epiphany yet. Was it sort of evil? Yes. Could Paris handle it unscathed? Yes.
“Give it to me. I’ll eat it, just stop beatin’ him!” August cried over Megan and Cairo’s loud, shameless cackling.
It was all that sweet tea Cairo had made. Ariana, like most southerners, was particular about tea. Getting it right was a science, and nobody understood sweet tea better than Cairo. She’’d gone overboard after the third glass.
Ariana scanned the room as the sink’s vanity lights flickered. Electrical trouble was typical on campus; there were occasional power outages that annoyed everyone, but hardly lasted long. She was washing her hands when the bathroom light flickered again, then cut out.
“Oh, come on,” Ariana said, feeling around for the light switch, knowing it was useless. She looked down and saw the kitchen light shining through the gap between the door and the gleaming hardwood floor.
The hell was up with the bathroom lights?
She didn’t worry. It wouldn’t last long.
Seconds later, the lights flashed on again. Ariana’s sigh of relief caught in her throat as she choked on fear, realizing she was no longer alone in the mirror.
A dead-eyed Sade stood behind her, her throat torn, the rhinestones on her blood-stained uniform dull with red clay. Through a large gash in the shimmering top, Ariana noted what had to be – what the HELL – autopsy scars. Her light brown skin had taken on a sickly green hue. Her long hair had been perfectly styled, and despite being very dead, she was still very pretty. In a grotesque sort of way.
A slack-jawed, suddenly lightheaded Ariana kept still and switched to manual breathing, tears of shock falling from her fluttering eyes. She wondered which psych med might solve the issue. She’d never needed anything for hallucinations before.
And she still didn’t. The physical presence was real. She would, however, need the whole armor of heaven as one of Sade’s rhinestones caught onto her hoodie as the body inched closer. There was no body heat. In fact, the closer she got, the cooler the air.
“Oh my god,” Ariana croaked, terrified at the sight of her own breath, trembling in the suddenly frigid room. She was both afraid to and dying to close her eyes. “Sade?”
Sade’s mouth slowly gaped, thick strings of dark blood pouring from inside. Was there liquid actually hitting the ground? Was she hearing things?
“Call me back, Paris,” came a whisper of a voice that was Sade’s, but a crackling recording of voicemail quality. “Call me back. Paris, please call me back. Paris?”
Meanwhile, Paris was in the living room getting beat up by Jada and none the-wiser to the shit unfolding in Jada’s restroom.
Sade’s request sounded once more, directly into Ariana’s ear. “Paris. Call me.”
Ariana didn’t even realize she was screaming until her friends burst through the door.
Cairo’s eyes darted in search of the threat. “What?”
“Oh my god. Holy fuck. Fuck!” Ariana cried, wringing her hands. The wringing hurt, it always had, but it usually brought her back into reality. There was no more Sade. The floor was clean, no blood, no red clay. The heat that’d been sucked from the room returned in a warm rush. Sunday dinner’s aroma hung in the air. Gone was the odor of formaldehyde that had previously filled the room.
Cairo gently grabbed her hands and held them firmly to his chest as he looked into her eyes. “Ariana! What’s wrong?”
Her heart could’ve thumped right out of her chest, and getting air was still difficult. “I saw her. I fuckin’ saw her, she was in here! She kept asking for Paris to call her back!” she cried with wild eyes, hardly able to keep still.
The color drained from Paris’s face as that bit of news landed, and all eyes landed on him. “Huh?”
“Who?” Jada asked with her fists ready, immediately on guard.
“Sade. I swear to god, she was here. I know everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I know what I saw.” She glanced at her shoulder. Sure enough, the lone rhinestone was still there. More tears, more fear clawing at her insides. “Oh god. Look at this,” she said, pinching the shoulder of her hoodie.
Megan frowned, waving her hands. “Wait, what? Sade? As in ‘just passed away’ Sade?”
“I was putting rhinestones on the board. That’s gotta be what it is,” Jada said, though she didn’t sound too sure herself. She leaned in to investigate.
Ariana hated to admit that the stone was similar to the type Jada had used. Admitting it would mean she had just been seeing things.
“Nobody thinks you’re crazy, my love. Least of all, me,” Megan said, placing her hand over Cairo’s as he continued holding Ariana’s. “That poor girl ain’t at rest.”
“Excuse me, but what the hell are y’all talkin’ about? Sade is dead. I did her hair at the funeral home. I went to the girl’s fuckin’ wake. She was in a casket, dead,” Jada said through shuddering breaths, fighting tears. She leaned into August’s embrace and let herself break just a little. Very unlike Jada.
“I saw her too. Just now,” Ariana said, her voice breaking. Maybe she was losing her goddamn mind after all.
There was hardly time to dwell. A phone chimed from the living room. Uneasy looks were shared as dread filled the air.
Was it Paris’s phone?
Of course it was.
Would there be a new voicemail that hadn’t been there minutes ago?
Of course there would.
“What the fuck did we smoke? We trippin’! Do we hear ourselves? Phones ring, p-people see shit,” August stuttered in an effort to explain the inexplicable as they returned to the living room. They stood shoulder to shoulder around the coffee table, staring at the phone after confirming that there was indeed a new message.
Paris hadn’t said another word. He had gone pale and sort of looked like he was going to be sick.
“P, you okay, man?” August asked, nodding as Paris shook his head. “Yeah, I wouldn’t think so.”
“Am I the only one that wants you to go ahead and play it?”
“Cairo, please!” Jada snapped, rolling her eyes. “But… no. I kinda wanna hear it, too. I think. What?”
“Somebody just do it!” Megan blurted, wincing. “My bad. Curiosity is gon’ kill me.”
Ariana snapped into action as Paris stared at the space ahead. She entered the passcode – her birthday, incidentally – and found the voicemail. She activated the speaker and played the message. Though it was mostly static, Sade’s trembling, panicked voice cut through the noise.
“Paris? ………. Paris, can you call me back, please? ……………………………………. I really need to talk to you. Call me back.”
“She sounded terrified,” Megan said, sighing as tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, I wish I could talk to her.”
Jada held up a hand. “You better not bring no Ouija board up in this house.”
“For your information, I do not use ouija boards. I do own a pendulum I wish I had in my bag. Clearly, she’s tryna tell us something.”
“I should’ve called her back,” Paris said eventually, rubbing his temples, green eyes watery. “I didn’t think it was that serious. Like, what if she needed my help–”
“Don’t do that. We still don’t know what happened exactly or why,” Ariana cut in, gently hugging him. “This is not your fault, Paris.”
It was almost as if he hadn’t heard a word anyone said, pulling in deep, steadying breaths that weren’t helping from the looks of it, his body solid against Ariana’s attempt to soothe him. “That message was not on my phone until now. I promise.”
“For real, what the hell were we smokin’?” Cairo asked, picking up a hastily-abandoned blunt from the ashtray to study.
“It’s just regular weed like I always get,” Jada said, wiping her face. “No Reggie Bush.”
Ariana gave Paris space, keeping her hands apart to prevent wringing them again. “...What the hell do we do, y’all?”
“We move on. That’s all we can do,” Jada said, settling back into her seat like nothing had happened. She resumed drawing perfect letters with long, smooth strokes after relighting the blunt and sticking it into the corner of her mouth.
Everyone else but Paris remained standing. He’d silently tucked himself away in the recliner near the patio and stared through the window. Ariana spied his reflection in the patio door’s glass. His features had settled into hard, somber lines. Not good. It was hard to get him back when he got lost like that.
Ariana bit her tongue right before it’d start to bleed, arms folded across her chest as she turned towards Jada. “Jay… y—… you believe me, right?”
She shook her head, but didn’t look up. “I don’t know, Ari. I’m having a hard time believing that the same girl we saw hangin’ from the scoreboard a week ago was just in my apartment.”
While Ariana fully understood Jada’s logic, it didn’t lessen the sting of her words. Her friend thought she was insane. “Did you or did you not just hear the same message I did?”
“She has a point, y’all. We know what we just heard. All damn six of us,” she said with a stony glare as she scanned them.
“It’s probably damn AI or something!” Jada cried, throwing up her hands. “People do things like that these days, and these idiots around here swear we had some kind of conspiracy going–”
“I believe it,” Cairo interjected Jada’s oncoming rant, crossing himself. He shrugged as his friends stared. “Hey, I been seein’ crazy shit since I was a little kid. And Ari ain’t a liar.”
“Thank you,” she said, gaze lowering to the ground, shame squeezing her throat like a pair of hands. Having to be defended always had done a number on her head, faced with being hard to swallow.
“Then that makes you just as ridiculous–” Jada said, gasping before snapping her mouth closed. She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry. Ariana, I am so sorry. I don’t even know why I said that.”
“Whoa,” Cairo said, frowning and utterly confused. Ariana shared the sentiment, deeply confused why Jada would say such a thing.
“Jada!” Megan scoffed, hands ready to catch the falling pieces once her friend shattered.
Ariana was aware of this and refused to fall apart. She wasn’t that goddamn fragile, was she? “Wow.”
August had reared back a few inches, jaw dropped. Ariana had never seen him so disgusted in all the time she’d known him. “That’s fucked up, Jada,” he said with a humorless chuckle.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Jada’s hands covered her mouth just as thunder shook the building, followed by a crack of lightning illuminating the darkening sky. Then that sky opened and it started to pour. Heavy raindrops pounded the ceiling. The charged air went silent, aside from the occasional creak of the recliner rocking back and forth. The music had long ago died.
Ariana returned to her previous corner and picked up a marker, popping off its top. She added another letter to the board, the ‘a’ in Sade’s ‘Gamble’, then grabbed the rhinestones and glue. “It’s fine, y’all. I’m good. Let’s just finish and go.”
bite down ch 2. - welcome to poinsette-clark state university!
[main story page]
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Sunday, October 4th
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“Could you please slow this Altima Hellcat down? Why are we acting like this road ain’t steep? Ari, baby, you won’t have to worry about your parents. You might not make it back to them with Jada flyin’ like a bat out of hell.”
“That sea level situation in NOLA traumatized you, because we aren’t even up that high. Calm down, I learned how to drive in Atlanta,” Jada said with a sweep of her long, mahogany waves, checking her mirrors before flipping the Nissan’s turn signal. She slid into the left lane to pass a gold Corolla that wasn’t traveling the winding mountain roads quickly enough.
Megan checked her seatbelt again, peering at the driver. “That’s the issue, Jada.”
Ariana didn’t say a word. She gripped the ‘oh shit’ handle and prayed that she wouldn’t die in Jada’s back seat.
At the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in upstate South Carolina sat Poinsette-Clark State University, an active, sprawling campus. The school was named for the ‘mother of the movement’ as coined by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., esteemed activist, educator, and South Carolina native Septima Poinsette-Clark.
The concept of a historically black college in their small city had initially frightened local non-black residents; they’d taken to the streets to violently protest its opening.
Despite this, PCSU opened its doors in 1925, met with what would become constant threats of more violence and hatred. There had even been arson during Ariana’s first year there; the school’s main arts building had mysteriously gone ablaze.
Only the culprit wasn’t a mystery at all; the deed had been carried out by a radical white supremacist who’d driven all the way up from Myrtle Beach. He was rotting away in prison somewhere in the midlands.
Thankfully, the fire hadn’t spread beyond the building; there had been no further damage to the surrounding southern gothic architecture, renowned designs by brilliant, innovative minds committed to campus pride. PCSU had done a fine job with the upkeep over time, never mind the kudzu reclaiming its territory along the sides of several buildings.
Landscapers be damned, there was no getting around that in the South.
The destroyed Arts Building had been rebuilt bigger and better, then renamed Boseman Hall in honor of the late, legendary SC-born and bred actor and HBCU alumni, Chadwick Boseman. She loved that building, and the SNS Club met weekly in one of its coveted meeting rooms.
Ariana had all but begged her parents to stay on campus following the fire; her dorm room trumped her household bedroom – which she loved – simply for being an hour away from her parents.
They were back on the same bullshit, talking about forcing Ariana to return home as if she wasn’t an adult following poor Sade’s demise. Ariana was her dormitory’s main residential advisor. She couldn’t abandon that, nor the Safety Net Sanctuary Club, especially not at such a crucial time.
The students were terrified. Mental health resources were more necessary than ever. She was all too aware of the kinds of things that put fear and justification hand-in-hand.
According to the whispers, Sageville Police weren’t any closer to finding the culprit, though Sade had been murdered a week ago.
“You do know they can’t actually make you do anything, right?” Jada asked Ariana as they sped toward a local box store. Aside from grabbing supplies for the candlelight vigil planned for later that night, the girls could restock their general supplies and always did so together, splitting packages and trading necessities. Nobody ever lacked Top Ramen, sanitary products, mascara, lash glue, dill pickles, or press-on nails.
Being broke college students didn’t determine their baddie status, Jada always said. Baddies did the best they could with what they had, in the words of the great Mariah Carey. Incidentally, her song ‘Breakdown’ blared through Jada’s rattling speakers.
“And you don’t wanna hurt Paris’s feelings, do you? You know he’d lose his mind if you moved off campus,” Megan added, staring out of the window and twirling the amethyst pendant she always wore between her fingers.
While she did have her own dorm room as an RA, she resided at home between semesters, and Paris still wasn’t allowed back there. Amir had caught them making out in Ariana’s bedroom when they were eighteen and threatened to castrate Paris if he ever showed his face again. Paris hadn’t come within a block of the place since.
“I’m not worried about him,” Ariana lied while wondering what he was doing. She had considered a ‘wyd’ text, but he hadn’t texted either. But if he was on her mind, wouldn’t it make sense to reach out? Then again, did she want to get involved in the back and forth with Paris Graham again?
“Lying ass,” Jada guffawed, briefly catching her friend’s eye in the rear view mirror.. “I’m clockin’ you. ‘Cause y’all were doing the most at the concert. Like I was almost embarrassed, it was getting that kinky.”
“Oh my god. Fuckin’ tequila, man,” Ariana groaned, covering her face, her cheeks warm. “I knew it. I really hoped I had just dreamed that.”
Megan smiled, her hands clasped and rested over her heart. “Dreamed it into reality. Aw! That’s so sweet. You and KiKi need to quit playin’, and get back to it already. Y’all are cute together. I love love.”
“Love. Please. Says the one in a marriage of convenience," Jada pointed out as she coasted the car into the store’s parking lot and whipped into a parking stall, narrowly avoiding an old couple standing near their Buick.
“This bitch gon’ kill us,” Ariana mumbled, fully expecting her life to soon flash before her eyes. “That’s sort of true. I’m sorry, Meg, but you act like you don’t even like August half the time. And I know for sure your parents don’t,” she added, still holding tight to her seat belt until Jada had powered off the engine.
During Megan’s parents’ first and only campus visit two years ago, Ariana had sat with the others through a painfully long, awkward dinner littered with mindless small talk at a restaurant downtown where fancy dress was required, and the regulars knew which fork to use when.
Things had taken an uncivilized turn when Megan’s father, Craig, had nearly come to blows with August. Craig Deschamps of Metairie wasn’t the most enlightened man, but he was usually the first to offer an opinion.
Though Megan knew the difference between table and salad forks, she didn’t really care and had long ago dismissed it as bullshit. She sighed, running her fingers through her hair, shaking out loose curls she’d just dyed ginger. “That’s not it. I do like him. I’m in love. And you’re right about my mama and daddy, but they’re ignorant as hell. He’s just so fucking… D1 sometimes.”
“I had one of those in high school. Tragic,” Jada said, grabbing her beloved black Coach bag from the back seat. She placed it in her lap and paused, pulling in a deep breath. Ariana had almost forgotten that Jada had lost a sister, she’d handled the loss with such grace. ”Lord, give me strength. Let’s go do this for my girl.” She forced a smile as her friends’ comforting hands landed on her shoulders and arms in an act of grounding.
“Let’s backtrack. What does acting D1 actually mean?”Ariana asked as the girls emerged into a chilly, wet, overcast afternoon. She’d heard the term before, but never bothered to dive deeper.
Megan’s head bobbed between Ariana’s and Jada’s shoulders as she drifted between her much taller friends. “Say if Paris played football, was kind of an asshole, and knew he’d get drafted eventually. Imagine how a man like that might act. Arrogant. Slutty. Entitled.”
“Oh yeah. That sounds like a nightmare. Paris is very slutty, by the way,” Ariana said, tugging an old PSCU hoodie over her head. “Not to slut shame, but…”
“No, I get you,” Jada said as they passed a group of classmates wheeling a shopping cart full of food and alcohol cases toward their car. “I’m not shamin’, either. This is coming from a factual place.”
Ariana scanned the faces of the students, pleased that she didn’t recognize them. She hated to bust up anyone’s party, but couldn’t ignore it in good conscience as a residential advisor. However, she couldn’t prove those seltzers were headed for campus, much less her dorm building, and minded her business.
“All three of ‘em are ran through, even August before you locked in,” Jada laughed as they breezed through automatic entrance doors and into a controlled climate. Well, somewhat controlled. There was a matter of a complete lack of control fostered by three children in hoodies, basketball shorts, long socks, and slides. Only these children were over twenty-one, at least six feet tall, and named Cairo, August, and Paris.
Cairo sat low on a tricycle intended for an actual child, his knees bent and chopping upward as he pedaled, cackling like a wild man. Rounding the corner from the next aisle over was August steering a small bike as he threw up gang signs, which may or may not have been related to any actual gangs; he was trailed by Paris, who rode a ten-speed and wore sunglasses with the tag still attached. They weren’t concerned with disturbing nice families doing their weekly grocery shopping.
“Look at their big asses on those tiny…” Ariana started, covering her mouth as Paris crashed into a display of round stuffed animals, its cardboard folding inward as the bike’s tire rammed into it. Paris’s massive frame flew over the handlebars and landed among the plushies. He shrieked the entire time, barely audible over Cairo and August’s screams.
“Record it, record it!” August said, cackling as Cairo whipped out his phone to capture the scene for all of his followers to see as Paris scrambled to free himself, getting nowhere fast as he shouted at the duo to stop filming. Never mind the other shoppers milling around, some amused, others mostly annoyed with the damn college kids.
“If I see this on TikTok, I promise we ain’t friends no more!” he shouted, a stuffed penguin headlocked.
“They are literally embarrassing as hell, oh my god,” Megan said as she walked in the opposite direction. “Let’s get what we need and get out of here before they see us.”
Wishful thinking. They’d grabbed baskets and buggies – yes, buggies– and shopped quickly. Groceries. Art supplies. They were almost done and hastily browsing the newest Wet n’ Wild shades when Cairo approached. He shrieked and threw his arms around Jada’s and Ariana’s shoulders, laughing as they screamed. “Y’all wasn’t gon’ say hey?”
“You scared the shit out of me,” Ariana muttered through clenched teeth, shoving her elbow into his side, knowing she was being a bit dramatic. But hell, was she? There was a murderer on the loose, no biggie. Her already rapid heart rate climbed higher as Paris showed up, brows knitted as he focused his phone. She prayed he wouldn’t sense it as they shared a customary side hug, which was always a little bit awkward. “Hey, you.”
“Wassup, baby, how you?” he asked, a smile spreading across his face.
Ariana hated herself and her weak ass knees. Baby. He called everybody that. It didn’t mean anything.
… it didn’t mean anything…?
“Hell no, we weren’t saying hi. Why would we?” Jada asked, shrugging Cairo’s sinewy arm from her shoulder. “We saw that silly shit y’all were doing.”
“Because we’re friends, and y’all shouldn’t be out here alone. Also, I could’ve caught a ride. AG thinks he’s funny doing all that Hellcat business, burning tires and shit. Who drove?”
Megan held two bottles of black nail polishes side by side, trying to decide which brand was the darkest. Ariana wouldn’t mention that they appeared the exact same shade. Megan nodded with a distracted hum. “Jada did.”
August had caught the tail end of the question as he’d approached and hugged his girlfriend’s slim waist as he received the answer. “Y’all were in danger either way, then.”
Jada plastered on a wide smile and flipped her middle finger in his direction. “Eat my ass, Saint. How long have y’all been in these people’s store playin’ around?”
“Like thirty minutes. There wasn’t shit to do on campus, and ever since Sade? The energy is dark as fuck, y’all. Like this shit ain’t over or somethin’,” he said, brows knitted. He wasn’t alone in that belief; the administration had implemented a temporary curfew of eleven PM and sent daily campuswide emails about buddy systems and campus safety.
Campus police presence had increased, sleek black SUVs with guard grills on guard at every entrance. Local news crews had damn near set up camp just off university property, and ignored the school’s warnings against interviewing students. Of course, far too many students had agreed to talk, enticed by the infamous fifteen minutes.
“Now you sound like this one,” Ariana said as she nudged Megan. She was their official ‘woo woo’ friend, and for all of their teasing, Megan’s discernment had proven itself time and time again.
“Y’all keep laughin’. When one of y’all wakes up bald, I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Wait a minute,” August said, fiddling with the tips of his beloved hair. “Would you really do somethin’ like that?”
“Don’t piss me off, and you’ll never have to find out,” Megan said, patting her boyfriend’s cheek as he pouted. “I know what you mean, ‘Ro. I still can’t believe she’s dead.”
“Her parents are torn up, real bad. That was the craziest thing ever. Like what the heck? What if that game had been in real time on tv?” Jada asked. A mere twenty-two second broadcasting delay had prevented the entire nation from witnessing the spectacle live on CSN, the College Sports Network. They’d pulled the plug at the sounds of a disturbance, the thud of Sade’s body crashing echoing through the stadium.
“Ain’t nobody seen Sergio in a week. I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped out,” Cairo said with a sad shrug. Sergio was a close friend to both him and Jada, and both of their lights dampened a bit whenever the doomed couple was mentioned. “He lost the love of his life, you know?”
“It’s fucked up, man. I feel bad for him and Sade. She was a good girl, she didn’t deserve that,” Paris said. He’d been questioned multiple times following the incident, seeing as how his call had been the last to reach Sade’s phone. He'd been cleared of any wrong doing – thank goodness for constant surveillance… right? – but Ariana knew it was eating him up inside. Which was why he’d been avoiding prolonged eye contact to prevent her from reading him.
Ariana’s bad night had paled in comparison to Sade’s. Shit, it’d been a cakewalk. Her parents had just pissed her off a little. The other girl was lying in a soft, fresh plot underground. It was astonishing and surreal, a dead body on campus. Poor Sade. Poor damn Sade. Ariana made a mental note to grab some flowers. They’d never truly formed a friendship outside of niceties, but she still deserved proper mourning.
“I’m still seeing that shit in my nightmares, I swear,” August said. “If I think about it too long, it starts to mess with me, and I had to come to the store anyway, so. Here we are.”
“I definitely wasn’t driving three hours to the Chuck just to come right back. You know Sundays are boring on campus. That Christian chicken place ain’t even open.”
Sundays in the Bible Belt meant heavy traffic, hour-long waits at local restaurants (unless you went to Cookout or something), and packed church parking lots. Not to mention, the students returning in droves from weekend parlays; everyone was always exhausted and recovered quietly indoors, and in turn, the campus became a ghost town. PCSU students hailed from all over the South; aside from the Carolina natives, others enrolled from Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and even as far as Texas. A PCSU degree was a heavyweight continentwide.
“That chicken is not that good,” Paris said, sinking down into the empty basket of an ownerless shopping cart. He was, as Ariana said, always just doing shit. “My mama’s chicken is better than that.”
“You would say that. You wouldn’t know decent seasoning if it punched you in the head,” Jada teased with a laugh.
Paris made a face. “Hold on now. My mama uses seasonings. Heavy on the Lawry’s.”
“Lawry’s is law. And that Slap Ya Mama stuff,” Cairo said, doing a poor job of hiding the fact that he was watching Jada’s every move with fascination shining in his bright eyes. “My grandpa won’t use anything else.”
“Wait. That Jesus chicken is your holy grail?” Ariana asked Jada, who was testing out polishes on her bare nails.
Jada shrugged. “I didn’t say that. I was just wondering how he’d know.”
“Now don’t do that,” Ariana said, losing the battle not to be first to defend him. Sometimes, Jada didn’t think before she spoke. Well, most of the time. The truth usually just projectile vomited itself from her mouth. Her truths, anyway. “Ms. Brianna’s chicken is good!”
Paris rolled his eyes, letting his head fall back against the cart’s rail as he sighed. “No, because if I’m keepin’ it a buck, I’m tired of you acting like I’m diluted or something.”
“Oh? I never said anything like that,” Jada said, leaning back as the tension expanded the space between them. “It’s just jokes, friend.”
“Well. That got awkward fast,” Ariana stated the obvious, anything to keep from rehashing a long-running, slightly tired discussion that usually triggered high tempers. “Let’s move on.”
“Thank you, Ariana,” Paris said, nodding in her direction. He then turned a pointed look onto the group, bringing his fingertips together. “Between this and KiKi, I might snap,” Paris barked with zero bite. Not only was he not going to snap, he was also immediately distracted by the petite girl with waist-grazing locs politely skirting past in fitted yoga pants and cropped tee, a cloud of Victoria’s Secret Bombshell lingering as she walked towards the Afro combs and boar-bristle brushes.
“Excuse me,” she said softly, smiling as she glanced at Paris, her smile spreading as she shyly giggled and locked eyes with him. Ariana pitied her. Another one bit the dust.
“Damn,” Cairo uttered under his breath, briefly distracted as his gaze followed her too before quickly returning to Jada as if she’d demanded his attention, though she hadn’t uttered another word.
August stepped into Megan’s space. “Paris ain’t gonna do nothin’. Especially since he just saw somethin’ he likes. Babe, don’t you wanna cook for us tonight?”
“No.” Megan looked directly at each one of her friends, physically leaving those sad puppy faces on read. “Now y’all are draggin’ it. No, you beggin’ bastards! And we should probably get out of this aisle having discussions about chicken for so many reasons. Dumbass ones, but reasons all the same,” she said as a group of students from a different local college roughhoused down the main aisle, cackling and jostling one another around. Wofford College, according to the ringleader’s t-shirt.
Ariana tugged her sweatshirt’s hood over her low ponytail, and then down onto her forehead. She had the best friends in the world. The absolute best at triggering ‘The Office’ style glances into an imaginary camera multiple times per gathering.
“You right. It’s a choice, and I’m ready to get gone anyway,” Cairo said, pushing up from where he leaned against a shelf housing Carol’s Daughter, Luster’s Pink Lotion, and Cantu bottles, a nearby jar of Blue Magic tumbling to the floor from the movement. He bent to retrieve it, and only Ariana noticed the embarrassment warming his cheeks. He’d restored his game face when he stood upright. “If Miss Jada here is done, that is.”
“I’m done,” Jada said, dropping the last of a handful of nail polish bottles into her basket, their glass surfaces clinking. She’d do magic, paint a Picasso with two dollar nail polish. It wasn’t about the tools, she’d always say. It was about intention. And from the day a thirteen year old Jada learned the value of social capital and decided that perfection was the cheat code, she’d moved accordingly.
August leaned in and peppered kisses to his girlfriend’s freckled cheek. “I’ll pay for it. Dinner and drinks on me. We’ll make Cairo help you,” he said, offering up his friend’s services. August rolled his eyes as Jada handed her over her basket, which was packed to the brim.
“Since I did touch up his hair for free last week. Let’s go get the rest, so that our generous big homie can pay for that.”
“I work at Foot Locker. What the hell do I look like? The Monopoly man?”
Paris was wiggling his way free from the cart, huffing and puffing. “Sometimes when your eye gets to leanin’ after you’ve been drinking–”
“Paris, shut the fuck up.”
Paris laughed as he landed on his feet, hands stuffed into the pouch of his Virginia State hoodie while he strolled toward the aisle’s end to get to know Miss Bombshell better. Ariana shook her head, storing away the jealousy burning her insides. Especially since she didn’t truly have any right to be. She pretended that the phone in her hand was the most interesting thing around after meeting Megan’s empathetic gaze.
“Y’all, don’t piss AG off, because I don’t wanna hear him whine all night. I do want a wine cooler and a nineties r&b mix, stat,” Cairo said, two-stepping and snapping to the soft rock playing at a reasonable volume over the store’s speakers.
“It’s still funny that you get lit from a couple of wine coolers,” Ariana said, extending her arm and noiselessly placing a few shades of eyeliner into the basket in August’s hand while his attention was elsewhere. She then joined Cairo’s dance party, bumping his slim hip with her fuller one to the song’s beat.
“I need a boost when the vibes are as fucked up as they are now. I don’t know, man. I skinny as hell, it don’t take much,” Cairo said (in Charleston-Speak) with a resigned, melancholic sigh as he checked out his own tall, thin frame. Jada brushed against said frame as she headed for the end of the aisle, texting. Cairo’s entire body perked upon contact, his lips pursed as his eyes fluttered closed. He was never beating the Jada Simp allegations.
Megan reconsidered August’s offer – especially after he’d successfully Ratatouille’d Paris too – and nudged the shopping cart toward him with a sweet smile. Yet had come the day Megan Deschamps would pass up free food or alcohol. She was known as The Bourbon Street Bandit. The tourists were especially generous toward the locals, drunk on liquor, lore, and a good time. She saved her own money for Westbank. “Well, in that case…”
+
“Gas is too high to drive two cars to the same place just to flex on each other,” Jada said, shaking her head as Paris carefully closed the door to his beloved 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, its rose gold candy paint and gold Dayton wire wheels known campuswide. An alarming amount of women wanted to ride shotgun. Many had tried, few had succeeded. Then there was Ariana, who had driven it countless nights when he’d had too much, or wanted to play passenger princess.
“That would mean he was capable of flexin’ on me,” August said, whistling as he took the shopping bags from Megan’s hands, then closed his own car’s door where it was parked in reverse beside the Cutlass. He then clicked the fob to lock his baby, a two year old hunter green, supercharged wide body Dodge Challenger Hellcat on midnight black rims. Specks of rain, gnats, and dust swarmed through the illumination of the high-powered headlights. “And he ain’t, so…”
“You are still so delusional. It’s sad to see, baby, for real,” Paris drawled, locking the older model with its key. He’d inherited the Cutlass from his uncle Mike and had logged the man hours to fix and maintain it, the car in pristine condition in Brianna’s brother’s memory. “Ol’ Hot Wheels headass boy–”
“Unc, please don’t start with me.”
“Unc? Nigga, you’re older than me! That’s aight. We’ll settle this later,” Paris decided as he helped Ariana out of the passenger seat. She’d decided that his driving was less likely to harm her than Jada’s. Cairo had been all too pleased to trade places. Also, Ariana had just really wanted to ride with him. Their music choices had always aligned and ranged from Future to Fleetwood Mac. Not to mention Paramore. Fucking Paramore.
“How many times are we gonna have to hear this argument?” Ariana questioned, met with blank stares and silence before they resumed bickering. “Oh okay, just fuck me, then.”
“We can’t take y’all nowhere,” Megan said as she marched behind Jada and Cairo toward Jada’s off campus apartment building. She turned to the boys. “Come on, and be quiet. Act like you’ve been outside the slums, hear?"
The building, like the majority of the campus, partially sat on former plantation land, a fact that Ariana’s bones never let her forget. She followed Megan as the odd cries of barred owls sounded, owls whose talons were wrapped around jagged branches, keeping them hidden among the trees. Its screech sliced through the crisp air while the earth crunched underneath sneakers.
The dark blackgum trees surrounding the property were allegedly alive, haunted by restless, justifiably angry spirits of the enslaved. Those who hadn’t been able to escape. Those to whom freedom had been completely denied.
Some swore they heard their desperate, anguished cries in the woods. Others heard rabid, angry hounds howling, the cracks of rifles ending lives, the clanging of rusted lanterns and slams of running boots to the ground. The ‘ting’ of iron railroad spikes being hammered into the ground by shackled Black hands. The chains and rustling of shackled Black feet.
There were even reports of faint whistles from ghost trains; the railroad tracks running parallel to the forest had long ago gone out of commission.
The soft grounds were still soaked from sporadic bursts of rain that had poured throughout the day, darkened sidewalks covered in loose leaves that retained traces of harvest yellows and greens and browns. Acorns were scattered here and there, which the infamous campus deer pack would graze in the dead of the night.
That was usually around the time that the crew left, unless the girls stayed behind to sleep over, which was often. Jada hated to be alone. Ariana’s overnight bag had been in the guest bedroom for the last few days; she’d spent more time at Jada’s than at her own place. An especially rough week would culminate that night.
August and Paris were still arguing when they’d filed into Jada’s two-bedroom place. Visitors were greeted Leo-style by bold florals and animal prints, bursts of yellows, oranges, and golds throughout. Ariana loved that she kept the place spotless. She could learn a thing or two from Jada about organization, given her cluttered dorm room.
Compartmentalization had never been Ariana’s strength . Everything at Jada’s had its place. Shoes were left at the door, and deviation from her rules would be met with profanity.
“Cairo, put your fuckin’ feet on my couch, and I’ll end you,” she said, emerging from the bedroom wearing her comfort uniform, an Atlanta Hawks t-shirt and bicycle shorts. The rest of the group slipped out of their shoes in the small foyer while gripping each other’s arms for leverage.
“Damn, she’s strict,” Cairo said, wincing as he sat down. He grabbed the remote, did some clicking around, and then the Living Single theme song blared from the television. “I wasn’t gonna put my feet on nothin’!”
“Ooh, in a nineties kind of world–
I’m glad I got my girls!”
Ariana just watched as Paris sang along, giggling as he climbed an octave. His voice was anointed. He’d transformed the sitcom theme into a hymn. And wasn’t it gospel?
Culture channeled through a queen? Wasn’t the silhouette of the rooftop dancer a show of praise? This was why Ariana had called some things into question. If it was divine, wasn’t femininity involved? Why was the church so patriarchal?
And though Ariana had tried to dismiss any recollection of the homecoming concert, she could never unhear the music that was the way he groaned her name when she had kissed his neck.
Jada headed for the kitchen. “Paris, come on. Megan needs help. We only have a few hours to get everything done.”
Paris had cooking skills. She blamed him for the Freshman Fifteen she’d held onto for the last three years. As the fourth and middle child of seven children, poverty had bred his creativity early. The family had never had much to work with, so he’d learned early to stretch very little into enough for his three brothers and three sisters.
Though he wasn’t the oldest, he had been the most responsible when it counted, and their parents had worked full-time jobs. Brianna worked days, and Tyler was on the night shift. Paris had been (and still was) mom or dad, whichever role needed fulfilling. Three of his siblings were still in high school.
Paris looked up from his phone with pursed lips, dazed and confused. He blinked hard. “Why am I being volun-told what to do?”
Cairo yawned, rubbing his eyes while he slouched on the couch. “AG offered your services while you were talkin’ to homegirl at the store.”
“I just came to eat,” he said, but complied, joining the kitchen sink hand-washing line; the trio would prepare a Sunday dinner that Ariana would spend the next week fondly remembering. On the menu? Fried chicken, Carolina red rice, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, and collard greens. Her stomach growled. No wonder Erica was so damn mad all the time. Deprivation was difficult.
“Hurry up and go, man, damn,” August said, ducking as Paris swung his fist on his way past. “That memorial ain’t too far off, we can’t miss that.”
Jada and Cairo, along with the band and the Greeks, had planned a vigil for Sade beside the lake near the chapel. PSCU’s students had been invited to join in honoring Sade’s life. Her family had buried her two days prior in her hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina, but it felt appropriate tethering her to a place where she’d lived so much life. Last week’s classes had been canceled, but they’d resume the next day, and life would go on. It seemed cruel that the world kept spinning.
“You’re back on the field Saturday, right?” Ariana asked as she settled onto the love seat beside August. Understandably, the football team’s last game had been rescheduled, considering that the stadium had been a crime scene.
“Yeah. It’s gon’ be weird as hell,” August said, rubbing his chin as he shook his head, sorrow in his dark eyes. “Whole team still fucked up off the whole thing. I figured they would wait a lil’ bit longer, but college football is money.”
Capitalism trumped the right thing usually. Homecoming would be forever marred by the tragedy. And although Ariana felt the need to pay her respects, that memorial was the last place she wanted to go. Roaming campus without being gawked at was impossible. Where there was Paris, there was Ariana, whether she actually was or not, and being questioned by police was reason enough for people to make up their damn minds.
“Damn, every video I see is about PSCU,” Cairo said, lying on his back as he scrolled social media timelines.
“Well somebody did die, Cairo.”
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Saint, thank you. I just still can’t believe it, and people won’t leave me alone. I had to turn off my damn comments.”
“I’m sorry, ‘Ro,” Ariana said, frowning as she leaned over to hug him. The band members spent a great deal of time together, and were all clearly close. She couldn’t imagine being in Cairo’s shoes. Not that she wasn’t getting her share of bullshit comments on social media, too.
He returned the hug, patting her back. “I ‘preciate that, but I don’t wanna think about it. Wine coolers, I’m on that. Ari? Go ahead and roll up, big dawg.”
Ariana glanced at the box containing ‘the shit’, Tales From the Hood-style. Jada kept her stash full for her friends, though she rarely smoked. That was trust. That was love.
“You know I’m not very good at that.”
“And you ain’t gon’ get no better unless you practice. Let’s go,” he said, snapping his fingers before darting out of reach. He strolled toward the kitchen to retrieve his libations. And to get yelled at for being in the way and unauthorized food sampling too, probably.
“Come on. I’ll run through this with you one more time, Ariana,” August said. He, like Jada, rarely smoked. Yet nobody rolled a tighter blunt. “I need a fuckin’ buzz.”
Ariana sighed as August gathered the supplies and set up to run the tutorial back. “Why don’t y’all just use those Raw cones?”
Cairo laughed when he returned carrying a strawberry wine cooler and a handful of grated cheese, catching the end of Ariana’s question. “Our people don’t do that. This ain’t Furman.”
Megan poked her head in from the kitchen. “We are not a monolith. We don’t have to all do the same things–
Paris groaned, his head falling back as he paused grating the cheese, as he’d been Cairo’s victim of choice. “Political Science, please give it a damn rest!”
“Y’all be wantin’ me to shut up, but can’t ever say I’m wrong, though!” Megan pointed with the knife in her hand as she turned on him. “And I don’t know who the fuck you think I am, but lower that tone, Paris–”
He glanced warily at the knife’s tip that was precariously close to his nose, then swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his eyes met Megan’s. “Hey, real quick. Reach the top shelf, and then I’ll consider shuttin’ up.”
August shook his head. “That boy got balls of steel.”
“Shut up, August. And you,” she said, turning back to Paris, “do you wanna get cut?” she asked, twirling the knife.
“Show me!”
Ariana tuned out the ensuing argument as she slid down to the floor and resumed her seat beside August, crossing her legs. Rolling materials were spread on the glass coffee table. She could do this. How hard could it be? The boys could do it. But then again, they were teaching her. Annoying.
“Those cones burn too fast, fuck up the rotation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, girl,” August said with a laugh. “But they are good when there’s one or two people.”
Cairo had started rolling a second one. Sessions were that much more effective when the rotation was constant. “I still wanna know how you roll the tightest blunts this side of the Mississippi, but don’t even really smoke.”
“I’ll tell you,” August said, waiting until Cairo sat up straight with wide eyes. Would they finally get an answer? A glimpse into August’s past?
Ariana doubted it, but still sort of hoped they would. Even she waited with bated breath for August to speak. He took his sweet time, however, deliberately tearing open a pack of Backwoods.
“I’ll tell you the same shit I said last time,” he started, clearing the guts into a waiting ashtray. “That’s my business.”
Cairo rolled his eyes and waved him off. He then watched Ariana struggle for a while under August’s guidance. “That’s a shame.”
August rubbed his hands tiredly over his face as Ariana did the exact opposite of what he’d just asked her to do. “I say roll it this way, girl!”
“Yell at me again, AG.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should’ve started with Swishers. Y’all are doing advanced rolling, that ain’t even her ministry. Y’all know her mama and daddy wasn’t leaving her alone long enough to sniff a blunt, much less roll one.”
“What’s with everybody clockin’ me lately? Like damn, let me live,” Ariana said, her upper lip curled as she turned on August. He leaned back, hands raised in surrender.
“I didn’t even say it!”
“Your silence was compliance,” Ariana said. The truth was anybody that crossed her path could catch it, nobody was safe. The problem was that when Ariana took it there, she genuinely dragged it. By the time she was satisfied, she’d gone too far. Repression and shit, according to Melanie, her last psychiatrist. “Shut up, Cairo. That’s the only warning you get.”
“Always you quiet ones people gotta watch,” Cairo said, casting a wary, sideways glance at his fuming, fire-eyed female friend. “You not gon’ hit me, are you?”
Paris barrelled through the kitchen door on his way to the restroom, humming to himself. He surveyed the scene, eyes darting between his friends until they rested on Ariana. Her cheekbones were especially pronounced, her dark eyes filled to the brim with emotion.
“Now which one of y’all done pissed her off?”
“On God, it was him,” August swore, pointing at Cairo, drilling the tip of his pointer finger against Cairo’s temple. “I didn’t say nothin’ about her parents, this one went that way–”
“You took it there. Mm. Wow. Ariana, baby, come with me,” Paris said, reaching for her hands, pulling her onto her feet as her palms met his.
Ariana stood still, a barely contained rage simmering just beneath the surface. She heard Paris making demands, but didn’t truly listen. It was only once the damp breeze brushed her cheek and the twinkle of wind chimes hit her ears did she register that she was outside on Jada’s balcony.
Damp leaves littering the balcony crunched underneath her feet. She glanced to her left, rejoining reality as she absorbed Paris’s presence. He was lighting up a RAW cone, pulling just enough to ignite the ember, and immediately handed it over.
“It’s yours–”
“Hit it, Ari.”
He wouldn’t have to tell her twice. The biggest indicator that she was losing it? The fact that he could tell her to do anything at all and expect her to listen. It didn’t feel like a battle worth choosing, so she pulled, orange tip glowing in the dim balcony lights.
August had been right. The effects hit almost immediately. Sure, she was a lightweight, but it had burned much faster. With those in existence, what difference did it make if she ever learned how to roll?
And why the hell had their usual back and forth made her so mad?
“It’s getting bad again,” Ariana said after her third hit, returning the joint as she exhaled smoke, watching it curl towards the dusky sky. “And I’m probably imagining it, but you kind of smell like Bombshell, and that’s pissing me off, too.”
“What the hell is Bombshell?”
Ariana swallowed the lump in her throat, thanking her lucky stars he didn’t follow. She’d have never even brought the girl up in her right mind. “Never mind.”
He pinched the front of his t-shirt and lifted it, sniffing. “Well, wait a minute, now. I quit using that aluminum-free stuff–”
“It’s not a bad smell. Forget it, P,” Ariana said with a tired laugh. Of the many sides of her emotions soaring so high? The descent was a motherfucker. She took another pull, then returned the cone to him. “Thank you.”
“Are you taking your meds, Ari?”
“Yes. You don’t have to ask me that, I know what I have to do–”
Paris’s gentle, slow, southern cadence cut into her budding tirade. “Honey, it’s just me.” He wasn’t the enemy. He never had been.
She was sick of being in the dark. Or being in the gray area, anyway. It wasn’t bipolar disorder. It wasn’t ADHD. Generalized anxiety disorder and depression were mixed up somewhere in there, but her doctors still hadn’t pinpointed a damn thing.
“I just wanna know. You gotta take care of yourself.” Then, he smoked some more.
A few minutes more into the session, he was humming. He had the smoothest rasp that had hit Ariana square in the center of her heart from the moment she’d heard it. Back after the homecoming dance during high school sophomore year while they sat on the curb in front of their school waiting for Tyler to pick them up.
Slouched to the right, his head in hands, and bored out of his mind, Paris had sung Leon Bridges’ ‘Coming Home’ and instead of laughing, Ariana was impressed. Where’d he get that voice from?
He’d taught her to project. To breathe, to sit up straight and use her diaphragm. She’d taught him control. Slightly fewer vocal runs (and god, were his smooth and effortless), more exploration of his range, because it was wider than he realized.
He sang ‘I Belong To You’, his grandmother’s favorite song. Ariana sang with him as they smoked the joint down. Their ranges? Matches made in heaven. It was fun. It was easy. It assured Ariana that she and Paris would always, somehow, be okay.
By the time he’d launched into his loudest and most ridiculous Rance Allen impression, she was laughing to tears. “Stop!”
The funniest part? He sounded damn good.
“What? I thought we was doin’ this shit.”
“Mmhmm. We were, then you had to do the most.”
“I’m good at that. Real good,” he said with a smile, nodding his head. “What did Cairo say?”
“That’s the thing. He's always saying shit like that, and it doesn’t usually bother me,” she said with a shrug, raising the sleeve of her hoodie to scratch her arm. The light drag of her fingertips was her newest method of self-soothing. It was better than the last method. She could still feel the faint scars on her wrists. “It just got under my skin.”
“Whatever you do, please don’t do that,” he said as he reached out to touch her wrist, gently rubbing his thumb across the scars. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking; that same horrified, disturbed look was on his face like it had been a year ago. Ariana had been almost fully under that night as the blood seeped from her wrist, but had caught a glimpse just before she’d passed out.
The last time she’d taken a blade to her arms, she’d cut too deep. A worried Paris had shown up at her dorm just in time to find her bleeding out after she’d ignored his calls and texts all day. She’d been in and out of consciousness the entire time, but some things within the chaos would forever live in her head.
Like Paris repeatedly asking the paramedics if she was going to live, pajama-clad Megan and Jada running across campus to get to her as she was wheeled from the building, the roar of August’s engine as he and Cairo had sped into the parking lot, jumping out before the car even fully stopped. Why had Paris sent an SOS in the group chat? Why had he called everyone multiple times?
“She tried to kill herself. Why the fuck would she do somethin’ like that? I’m bouta lose it, bruh. I gotta call her mama.”
Ariana sometimes wondered if Paris had known that she’d heard his frantic voice tearfully explaining to August as they loaded her into the ambulance. She’d broken his heart, and a brokenhearted Paris was especially tragic. The weather often aligned with his mood. Rain had poured the entire five days she’d spent in the hospital.
The armchair next to her bed had never been empty. Though Amir and his long-running grudge had tried to keep him away, he couldn’t outright ban him from a public hospital, and Paris had spent every night by her side, holding her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said like she had a thousand times before. There wasn’t enough remorse in the world. She’d never be sorry enough, she realized. Though the incident was over a year behind them, it lingered like an unrelenting ghost.
Even to the day, he had never responded to that phrase. Paris wasn’t much of a liar, and he wasn’t open to accepting that apology. “I’m just glad you’re still here.”
“You know, you never tell me it’s okay when I say that I’m sorry for that.”
“Because it pissed me off that you felt like you didn’t deserve to be here. Still does. So keep it,” was all he said.
Ariana had long ago accepted that. “I have to get this under control. I don’t want everybody to feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me.”
“If I can help, let me know,” he said, quiet until she’d finally granted him attention. “I’m serious, Ariana.”
“I hear you.” Truthfully, she was terrified at the thought of losing herself again. And being all alone if it did happen.
“Looks like they’re on the way to the chapel,” he said as a group of Gamma girls lugged supplies down a nearby sidewalk. “I feel for Jada. She loved her some damn Sade.”
And while Ariana knew that no, he hadn’t been in love with Sade, her death affected him a bit more than he let on. The recollection of the suicide attempt definitely hadn’t helped. Not to mention that Paris had initially been pinned as a person of interest given that the last calls from and to Sade had involved him somehow. He’d been cleared, but the damage was done. “What was she like?”
“Mean,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head. He leaned forward, his free hand rubbing his neck. “At least until you got past that, then she was cool. Funny. She knew what she wanted out of life, for sure. I see why she got along with Jada. ”
“I’m sorry you lost her, too,” Ariana said, reaching for his hand, giving his palm a squeeze.
“Thank you.”
A moment later came the Sigmas, carrying folding chairs by the armload. Where there were Gammas, Sigmas weren’t far behind. Of course, they were just as involved; they’d lost one of their own. Ariana didn’t know many of the Greeks personally, but she recognized a few of them.
There was Inez Gibson, Sade’s lifelong best friend and another head majorette, carrying bags of long, tapered candles. She walked beside Josiah and Josiah’s friend, Reece Polite. Like all Sigmas and Gammas, they were conventionally attractive. The standard was unwritten officially, but unofficially, stood a better chance of being chosen if they were good-looking.
“I’m surprised Jada didn’t come and cuss at you for not being in the kitchen.”
The patio door flew open. “Paris! I already told you I have shit to do. I gotta get these boards together for the vigil. My printer smells my fear, and it’s not working. What are you doing?”
Paris sat back, chuckling. “I’m too high for you to hurt me, Jada.”
Ariana cut in. “It’s my fault. I needed a minute, and he helped me out.”
“Oh. Well, okay then. We do need to hurry up, though. Come come,” Jada said, twirling on her heels to go inside.
Paris stubbed the cone in a nearby ashtray. “See how she do me? Let me go be useful. I’ll distract them.”
Ariana especially hated being perceived post pop-off. Those moments were few and far between, but the shame lasted forever. Hell, it wasn’t as if Cairo had been lying. Her parents had never given her much room to breathe. Maybe the fact that he hadn’t been lying was why she’d blown up?
By the time she worked up the courage to return, the boys were knee-deep in a nineties tv show debate. August had crowned The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as the winner. Cairo was passionately disagreeing.
“I’m telling y’all Moesha was the shit, okay? If I played that music that comes on when she writes in her journal, bet you’d lose your mind right now.”
“Fair enough,” August said.
“... Aye, that lil bop is kinda smooth, though, won’t lie,” Paris said, making his way to the kitchen.
“What bop?”
“Moesha’s diary music. When she’s all introspective and what not.”
“Oh. Yeah, that beat slaps,” Jada agreed.
“Dude!” Ariana cried as Paris detoured, rushing past her and toward the bathroom.
“I had to pee like twenty minutes ago!”
Ariana crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall adjoining the kitchen, watching her friends prepare food. For all of her complaining, Megan’s labor was one of love every time she fed them. Ariana recalled friendless grade school days when they’d written off the girl who always wore black and weird jewelry as a weirdo and started a smear campaign that had followed her through high school graduation.
She wasn’t entirely convinced that the campaign was finished, but in her friends’ presence, none of that mattered. They loved and accepted each other, and Ariana still couldn’t believe her luck.
Jada set a probing gaze on her as she approached the nearby fridge for the milk. “You good?”
“Yeah. I overreacted, but I’m good now,” Ariana said, and accepted the hug that Jada slipped around her shoulders. “I’m fine.”
“Alright, as long as you’re good. But you know we’re here if you’re not.”
Ariana smiled. “I know.”
She caught sight of a tri-folded sheet of paper stuck to the fridge with a magnet from a local law firm. The notice swung closer as Megan opened the refrigerator's door. The power company’s name and the words ‘overdue’ printed in red ink caught Ariana’s attention; she quickly looked away. Jada would absolutely tweak if she knew that she’d been found out. She wondered how to ensure that Jada knew they were there for her, too, without stepping on Jada’s pride.
Half an hour later, the food was almost ready. They were just waiting on the cornbread to bake. Then, it was chow time.
While they waited, the backwoods went into rotation. They’d swapped Living Single for YouTube, and GoldLink’s ‘Crew’ played instead. The patio door was cracked just so; smoking wasn’t allowed in the building. They’d spent the last three years carelessly breaking that rule.
Jada sighed. “Let me hit it.”
“Hit what?” Megan asked, glancing between Jada and the blunt in her hand.
“The blunt, Meg!”
“Since when?”
“Dire times, man. I need to be high to deal with this,” she said as she perused Sade’s photo. The photo was months old, taken during a fundraising car wash they’d organized in hopes to afford new uniforms. Sade had never even gotten to perform in hers; at least not without someone pulling strings. Who’d puppeteered her over that scoreboard? “There’s so much going on. I’m struggling.”
The confession hung in the weed-tinged air. Jada didn’t have problems, as far as anyone knew. Well, as far as she’d let anyone know, anyhow.
“You?” Cairo asked.
“Me,” Jada said, replacing the cap of the marker she’d been using to etch Sade’s name onto the poster board she was crafting and accepted the blunt Megan handed her. “I’m the head majorette now, and that comes with its own set of problems. Then, everything keeps going up. My 529 is fightin’ for its life.”
“I get you, because I’m doin’ Sergio’s job now. Do you need help with anything?” Cairo continued, choosing his words carefully as he probed with empathetic eyes. “You know I got you…”
Jada smiled at him. He seemed just as surprised as anyone else that she hadn’t snapped. “Thank you, Cairo. That’s sweet. I’m good for now,” she decided, taking a hit and holding the smoke for a few seconds before exhaling. “I’m just talkin’.”
“I’ll go check on the food,” Megan said, glancing out of the windows as she walked past. “I see people goin’ to the chapel.”
Jada sat up after hearing this news, yanked back into reality. “I need to be one of them in about an hour. I’m supposed to meet up with Josiah.”
August’s features screwed up in disgust. “I don’t like his ass.”
Cairo finished his second wine cooler and sat the bottle down beside his socked feet, wiping his mouth. “What did he do to you?”
“He knows better.”
“Then what is it?”
August shrugged with crossed arms, shaking his head, one side of his mouth lifted in repulsion. “He just rubs me the wrong way. I ain’t the most humble dude, I know that, but goddamn. He might actually think he’s God.”
Cairo shrugged, mainly because he couldn’t refute that well and widely-known fact. “He asked me why y’all didn’t pledge when I did.”
“Because I hate that mufucka, next question.”
Paris shook his head. “Don’t even look this way. I love it for you, but that frat shit just ain’t for me.”
“You don’t want brotherhood, brother?” Cairo asked with a hard slap to Paris’s shoulder. He jerked backwards as Paris winced and bucked at him. With raised hands, he grinned. “I’m on a mission to piss everybody in this room off at least once today, sorry.”
“Don’t forget that I have three brothers, miss me with that brotherhood shit. I hate them bitches, too. Glad they went back to Alabama.” Paris’s family had decided to return to Birmingham during his high school junior year, but he’d begged to stay with his uncle in Sageville instead.
Though Michael’s trailer had been old and small, he’d welcomed his nephew with open arms, as well as Ariana whenever she visited. His uncle Michael had been the sweetest man. Meals on Wheels, soup kitchens, shelters… poverty had never become between him and volunteering time and energy into those things.
His untimely death had tipped Paris’s already unbalanced, homesick scale; it’d been the catalyst to his decision to leave Virginia State. Ariana understood why Paris missed Michael so much.
Paris’s brothers Andre, Rodrick, and D’Wayne had always been assholes. He always said that his big brothers had never fulfilled that role, instead becoming his first bullies. The youngest of the four boys, Rodrick, hadn’t hesitated to push Paris into the fire in order to save himself from the heat, and often joined the attacks. Ariana understood why Paris loathed them so much.
“The Sigma parties be lit. They basically run PCSU. I don’t get why y’all wouldn’t wanna be involved,” Cairo said, shaking his head. “Ask Jada.”
August stroked his chin as if he pondered a deep thought. “I’ma go out on a limb here and assume you really tryna join because Jada’s a Gamma.”
“That’s not the reason, but it don’t hurt. Paris, your ho ass should be first in line, ‘cause girls will fall into your lap.”
That sort of hung in the air for a while.
“Please excuse me from the narrative.”
August had never been as nice. “Fuck them, okay?”
Cairo rubbed his stomach and burped obnoxiously. “That’s all right. Don’t ask me about the guest list when I’m finally on the money team.”
August looked up from blocking yet another nosy ass person asking inappropriate questions in his DMs. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they really had a guest list.”
“They really do have a guest list,” Jada interjected, laughing. “They can be extra, but they’re harmless.”
Paris’s head whipped toward Cairo in delayed offense. “Hold on, did you call me a ho? Let’s not, community dick–”
“Don’t start none, won’t be none!” Cairo shouted, pointing his finger, raising it once more after Paris slapped it aside.
“Honestly, both of y’all should keep MyChart results on hand,” Ariana said, snickering as August let out a long, ignorant howl. She laughed harder as both boys mugged her.
Megan leaned in from the kitchen. “The cornbread is finished. “Babe, you want everything?”
“I do. Thank you, baby,” August said, catching his breath, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“I’ll come help,” Jada said, slowly getting to her feet. “Whoo. Shit’s spinnin’. I hope everybody wants some of everything because that’s what I’m putting on these plates.”
“...I‘m not in the mood for cornbread or greens at this time, but I’m really scared to say it now,” Paris told Ariana, who offered a sympathetic shoulder pat as she listened and didn’t judge.
“Hey. Megan be fixin’ your plates?” Cairo asked August.
“Yes?”
“I thought she was a feminist.”
August rolled his eyes. “This is how I know you don’t know what a feminist is. You think I ain’t learned nothin’ from being with her?”
“Then can somebody explain it to me like I’m five?”
“What don’t we already have to explain to you like you’re five?” Ariana asked, cracking herself up in the process. In turn, she got Paris started, August cracked, and then the three leaned on each other laughing their asses off.
Cairo watched his friends in disdain, sneering. “It ain’t that fuckin’ funny, now.”
Megan sighed as she returned with a loaded plate. “Feminism is about equality and freedom to choose. If that girl doesn’t want to be a wife and/or a mother, that’s her business. If that girl does, that’s her business, as long as nobody’s judging each other. I wish ‘em both the best of luck, as someone okay with either fate. Besides, I do this kind of thing for him because he does them for me.”
“You so smart, boo. Please tell him. Thank you,” August said, accepting the plate and Megan’s kiss to his cheek. “You need to get you a woman, let her teach you somethin’. Accept that they know more than us.”
“I’m tryin’! She don’t want me,” Cairo added with a whisper. A mostly pointless whisper. Everybody knew he was in love with Jada Cunningham. Including Jada Cunningham.
Paris re-lit the nearest blunt. “You ain’t movin’ right. If you wanted to impress her, you’d be in that kitchen helpin’ her out.”
“My grandma always says that laziness gon’ be the death of me. I should go, right? I’ma go,” he said, stumbling on lightweight-drunk legs as he stood and wandered into the kitchen.
“Pray for y’alls boy,” Ariana said with a sympathetic shake of the head. Patience was not Jada’s strength, and the ultimate Patience Tester had just hunted her down.
Thankfully, he survived and the group enjoyed a meal together. Jada only fussed once, and it was at Paris, whose cornbread and greens remained after he’d smashed everything else.
“But I don’t want ‘em!” he whined.
“It’s wasteful.”
“Why y’all always on me? If you had asked to start with, this wouldn’t have happened. The way I see it, it’s your problem.”
“I’m giving you problems as soon as I finish this piece of chicken, I promise,” she said, shaking a Texas Pete Hot Sauce bottle over her drumstick. “You fried the hell out of this, though, gotta give you that, too.”
By the time Ariana finally made it to the restroom, the problems had started. Paris was screaming, and it was like any other Sunday night at Jada’s. Everybody was always on him because his reactions were the funniest, and he hadn’t had that epiphany yet. Was it sort of evil? Yes. Could Paris handle it unscathed? Yes.
“Give it to me. I’ll eat it, just stop beatin’ him!” August cried over Megan and Cairo’s loud, shameless cackling.
It was all that sweet tea Cairo had made. Ariana, like most southerners, was particular about tea. Getting it right was a science, and nobody understood sweet tea better than Cairo. She’’d gone overboard after the third glass.
Ariana scanned the room as the sink’s vanity lights flickered. Electrical trouble was typical on campus; there were occasional power outages that annoyed everyone, but hardly lasted long. She was washing her hands when the bathroom light flickered again, then cut out.
“Oh, come on,” Ariana said, feeling around for the light switch, knowing it was useless. She looked down and saw the kitchen light shining through the gap between the door and the gleaming hardwood floor.
The hell was up with the bathroom lights?
She didn’t worry. It wouldn’t last long.
Seconds later, the lights flashed on again. Ariana’s sigh of relief caught in her throat as she choked on fear, realizing she was no longer alone in the mirror.
A dead-eyed Sade stood behind her, her throat torn, the rhinestones on her blood-stained uniform dull with red clay. Through a large gash in the shimmering top, Ariana noted what had to be – what the HELL – autopsy scars. Her light brown skin had taken on a sickly green hue. Her long hair had been perfectly styled, and despite being very dead, she was still very pretty. In a grotesque sort of way.
A slack-jawed, suddenly lightheaded Ariana kept still and switched to manual breathing, tears of shock falling from her fluttering eyes. She wondered which psych med might solve the issue. She’d never needed anything for hallucinations before.
And she still didn’t. The physical presence was real. She would, however, need the whole armor of heaven as one of Sade’s rhinestones caught onto her hoodie as the body inched closer. There was no body heat. In fact, the closer she got, the cooler the air.
“Oh my god,” Ariana croaked, terrified at the sight of her own breath, trembling in the suddenly frigid room. She was both afraid to and dying to close her eyes. “Sade?”
Sade’s mouth slowly gaped, thick strings of dark blood pouring from inside. Was there liquid actually hitting the ground? Was she hearing things?
“Call me back, Paris,” came a whisper of a voice that was Sade’s, but a crackling recording of voicemail quality. “Call me back. Paris, please call me back. Paris?”
Meanwhile, Paris was in the living room getting beat up by Jada and none the-wiser to the shit unfolding in Jada’s restroom.
Sade’s request sounded once more, directly into Ariana’s ear. “Paris. Call me.”
Ariana didn’t even realize she was screaming until her friends burst through the door.
Cairo’s eyes darted in search of the threat. “What?”
“Oh my god. Holy fuck. Fuck!” Ariana cried, wringing her hands. The wringing hurt, it always had, but it usually brought her back into reality. There was no more Sade. The floor was clean, no blood, no red clay. The heat that’d been sucked from the room returned in a warm rush. Sunday dinner’s aroma hung in the air. Gone was the odor of formaldehyde that had previously filled the room.
Cairo gently grabbed her hands and held them firmly to his chest as he looked into her eyes. “Ariana! What’s wrong?”
Her heart could’ve thumped right out of her chest, and getting air was still difficult. “I saw her. I fuckin’ saw her, she was in here! She kept asking for Paris to call her back!” she cried with wild eyes, hardly able to keep still.
The color drained from Paris’s face as that bit of news landed, and all eyes landed on him. “Huh?”
“Who?” Jada asked with her fists ready, immediately on guard.
“Sade. I swear to god, she was here. I know everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I know what I saw.” She glanced at her shoulder. Sure enough, the lone rhinestone was still there. More tears, more fear clawing at her insides. “Oh god. Look at this,” she said, pinching the shoulder of her hoodie.
Megan frowned, waving her hands. “Wait, what? Sade? As in ‘just passed away’ Sade?”
“I was putting rhinestones on the board. That’s gotta be what it is,” Jada said, though she didn’t sound too sure herself. She leaned in to investigate.
Ariana hated to admit that the stone was similar to the type Jada had used. Admitting it would mean she had just been seeing things.
“Nobody thinks you’re crazy, my love. Least of all, me,” Megan said, placing her hand over Cairo’s as he continued holding Ariana’s. “That poor girl ain’t at rest.”
“Excuse me, but what the hell are y’all talkin’ about? Sade is dead. I did her hair at the funeral home. I went to the girl’s fuckin’ wake. She was in a casket, dead,” Jada said through shuddering breaths, fighting tears. She leaned into August’s embrace and let herself break just a little. Very unlike Jada.
“I saw her too. Just now,” Ariana said, her voice breaking. Maybe she was losing her goddamn mind after all.
There was hardly time to dwell. A phone chimed from the living room. Uneasy looks were shared as dread filled the air.
Was it Paris’s phone?
Of course it was.
Would there be a new voicemail that hadn’t been there minutes ago?
Of course there would.
“What the fuck did we smoke? We trippin’! Do we hear ourselves? Phones ring, p-people see shit,” August stuttered in an effort to explain the inexplicable as they returned to the living room. They stood shoulder to shoulder around the coffee table, staring at the phone after confirming that there was indeed a new message.
Paris hadn’t said another word. He had gone pale and sort of looked like he was going to be sick.
“P, you okay, man?” August asked, nodding as Paris shook his head. “Yeah, I wouldn’t think so.”
“Am I the only one that wants you to go ahead and play it?”
“Cairo, please!” Jada snapped, rolling her eyes. “But… no. I kinda wanna hear it, too. I think. What?”
“Somebody just do it!” Megan blurted, wincing. “My bad. Curiosity is gon’ kill me.”
Ariana snapped into action as Paris stared at the space ahead. She entered the passcode – her birthday, incidentally – and found the voicemail. She activated the speaker and played the message. Though it was mostly static, Sade’s trembling, panicked voice cut through the noise.
“Paris? ………. Paris, can you call me back, please? ……………………………………. I really need to talk to you. Call me back.”
“She sounded terrified,” Megan said, sighing as tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, I wish I could talk to her.”
Jada held up a hand. “You better not bring no Ouija board up in this house.”
“For your information, I do not use ouija boards. I do own a pendulum I wish I had in my bag. Clearly, she’s tryna tell us something.”
“I should’ve called her back,” Paris said eventually, rubbing his temples, green eyes watery. “I didn’t think it was that serious. Like, what if she needed my help–”
“Don’t do that. We still don’t know what happened exactly or why,” Ariana cut in, gently hugging him. “This is not your fault, Paris.”
It was almost as if he hadn’t heard a word anyone said, pulling in deep, steadying breaths that weren’t helping from the looks of it, his body solid against Ariana’s attempt to soothe him. “That message was not on my phone until now. I promise.”
“For real, what the hell were we smokin’?” Cairo asked, picking up a hastily-abandoned blunt from the ashtray to study.
“It’s just regular weed like I always get,” Jada said, wiping her face. “No Reggie Bush.”
Ariana gave Paris space, keeping her hands apart to prevent wringing them again. “...What the hell do we do, y’all?”
“We move on. That’s all we can do,” Jada said, settling back into her seat like nothing had happened. She resumed drawing perfect letters with long, smooth strokes after relighting the blunt and sticking it into the corner of her mouth.
Everyone else but Paris remained standing. He’d silently tucked himself away in the recliner near the patio and stared through the window. Ariana spied his reflection in the patio door’s glass. His features had settled into hard, somber lines. Not good. It was hard to get him back when he got lost like that.
Ariana bit her tongue right before it’d start to bleed, arms folded across her chest as she turned towards Jada. “Jay… y—… you believe me, right?”
She shook her head, but didn’t look up. “I don’t know, Ari. I’m having a hard time believing that the same girl we saw hangin’ from the scoreboard a week ago was just in my apartment.”
While Ariana fully understood Jada’s logic, it didn’t lessen the sting of her words. Her friend thought she was insane. “Did you or did you not just hear the same message I did?”
“She has a point, y’all. We know what we just heard. All damn six of us,” she said with a stony glare as she scanned them.
“It’s probably damn AI or something!” Jada cried, throwing up her hands. “People do things like that these days, and these idiots around here swear we had some kind of conspiracy going–”
“I believe it,” Cairo interjected Jada’s oncoming rant, crossing himself. He shrugged as his friends stared. “Hey, I been seein’ crazy shit since I was a little kid. And Ari ain’t a liar.”
“Thank you,” she said, gaze lowering to the ground, shame squeezing her throat like a pair of hands. Having to be defended always had done a number on her head, faced with being hard to swallow.
“Then that makes you just as ridiculous–” Jada said, gasping before snapping her mouth closed. She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry. Ariana, I am so sorry. I don’t even know why I said that.”
“Whoa,” Cairo said, frowning and utterly confused. Ariana shared the sentiment, deeply confused why Jada would say such a thing.
“Jada!” Megan scoffed, hands ready to catch the falling pieces once her friend shattered.
Ariana was aware of this and refused to fall apart. She wasn’t that goddamn fragile, was she? “Wow.”
August had reared back a few inches, jaw dropped. Ariana had never seen him so disgusted in all the time she’d known him. “That’s fucked up, Jada,” he said with a humorless chuckle.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Jada’s hands covered her mouth just as thunder shook the building, followed by a crack of lightning illuminating the darkening sky. Then that sky opened and it started to pour. Heavy raindrops pounded the ceiling. The charged air went silent, aside from the occasional creak of the recliner rocking back and forth. The music had long ago died.
Ariana returned to her previous corner and picked up a marker, popping off its top. She added another letter to the board, the ‘a’ in Sade’s ‘Gamble’, then grabbed the rhinestones and glue. “It’s fine, y’all. I’m good. Let’s just finish and go.”
bite down; in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and broader hip-hop slang means to bear the pain, push through a difficult situation, or keep going despite hardship. (via google search)
an original southern HBCU horror story. feat. original characters who may or may not be *****/*****/**** coded. your girl is finally starting her author journey! i appreciate & love y'all so much.
what is bite down?
A love letter to the American South, to Millennials, to the HBCUs, to black horror stories, to candy paint and big rims, to grillz and gold teeth, to knotless braids and pre-stretched hair, to locs and kinks and coils, to waves and fades, to black voting power, to the Willie Maes and Gradys, to the subs and Black Ice car fresheners, to beatin’ down the block, to the cookouts, to the uncs and aunties, to hoodoo, to the sea, to our ancestors. To my home, South Carolina. Most of all, love to you, fellow Southern Black American.
ready?
[ meet the big six · the big ass bite down playlist · story graphics (1, 2, ) · my author site ]
NOTES
Bite Down features a fictional college, and original Black characters. These characters use AAVE/ebonics. It’s ridiculous to need to mention, yes! But as I’ve said before, let’s normalize appreciating stories centering people that don’t look or sound like you. This is a huge issue in fandom spaces, though Bite Down is not fanfiction; however, I am constantly inspired by my muses in some way, shape, or form. I don’t respect respectability politics, nor am I willing to compromise authenticity. Good storytelling is honest.
That said, you will encounter drugs, sex, blood, profanity, death, the occult/the supernatural, and then some in the story. I’m not big on content warnings, but here’s one anyway! Don’t worry, there will never be any 'weird in a bad way' content.
I write this story in my spare time. I am an adult with a low-paying job and bills, so if you feel so inclined to help me & Bite Down continue on the smoothest course, feel free to leave me a tip via Ko-Fi! I’d greatly appreciate it.
Bite Down will be free to read. I may offer early access and bonus content via Patreon in the near future, if it makes sense to do. You’ll be the first to know if/when that is available.
I love engagement and questions, so do take the time to get to know Ariana, Paris, Jada, Cairo, Megan, and August. These characters are a culmination of everyone I’ve ever known, loved, hated, missed, created, or lost. Ask away. Again, thank you for your time and energy. I hope you’ll enjoy the story.
Bite Down is not on a set schedule for updates, but I’m shooting for weekly chapters. Which means, in Monique-speak, it could be anywhere between one/two weeks between updates depending on… well… life. But I promise that I’ll try my hardest to be consistent.
·
ch1 - HOMECOMING.
ch2 - welcome to poinsette-clark state university! [NEW!]
ch3 - but not ha ha funny, funny weird... [future]
bite down; in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and broader hip-hop slang means to bear the pain, push through a difficult situation, or keep going despite hardship. (via google search)
an original southern HBCU horror story. feat. original characters who may or may not be *****/*****/**** coded. your girl is finally starting her author journey! i appreciate & love y'all so much.
what is bite down?
A love letter to the American South, to Millennials, to the HBCUs, to black horror stories, to candy paint and big rims, to grillz and gold teeth, to knotless braids and pre-stretched hair, to locs and kinks and coils, to waves and fades, to black voting power, to the Willie Maes and Gradys, to the subs and Black Ice car fresheners, to beatin’ down the block, to the cookouts, to the uncs and aunties, to hoodoo, to the sea, to our ancestors. To my home, South Carolina. Most of all, love to you, fellow Southern Black American.
ready?
[ meet the big six · the big ass bite down playlist · story graphics (1, 2, ) · my author site ]
NOTES
Bite Down features a fictional college, and original Black characters. These characters use AAVE/ebonics. It’s ridiculous to need to mention, yes! But as I’ve said before, let’s normalize appreciating stories centering people that don’t look or sound like you. This is a huge issue in fandom spaces, though Bite Down is not fanfiction; however, I am constantly inspired by my muses in some way, shape, or form. I don’t respect respectability politics, nor am I willing to compromise authenticity. Good storytelling is honest.
That said, you will encounter drugs, sex, blood, profanity, death, the occult/the supernatural, and then some in the story. I’m not big on content warnings, but here’s one anyway! Don’t worry, there will never be any 'weird in a bad way' content.
I write this story in my spare time. I am an adult with a low-paying job and bills, so if you feel so inclined to help me & Bite Down continue on the smoothest course, feel free to leave me a tip via Ko-Fi! I’d greatly appreciate it.
Bite Down will be free to read. I may offer early access and bonus content via Patreon in the near future, if it makes sense to do. You’ll be the first to know if/when that is available.
I love engagement and questions, so do take the time to get to know Ariana, Paris, Jada, Cairo, Megan, and August. These characters are a culmination of everyone I’ve ever known, loved, hated, missed, created, or lost. Ask away. Again, thank you for your time and energy. I hope you’ll enjoy the story.
Bite Down is not on a set schedule for updates, but I’m shooting for weekly chapters. Which means, in Monique-speak, it could be anywhere between one/two weeks between updates depending on… well… life. But I promise that I’ll try my hardest to be consistent.
·
ch1 - HOMECOMING.
ch2 - welcome to poinsette-clark state university! [NEW!]
ch3 - but not ha ha funny, funny weird... [future]
bite down ch 2. - welcome to poinsette-clark state university!
[main story page]
+
Sunday, October 4th ✨
+
“Could you please slow this Altima Hellcat down? Why are we acting like this road ain’t steep? Ari, baby, you won’t have to worry about your parents. You might not make it back to them with Jada flyin’ like a bat out of hell.”
“That sea level situation in NOLA traumatized you, because we aren’t even up that high. Calm down, I learned how to drive in Atlanta,” Jada said with a sweep of her long, mahogany waves, checking her mirrors before flipping the Nissan’s turn signal. She slid into the left lane to pass a gold Corolla that wasn’t traveling the winding mountain roads quickly enough.
Megan checked her seatbelt again, peering at the driver. “That’s the issue, Jada.”
Ariana didn’t say a word. She gripped the ‘oh shit’ handle and prayed that she wouldn’t die in Jada’s back seat.
At the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in upstate South Carolina sat Poinsette-Clark State University, an active, sprawling campus. The school was named for the ‘mother of the movement’ as coined by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., esteemed activist, educator, and South Carolina native Septima Poinsette-Clark.
The concept of a historically black college in their small city had initially frightened local non-black residents; they’d taken to the streets to violently protest its opening.
Despite this, PCSU opened its doors in 1925, met with what would become constant threats of more violence and hatred. There had even been arson during Ariana’s first year there; the school’s main arts building had mysteriously gone ablaze.
Only the culprit wasn’t a mystery at all; the deed had been carried out by a radical white supremacist who’d driven all the way up from Myrtle Beach. He was rotting away in prison somewhere in the midlands.
Thankfully, the fire hadn’t spread beyond the building; there had been no further damage to the surrounding southern gothic architecture, renowned designs by brilliant, innovative minds committed to campus pride. PCSU had done a fine job with the upkeep over time, never mind the kudzu reclaiming its territory along the sides of several buildings.
Landscapers be damned, there was no getting around that in the South.
The destroyed Arts Building had been rebuilt bigger and better, then renamed Boseman Hall in honor of the late, legendary SC-born and bred actor and HBCU alumni, Chadwick Boseman. She loved that building, and the SNS Club met weekly in one of its coveted meeting rooms.
Ariana had all but begged her parents to stay on campus following the fire; her dorm room trumped her household bedroom – which she loved – simply for being an hour away from her parents.
They were back on the same bullshit, yapping about forcing Ariana to return home as if she wasn’t an adult following poor Sade’s demise. Ariana was her dormitory’s main residential advisor. She couldn’t abandon that, nor the Safety Net Sanctuary Club, especially not at such a crucial time.
The students were terrified. Mental health resources were more necessary than ever. She was all too aware of the kinds of things that put fear and justification hand-in-hand.
According to the whispers, Sageville Police weren’t any closer to finding the culprit, though Sade had been murdered a week ago.
“You do know they can’t actually make you do anything, right?” Jada asked Ariana as they sped toward a local box store. Aside from grabbing supplies for the candlelight vigil planned for later that night, the girls could restock their general supplies and always did so together, splitting packages and trading necessities. Nobody ever lacked Top Ramen, sanitary products, mascara, lash glue, dill pickles, or press-on nails.
Being broke college students didn’t determine their baddie status, Jada always said. Baddies did the best they could with what they had, in the words of the great Mariah Carey. Incidentally, her song ‘Breakdown’ blared through Jada’s rattling speakers.
“And you don’t wanna hurt Paris’s feelings, do you? You know he’d lose his mind if you moved off campus,” Megan added, staring out of the window and twirling the amethyst pendant she always wore between her fingers.
While she did have her own dorm room as an RA, she resided at home between semesters, and Paris still wasn’t allowed back there. Amir had caught them making out in Ariana’s bedroom when they were eighteen and threatened to castrate Paris if he ever showed his face again. Paris hadn’t come within a block of the place since.
“I’m not worried about him,” Ariana lied while wondering what he was doing. She had considered a ‘wyd’ text, but he hadn’t texted either. But if he was on her mind, wouldn’t it make sense to reach out? Then again, did she want to get involved in the back and forth with Paris Graham again?
“Lying ass,” Jada guffawed, briefly catching her friend’s eye in the rear view mirror. “I’m clockin’ you. ‘Cause y’all were doing the most at the concert. Like I was almost embarrassed, it was getting that kinky.”
“Oh my god. Fuckin’ tequila, man,” Ariana groaned, covering her face, her cheeks warm. “I knew it. I really hoped I had just dreamed that.”
Megan smiled, her hands clasped and rested over her heart. “Dreamed it into reality. Aw! That’s so sweet. You and KiKi need to quit playin’, and get back to it already. Y’all are cute together. I love love.”
“Love? Please. Says the one in a marriage of convenience," Jada pointed out as she coasted the car into the store’s parking lot and whipped into a parking stall, narrowly avoiding an old couple standing near their Buick.
“This bitch gon’ kill us,” Ariana mumbled, fully expecting her life to soon flash before her eyes. “That’s sort of true. I’m sorry, Meg, but you act like you don’t even like August half the time. And I know for sure your parents don’t,” she added, still holding tight to her seat belt until Jada had powered off the engine.
During Megan’s parents’ first and only campus visit two years ago, Ariana had sat with the others through a painfully long, awkward dinner littered with mindless small talk at a restaurant downtown where fancy dress was required, and the regulars knew which fork to use when.
Things had taken an uncivilized turn when Megan’s father, Craig, had nearly come to blows with August. Craig Deschamps, a privileged white man of Metairie, wasn’t the most enlightened person, but he was usually the first to offer an opinion.
Though Megan knew the difference between table and salad forks, she didn’t really care and had long ago dismissed it as bullshit. She sighed, running her fingers through her hair, shaking out loose curls she’d just dyed ginger. “That’s not it. I do like him. I’m in love. And you’re right about my mama and daddy, but they’re ignorant as hell. He’s just so fucking… D1 sometimes.”
“I had one of those in high school. Tragic,” Jada said, grabbing her beloved black Coach bag from the back seat. She placed it in her lap and paused, pulling in a deep breath. Ariana had almost forgotten that Jada had lost a sister, she’d handled the loss with such grace. “Lord, give me strength. Let’s go do this for my girl.” She forced a smile as her friends’ comforting hands landed on her shoulders and arms in an act of grounding.
“Let’s backtrack. What does acting D1 actually mean?”Ariana asked as the girls emerged into a chilly, wet, overcast afternoon. She’d heard the term before, but never bothered to dive deeper.
Megan’s head bobbed between Ariana’s and Jada’s shoulders as she drifted between her taller friends. “Say if Paris played football, was kind of an asshole, and knew he’d get drafted eventually. Imagine how a man like that might act. Arrogant. Slutty. Entitled.”
“Oh yeah. That sounds like a nightmare. Paris is very slutty, by the way,” Ariana said, tugging an old PSCU hoodie over her head. “Not to slut shame, but…”
“No, I get you,” Jada said as they passed a group of classmates wheeling a shopping cart full of food and alcohol cases toward their car. “I’m not shamin’, either. This is coming from a factual place.”
Ariana scanned the faces of the students, relieved that she didn’t recognize them. She hated to bust up anyone’s party, but couldn’t ignore it in good conscience as a residential advisor. However, she couldn’t prove those seltzers were headed for campus, much less her dorm building, so she minded her business.
“All three of ‘em are ran through, even August before you locked in,” Jada added, laughing as they breezed through automatic entrance doors and into a controlled climate. Well, somewhat controlled. There was a matter of a complete lack of control fostered by three children in hoodies, basketball shorts, long socks, and slides. Only these children were over twenty-one, at least six feet tall, and named Cairo, August, and Paris.
Cairo sat low on a tricycle intended for an actual child, his knees bent and chopping upward as he pedaled, cackling like a wild man. Rounding the corner from the next aisle over was August steering a small bike as he threw up gang signs, which may or may not have been related to any actual gangs; he was trailed by Paris, who rode a ten-speed and wore sunglasses with the tag still attached. They weren’t concerned with disturbing nice families doing their weekly grocery shopping.
“Look at their big asses on those tiny…” Ariana started, covering her mouth as Paris crashed into a display of round stuffed animals, its cardboard folding inward as the bike’s tire rammed into it. Paris’s massive frame flew over the handlebars and landed among the plushies. He shrieked the entire time, barely audible over Cairo and August’s screams.
“Record it, record it!” August said, cackling as Cairo whipped out his phone to capture the scene for all of his followers to see as Paris scrambled to free himself, getting nowhere fast as he shouted at the duo to stop filming. Never mind the other shoppers milling around, some amused, others mostly annoyed with the damn college kids.
“If I see this on TikTok, I promise we ain’t friends no more!” he shouted, a stuffed penguin headlocked.
“They are literally embarrassing as hell, oh my god,” Megan said as she walked in the opposite direction. “Let’s get what we need and get out of here before they see us.”
Wishful thinking. They’d grabbed baskets and buggies – yes, buggies– and shopped quickly. Groceries. Art supplies. They were almost done and hastily browsing the newest Wet n’ Wild shades when Cairo approached. He shrieked and threw his arms around Jada’s and Ariana’s shoulders, laughing as they screamed. “Y’all wasn’t gon’ say hey?”
“You scared the shit out of me,” Ariana muttered through clenched teeth, shoving her elbow into his side, knowing she was being a bit dramatic. But hell, was she? There was a murderer on the loose, no biggie. Her already rapid heart rate climbed higher as Paris showed up, brows knitted as he focused his phone. She prayed he wouldn’t sense it as they shared a customary side hug, which was always a little bit awkward. “Hey, you.”
“Wassup, baby, how you?” he asked, a smile spreading across his face.
Ariana hated herself and her weak ass knees. Baby. He called everybody that. It didn’t mean anything.
… it didn’t mean anything…?
“Hell no, we weren’t saying hi. Why would we?” Jada asked, shrugging Cairo’s sinewy arm from her shoulder. “We saw that silly shit y’all were doing.”
“Because we’re friends, and y’all shouldn’t be out here alone. Also, I could’ve caught a ride. AG thinks he’s funny doing all that Hellcat business, burning tires and shit. Who drove?”
Megan held two bottles of black nail polishes side by side, trying to decide which brand was the darkest. Ariana wouldn’t mention that they appeared the exact same shade. Megan nodded with a distracted hum. “Jada did.”
August had caught the tail end of the question as he’d approached and hugged his girlfriend’s slim waist as he received the answer. “Y’all were in danger either way, then.”
Jada plastered on a wide smile and flipped her middle finger in his direction. “Eat my ass, Saint. How long have y’all been in these people’s store playin’ around?”
“Like thirty minutes. There wasn’t shit to do on campus, and ever since Sade? The energy is dark as fuck, y’all. Like this shit ain’t over or somethin’,” he said, brows knitted. He wasn’t alone in that belief; the administration had implemented a temporary curfew of eleven PM and sent daily campuswide emails about buddy systems and campus safety.
Campus police presence had increased, sleek black SUVs with guard grills on guard at every entrance. Local news crews had damn near set up camp just off university property, and ignored the school’s warnings against interviewing students. Of course, far too many students had agreed to talk, enticed by the infamous fifteen minutes.
“Now you sound like this one,” Ariana said as she nudged Megan. She was their official ‘woo woo’ friend, and for all of their teasing, Megan’s discernment had proven itself time and time again.
“Y’all keep laughin’. When one of y’all wakes up bald, I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Wait a minute,” August said, fiddling with the tips of his beloved hair. “Would you really do somethin’ like that?”
“Don’t piss me off, and you’ll never have to find out,” Megan said, patting her boyfriend’s cheek as he pouted. “I know what you mean, ‘Ro. I still can’t believe she’s dead.”
“Her parents are torn up, real bad. That was the craziest thing ever. Like what the heck? What if that game had been in real time on tv?” Jada asked. A mere twenty-two second broadcasting delay had prevented the entire nation from witnessing the spectacle live on CSN, the College Sports Network. They’d pulled the plug at the sounds of a disturbance, the thud of Sade’s body crashing echoing through the stadium.
“Ain’t nobody seen Sergio in a week. I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped out,” Cairo said with a sad shrug. Sergio was a close friend to both him and Jada, and both of their lights dampened a bit whenever the doomed couple was mentioned. “He lost the love of his life, you know?”
“It’s fucked up, man. I feel bad for him and Sade. She was a good girl, she didn’t deserve that,” Paris said. He’d been questioned multiple times following the incident, seeing as how his call had been the last to reach Sade’s phone. He'd been cleared of any wrong doing – thank goodness for constant surveillance… right? – but Ariana knew it was eating him up inside. Which was why he’d been avoiding prolonged eye contact to prevent her from reading him.
Ariana’s bad night had paled in comparison to Sade’s. Shit, it’d been a cakewalk. Her parents had just pissed her off a little. The other girl was lying in a soft, fresh plot underground. It was astonishing and surreal, a dead body on campus. Poor Sade. Poor damn Sade. Ariana made a mental note to grab some flowers. They’d never truly formed a friendship outside of niceties, but she still deserved proper mourning.
“I’m still seeing that shit in my nightmares, I swear,” August said. “If I think about it too long, it starts to mess with me, and I had to come to the store anyway, so. Here we are.”
“I definitely wasn’t driving three hours to the Chuck just to come right back. You know Sundays are boring on campus. That Christian chicken place ain’t even open.”
Sundays in the Bible Belt meant heavy traffic, hour-long waits at local restaurants (unless you went to Cookout or something), and packed church parking lots. Not to mention, the students returning in droves from weekend parlays; everyone was always exhausted and recovered quietly indoors, and in turn, the campus became a ghost town.
PCSU students hailed from all over the South; aside from the Carolina natives, others enrolled from Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and even as far as Texas. A PCSU degree was a heavyweight continentwide.
“That chicken is not that good,” Paris said, sinking down into the empty basket of an ownerless shopping cart. He was, as Ariana said, always just doing shit. “My mama’s chicken is better than that.”
“You would say that. You wouldn’t know decent seasoning if it punched you in the head,” Jada teased with a laugh.
Paris made a face. “Hold on now. My mama uses seasonings. Heavy on the Lawry’s.”
“Lawry’s is law. And that Slap Ya Mama stuff,” Cairo said, doing a poor job of hiding the fact that he was watching Jada’s every move with fascination shining in his bright eyes. “My grandpa won’t use anything else.”
“Wait. That Jesus chicken is your holy grail?” Ariana asked Jada, who was testing out polishes on her bare nails.
Jada shrugged. “I didn’t say that. I was just wondering how he’d know.”
“Now don’t do that,” Ariana said, losing the battle not to be first to defend him. Sometimes, Jada didn’t think before she spoke. Well, most of the time. The truth usually just projectile vomited itself from her mouth. Her truths, anyway. “Ms. Brianna’s chicken is good!”
Paris rolled his eyes, letting his head fall back against the cart’s rail as he sighed. “No, because if I’m keepin’ it a buck, I’m tired of you acting like I’m diluted or something.”
“Oh? I never said anything like that,” Jada said, leaning back as the tension expanded the space between them. “It’s just jokes, friend.”
“Well. That got awkward fast,” Ariana stated the obvious, anything to keep from rehashing a long-running, slightly tired discussion that usually triggered high tempers. “Let’s move on.”
“Thank you, Ariana,” Paris said, nodding in her direction. He then turned a pointed look onto the group, bringing his fingertips together. “Between this and KiKi, I might snap,” Paris barked with zero bite.
Not only was he not going to snap, he was also immediately distracted by the petite girl with waist-grazing locs politely skirting past in fitted yoga pants and cropped tee, a cloud of Victoria’s Secret Bombshell lingering as she walked towards the Afro combs and boar-bristle brushes.
“Excuse me,” she said softly, smiling as she glanced at Paris, her smile spreading as she shyly giggled and locked eyes with him. Ariana pitied her. Another one bit the dust.
“Damn,” Cairo uttered under his breath, briefly distracted as his gaze followed her too before quickly returning to Jada as if she’d demanded his attention, though she hadn’t uttered another word.
August stepped into Megan’s space. “Paris ain’t gonna do nothin’. Especially since he just saw somethin’ he likes. Babe, don’t you wanna cook for us tonight?”
“No.” Megan looked directly at each one of her friends, physically leaving those sad puppy faces on read. “Now y’all are draggin’ it. No, you beggin’ bastards! And we should probably get out of this aisle having in-depth discussions about chicken for so many reasons. Dumbass ones, but reasons,” she said as a group of students from a different local college roughhoused down the main aisle, cackling and jostling one another. Wofford College, according to the ringleader’s t-shirt.
Ariana tugged her sweatshirt’s hood over her low ponytail, and then down onto her forehead. She had the best friends in the world. The absolute best at triggering ‘The Office’ style glances into an imaginary camera multiple times per gathering.
“You right. It’s a choice, and I’m ready to get gone anyway,” Cairo said, pushing up from where he leaned against a shelf housing Carol’s Daughter, Luster’s Pink Lotion, and Cantu bottles, a nearby jar of Blue Magic tumbling to the floor from the movement. He bent to retrieve it, and only Ariana noticed the embarrassment warming his cheeks. He’d restored his game face when he stood upright. “If Miss Jada here is done, that is.”
“I’m done,” Jada said, dropping the last of a handful of nail polish bottles into her basket, their glass surfaces clinking. She’d do magic, paint a Picasso with two dollar nail polish. It wasn’t about the tools, she’d always say. It was about intention. And from the day a thirteen year old Jada learned the value of social capital and decided that perfection was the cheat code, she’d moved accordingly.
August leaned in and peppered kisses to his girlfriend’s freckled cheek. “I’ll pay for it. Dinner and drinks on me. We’ll make Cairo help you,” he said, offering up his friend’s services. August rolled his eyes as Jada handed her over her basket, which was packed to the brim.
“Since I did touch up his hair for free last week. Let’s go get the rest, so that our generous big homie can pay for that.”
“I work at Foot Locker. What the hell do I look like? The Monopoly man?”
Paris was wiggling his way free from the cart, huffing and puffing. “Sometimes when your eye gets to leanin’ after you’ve been drinking–”
“Paris, shut the fuck up.”
Paris laughed as he landed on his feet, hands stuffed into the pouch of his Virginia State hoodie while he strolled toward the aisle’s end to get to know Miss Bombshell better.
Ariana shook her head, storing away the jealousy burning her insides. Especially since she didn’t truly have any right to be. She pretended that the phone in her hand was the most interesting thing around after meeting Megan’s empathetic gaze.
“Y’all, don’t piss AG off, because I don’t wanna hear him whine all night. I do want a wine cooler and a nineties r&b mix, stat,” Cairo said, two-stepping and snapping to the soft rock playing at a reasonable volume over the store’s speakers.
“It’s still funny that you get lit from a couple of wine coolers,” Ariana said, extending her arm and noiselessly placing a few shades of eyeliner into the basket in August’s hand while his attention was elsewhere. She then joined Cairo’s dance party, bumping his slim hip with her fuller one to the song’s beat.
“I need a boost when the vibes are as fucked up as they are now. I don’t know, man. I skinny as hell, it don’t take much,” Cairo said (in Charleston-Speak) with a resigned, melancholic sigh as he checked out his own tall, thin frame.
Jada brushed against said frame as she headed for the end of the aisle, texting. Cairo’s entire body perked upon contact, his lips pursed as his eyes fluttered closed. He was never beating the Jada Simp allegations.
Megan reconsidered August’s offer – especially after he’d successfully Ratatouille’d Paris too – and nudged the shopping cart toward him with a sweet smile. Yet had come the day Megan Deschamps would pass up free food or alcohol. She was known as The Bourbon Street Bandit. The tourists were especially generous toward the locals, drunk on liquor, lore, and a good time. She saved her own money for Westbank. “Well, in that case…”
+
“Gas is too high to drive two cars to the same place just to flex on each other,” Jada said, shaking her head as Paris carefully closed the door to his beloved 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, its rose gold candy paint and gold Dayton wire wheels known campuswide. An alarming amount of women wanted to ride shotgun. Many had tried, few had succeeded. Then there was Ariana, who had driven it countless nights when he’d had too much, or wanted to play passenger princess.
“That would mean he was capable of flexin’ on me,” August said, whistling as he took the shopping bags from Megan’s hands, then closed his own car’s door where it was parked in reverse beside the Cutlass. He then clicked the fob to lock his baby, a two year old hunter green, supercharged wide body Dodge Challenger Hellcat on midnight black rims. Specks of rain, gnats, and dust swarmed through the illumination of the high-powered headlights. “And he ain’t, so…”
“You are still so delusional. It’s sad to see, baby, for real,” Paris drawled, locking the older model with its key. He’d inherited the Cutlass from his uncle Mike and had logged the man hours to fix and maintain it, the car in pristine condition in Brianna’s brother’s memory. “Ol’ Hot Wheels headass boy–”
“Unc, please don’t start with me.”
“Unc? Nigga, you’re older than me! That’s aight. We’ll settle this later,” Paris decided as he helped Ariana out of the passenger seat. She’d decided that his driving was less likely to harm her than Jada’s. Cairo had been all too pleased to trade places. Also, Ariana had just really wanted to ride with him. Their music choices had always aligned and ranged from Future to Fleetwood Mac. Not to mention Paramore. Fucking Paramore.
“How many times are we gonna have to hear this argument?” Ariana questioned, met with blank stares and silence before they resumed bickering. “Oh okay, just fuck me, then.”
“We can’t take y’all nowhere,” Megan said as she marched behind Jada and Cairo toward Jada’s off campus apartment building. She turned to the boys. “Come on, and be quiet. Act like you’ve been outside the slums, hear?"
The building, like the majority of the campus, partially sat on former plantation land, a fact that Ariana’s bones never let her forget. She followed Megan as the odd cries of barred owls sounded, owls whose talons were wrapped around jagged branches, keeping them hidden among the trees. Its screech sliced through the crisp air while the earth crunched underneath sneakers.
The dark blackgum trees surrounding the property were allegedly alive, haunted by restless, justifiably angry spirits of the enslaved. Those who hadn’t been able to escape. Those to whom freedom had been completely denied.
Some swore they heard their desperate, anguished cries in the woods. Others heard rabid, angry hounds howling, the cracks of rifles ending lives, the clanging of rusted lanterns and slams of running boots to the ground. The ‘ting’ of iron railroad spikes being hammered into the ground by shackled Black hands. The chains and rustling of shackled Black feet.
There were even reports of faint whistles from ghost trains; the railroad tracks running parallel to the forest had long ago gone out of commission.
The soft grounds were still soaked from sporadic bursts of rain that had poured throughout the day, darkened sidewalks covered in loose leaves that retained traces of harvest yellows and greens and browns. Acorns were scattered here and there, which the infamous campus deer pack would graze in the dead of the night.
That was usually around the time that the crew left, unless the girls stayed behind to sleep over, which was often. Jada hated to be alone. Ariana’s overnight bag had been in the guest bedroom for the last few days; she’d spent more time at Jada’s than at her own place. An especially rough week would culminate that night.
August and Paris were still arguing when they’d filed into Jada’s two-bedroom place. Visitors were greeted Leo-style by bold florals and animal prints, bursts of yellows, oranges, and golds throughout. Ariana loved that she kept the place spotless. She could learn a thing or two from Jada about organization, given her cluttered dorm room.
Compartmentalization had never been Ariana’s strength. Everything at Jada’s had its place. Shoes were left at the door, and deviation from her rules would be met with profanity.
“Cairo, put your fuckin’ feet on my couch, and I’ll end you,” she said, emerging from the bedroom wearing her comfort uniform, an Atlanta Hawks t-shirt and bicycle shorts. The rest of the group slipped out of their shoes in the small foyer while gripping each other’s arms for leverage.
“Damn, she’s strict,” Cairo said, wincing as he sat down. He grabbed the remote, did some clicking around, and then the Living Single theme song blared from the television. “I wasn’t gonna put my feet on nothin’!”
“Ooh, in a nineties kind of world–
I’m glad I got my girls!”
Ariana just watched as Paris sang along, giggling as he climbed an octave. His voice was anointed. He’d transformed the sitcom theme into a hymn. And wasn’t it gospel?
Culture channeled through a queen? Wasn’t the silhouette of the rooftop dancer a show of praise? This was why Ariana had called some things into question. If it was divine, wasn’t femininity involved? Why was the church so patriarchal?
And though Ariana had tried to dismiss any recollection of the homecoming concert, she could never unhear the music that was the way he groaned her name when she had kissed his neck.
Jada headed for the kitchen. “Paris, come on. Megan needs help. We only have a few hours to get everything done.”
Paris could burn. She blamed him for the Freshman Fifteen she’d carried for the last three years. As the fourth and middle child of seven children, poverty had bred his creativity early. The family had never had much to work with, so he’d learned early to stretch very little into enough for his three brothers and three sisters.
Though he wasn’t the oldest, he had been the most responsible when it counted, and their parents had worked full-time jobs. Brianna worked days, and Tyler was on the night shift. Paris had been mom or dad, whichever role needed fulfilling. This was still true for his three siblings that were high school kids.
Paris looked up from his phone with pursed lips, dazed and confused. He blinked hard. “Why am I being volun-told what to do?”
Cairo yawned, rubbing his eyes while he slouched on the couch. “AG offered your services while you were talkin’ to homegirl at the store.”
“I just came to eat,” he said, but complied, joining the kitchen sink hand-washing line; the trio would prepare a Sunday dinner that Ariana would spend the next week fondly remembering. On the menu? Fried chicken, Carolina red rice, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, and collard greens. Her stomach growled. No wonder Erica was so damn mad all the time. Deprivation was difficult.
“Hurry up and go, man, damn,” August urged, ducking as Paris swung his fist on his way past. “That memorial ain’t too far off, we can’t miss that.”
Jada and Cairo, along with the band, Gammas, and Sigmas, had planned a vigil for Sade beside the lake near the chapel. PSCU’s students had been invited to join in honoring Sade’s life. Her family had buried her two days prior in her hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina, but it felt appropriate tethering her to a place where she’d lived so much life.
The previous week’s classes had been canceled following homecoming, but they’d resume the next day, and life would go on. It seemed cruel that the world kept spinning.
“You’re back on the field Saturday, right?” Ariana asked as she settled onto the love seat beside August. Understandably, the football team’s last game had been rescheduled, considering that the stadium had been a crime scene.
“Yeah. It’s gon’ be weird as hell,” August said, rubbing his chin as he shook his head, sorrow in his dark eyes. “Whole team still fucked up off the whole thing. I figured they would wait a lil’ bit longer, but college football is money.”
Capitalism trumped the right thing usually. Homecoming would be forever marred by the tragedy. And although Ariana felt the need to pay her respects, that memorial was the last place she wanted to go. Roaming campus without being gawked at was impossible. Where there was Paris, there was Ariana, whether she actually was or not, and being questioned by police was reason enough for people to make up their damn minds.
“Damn, every video I see is about PSCU,” Cairo said, lying on his back as he scrolled social media timelines.
“Well somebody did die, Cairo.”
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Saint, thank you. I just still can’t believe it, and people won’t leave me alone. I had to turn off my damn comments.”
“I’m sorry, ‘Ro,” Ariana said, frowning as she leaned over to hug him. The band members considered each other family. She couldn’t imagine being in Cairo’s shoes. Not that she wasn’t getting her share of bullshit comments on social media, too.
He returned the hug, patting her back. “I ‘preciate that, but I don’t wanna think about it. Wine coolers, I’m on that. Ari? Go ahead and roll up, big dawg.”
Ariana glanced at the box containing ‘the shit’, Tales From the Hood-style. Jada kept her stash full for her friends, though she rarely smoked. That was trust. That was love.
“You know I’m not very good at that.”
“And you ain’t gon’ get no better unless you practice. Let’s go,” he said, snapping his fingers before darting out of reach. He strolled toward the kitchen to retrieve his libations. And to get yelled at for being in the way and unauthorized food sampling too, probably.
“Come on. I’ll run through this with you one more time, Ariana,” August said. He, like Jada, rarely smoked. Yet nobody rolled a tighter blunt. “I need a fuckin’ buzz.”
Ariana sighed as August gathered the supplies and set up to run the tutorial back. “Why don’t y’all just use those Raw cones?”
Cairo laughed when he returned carrying a strawberry wine cooler and a handful of grated cheese, catching the end of Ariana’s question. “Our people don’t do that. This ain’t Furman.”
Megan poked her head in from the kitchen. “We are not a monolith. We don’t have to all do the same things–
Paris groaned, his head falling back as he paused grating the cheese, as he’d been Cairo’s victim of choice. “Political Science, please give it a damn rest!”
“Y’all be wantin’ me to shut up, but can’t ever say I’m wrong, though!” Megan pointed with the knife in her hand as she turned on him. “And I don’t know who you feelin’ like, but lower that tone, Paris–”
He glanced warily at the knife’s tip that was precariously close to his nose, then swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his eyes met Megan’s. “Hey, real quick. Reach the top shelf, and then I’ll consider shuttin’ up.”
August shook his head. “That boy got balls of steel.”
“Shut up, August. And you,” she said, turning back to Paris, “do you wanna get cut?” she asked, twirling the knife.
“Show me!”
Ariana tuned out the ensuing argument as she slid down to the floor and resumed her seat beside August, crossing her legs. Rolling materials were spread on the glass coffee table. She could do this. How hard could it be? The boys could do it. But then again, they were teaching her. Annoying.
“Those cones burn too fast, fuck up the rotation, girl,” August said with a laugh. “But they are good when there’s one or two people.”
Cairo had started rolling a second one. Sessions were that much more effective when the rotation was constant. “I still wanna know how you roll the tightest blunts this side of the Mississippi, but don’t even really smoke.”
“I’ll tell you,” August said, waiting until Cairo sat up straight with wide eyes. Would they finally get an answer? A glimpse into August’s mysterious past?
Ariana doubted it, but still sort of hoped they would. Even she waited with bated breath for August to speak. He took his sweet time, however, deliberately tearing open a pack of Backwoods.
“I’ll tell you the same shit I said last time,” he started, clearing the guts into a waiting ashtray. “That’s my business.”
Cairo rolled his eyes and waved him off. He then watched Ariana struggle for a while under August’s guidance. “That’s a shame.”
August rubbed his hands tiredly over his face as Ariana did the exact opposite of what he’d just asked her to do. “I say roll it this way, girl!”
“Yell at me again, AG.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should’ve started with Swishers. Y’all are doing advanced rolling, that ain’t even her ministry. Y’all know her mama and daddy wasn’t leaving her alone long enough to sniff a blunt, much less roll one.”
“What’s with everybody clockin’ me lately? Like damn, let me live,” Ariana grumbled, her upper lip curled as she turned on August. He leaned back, hands raised in surrender.
“I didn’t even say it!”
“Your silence was compliance,” Ariana said. The truth was anybody that crossed her path could catch it, nobody was safe. The problem was that when Ariana took it there, she genuinely dragged it. Once she reached satisfaction, she’d already gone too far. Repression and shit, according to Melanie, her last psychiatrist. “Shut up, Cairo. That’s the only warning you get.”
“Always you quiet ones people gotta watch,” Cairo said, casting a wary, sideways glance at his fuming, fire-eyed female friend. “You not gon’ hit me, are you?”
Paris barrelled through the kitchen door on his way to the restroom, humming to himself. He surveyed the scene, eyes darting between his friends until they rested on Ariana. Her cheekbones were especially pronounced, her dark eyes filled to the brim with emotion.
“Now which one of y’all done pissed her off?”
“On God, it was him,” August swore, pointing at Cairo, drilling the tip of his pointer finger against Cairo’s temple. “I didn’t say nothin’ about her parents, this one went that way–”
“You took it there. Mm. Wow. Ariana, baby, come with me,” Paris said, reaching for her hands, pulling her onto her feet as her palms met his.
Ariana stood still, a barely contained rage simmering just beneath the surface. She heard Paris making demands, but didn’t truly listen. It was only once the damp breeze brushed her cheek and the twinkle of wind chimes hit her ears did she register that she was outside on Jada’s balcony.
Damp leaves littering the balcony crunched underneath her feet. She glanced to her left, rejoining reality as she absorbed Paris’s presence. He was lighting up a packed cone, pulling just enough to ignite the ember, and immediately handed it over.
“It’s yours–”
“Hit it, Ari.”
He wouldn’t have to tell her twice. The biggest indicator that she was losing it? The fact that he could tell her to do anything at all and expect her to listen. It didn’t feel like a battle worth fighting, so she pulled, orange tip glowing in the dim balcony lights.
August had been right. The effects hit almost immediately. Sure, she was a lightweight, but it had burned much faster. With those in existence, what difference did it make if she ever learned how to roll?
And why the hell had their usual back and forth made her so mad?
“It’s getting bad again,” Ariana said after her third hit, returning the joint as she exhaled smoke, watching it curl towards the dusky sky. “And I’m probably imagining it, but you kind of smell like Bombshell, and that’s pissing me off, too.”
“What the hell is Bombshell?”
Ariana swallowed the lump in her throat, thanking her lucky stars he didn’t follow. She’d have never even brought the girl up in her right mind. “Never mind.”
He pinched the front of his t-shirt and lifted it, sniffing. “Well, wait a minute, now. I quit using that aluminum-free stuff–”
“It’s not a bad smell. Forget it, P,” Ariana said with a tired laugh. Of the many downsides of soaring emotions? The descent was a motherfucker. She took another pull, then returned the cone to him. “Thank you.”
“Are you taking your meds, Ari?”
“Yes. You don’t have to ask me that, I know what I have to do–”
Paris’s gentle, slow, southern cadence cut into her budding tirade. “Honey, it’s just me.” He wasn’t the enemy. He never had been.
She was sick of being in the dark. Or being in the gray area, anyway. It wasn’t bipolar disorder. It wasn’t ADHD. Generalized anxiety disorder and depression were mixed up somewhere in there, but her doctors still hadn’t pinpointed a damn thing.
“I just wanna know. You gotta take care of yourself.” Then he smoked some more.
A few minutes more into the session, he was humming. He had the smoothest rasp, one that had hit Ariana square in the center of her heart the moment she’d heard it. Back after the homecoming dance during high school sophomore year while they sat on the curb in front of their school waiting for Tyler to pick them up.
Slouched to the right, his head in hands, and bored out of his mind, Paris had sung Leon Bridges’s ‘Coming Home’ and instead of laughing, Ariana had been impressed. Where’d he get that voice from?
He’d taught her to project. To breathe, to sit up straight and use her diaphragm. She’d taught him control. Slightly fewer vocal runs (and god, were his smooth and effortless), more exploration of his range, because it was wider than he realized.
He sang ‘I Belong To You’, his grandmother’s favorite song. Ariana sang with him as they smoked the joint down. Their ranges? Matches made in heaven. It was fun. It was easy. It assured Ariana that she and Paris would always, somehow, be okay.
By the time he’d launched into his loudest and most ridiculous Rance Allen impression, she was laughing to tears. “Stop!”
The funniest part? He sounded damn good.
“What? I thought we was doin’ this shit.”
“Mmhmm. We were, then you had to do the most.”
“I’m good at that. Real good,” he said with a smile, nodding his head. “What did Cairo say?”
“That’s the thing. He's always saying shit like that, and it doesn’t usually bother me,” she said with a shrug, raising the sleeve of her hoodie to scratch her arm. The light drag of her fingertips was her newest method of self-soothing. It was better than the last method. She could still feel the faint scars on her wrists. “It just got under my skin.”
“Whatever you do, please don’t do that,” he said as he reached out to touch her wrist, gently rubbing his thumb across the scars. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking; that same horrified, disturbed look was on his face like it had been a year ago. Ariana had been almost fully under that night as the blood seeped from her wrist, but had caught a glimpse just before she’d passed out.
The last time she’d taken a blade to her arms, she’d cut too deep. A worried Paris had shown up at her dorm just in time to find her bleeding out after she’d ignored his calls and texts all day. She’d been in and out of consciousness the entire time, but some things within the chaos would forever live in her head.
Like Paris repeatedly asking the paramedics if she was going to live, pajama-clad Megan and Jada running across campus to get to her as she was wheeled from the building, the roar of August’s engine as he and Cairo had sped into the parking lot, jumping out before the car even fully stopped.
The four had had the same question. Why had Paris sent an SOS in the group chat? Why had he called everyone multiple times, then texted the word ‘suicide’?
“She tried to kill herself. Why the fuck would she do somethin’ like that? I’m bouta lose it, bruh. I gotta call her mama.”
Ariana sometimes wondered if Paris had known that she’d heard his frantic voice tearfully explaining to August as they loaded her into the ambulance. She’d broken his heart, and a brokenhearted Paris was especially tragic. The weather often aligned with his mood. Rain had poured the entire five days she’d spent in the hospital.
The armchair next to her bed had never been empty. Though Amir and his long-running grudge had tried to keep him away, he couldn’t outright ban the boy from a public hospital, and Paris had spent every night by her side, holding her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said like she had a thousand times before. There wasn’t enough remorse in the world. She’d never be sorry enough, she realized. Though the incident was over a year behind them, it lingered like an unrelenting ghost.
Even to the day, he had never responded whenever Ariana used that phrase. Paris wasn’t much of a liar, and he wasn’t open to accepting that apology. “I’m just glad you’re still here.”
“You know, you never tell me it’s okay when I say that I’m sorry for that.”
“Because it pissed me off that you felt like you didn’t deserve to be here. Still does. So keep it,” was all he said.
Ariana had long ago accepted his position on that, despite her spoken observation. “I have to get this under control. I don’t want everybody to feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me.”
“If I can help, let me know,” he said, quiet until she’d finally granted him attention. “I’m serious, Ariana.”
“I hear you.” Truthfully, she was terrified at the thought of losing herself again. And being all alone if it did happen.
“Looks like they’re on the way to the chapel,” he said as a group of Gamma girls lugged bags and boxes down a nearby sidewalk. “I feel for Jada. She loved her some damn Sade.”
And while Ariana knew that no, he hadn’t been in love with Sade, her death affected him a bit more than he let on. The recollection of the suicide attempt definitely hadn’t helped. Not to mention that Paris had initially been pinned as a person of interest considering that the last calls from and to Sade had involved him somehow. He’d been cleared, but the damage was done. “What was she like?”
“Mean,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head. He leaned forward, his free hand rubbing his neck. “At least until you got past that, then she was cool. Funny. She knew what she wanted out of life, for sure. I see why she got along with Jada.”
“I’m sorry you lost her, too,” Ariana said, reaching for his hand, giving his palm a squeeze.
“Thank you.”
A moment later came the Sigmas, carrying folding chairs by the armload. Where there were Gammas, Sigmas weren’t far behind. Of course, they were just as involved; they’d lost one of their own. Ariana didn’t know many of the Greeks personally, but she recognized a few of them.
There was Inez Gibson, Sade’s lifelong best friend and another head majorette, carrying sacks of long, tapered candles. She walked beside Josiah and Josiah’s friend, Reece Polite. Like all Sigmas and Gammas, they were conventionally attractive. The standard was unwritten officially, but unofficially, stood a better chance of being chosen if they were good-looking.
“I’m surprised Jada didn’t come and cuss at you for not being in the kitchen.”
The patio door flew open. “Paris! I already told you I have shit to do. I gotta get these boards together for the vigil. My printer smells my fear, and it’s not working. What are you doing?”
Paris sat back, chuckling. “I’m too high for you to hurt me, Jada.”
Ariana cut in. “It’s my fault. I needed a minute, and he helped me out.”
“Oh. Well, okay then. We do need to hurry up, though. Come come,” Jada said, twirling on her heels to go inside.
Paris stubbed the cone in a nearby ashtray. “See how she do me? Let me go be useful. I’ll distract them.”
Ariana especially hated being perceived post pop-off. Those moments were few and far between, but the shame lasted forever. Hell, it wasn’t as if Cairo had been lying. Her parents had never given her much room to breathe. Maybe the fact that he hadn’t been lying was why she’d blown up?
Once she had worked up the courage to return, the boys were knee-deep in a nineties tv show debate. August had crowned The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as the winner. Cairo was passionately disagreeing.
“I’m telling y’all Moesha was the shit, okay? If I played that music that comes on when she writes in her journal, bet you’d lose your mind right now.”
“Fair enough,” August said.
“... Aye, that lil bop is kinda smooth, though, won’t lie,” Paris said, making his way to the kitchen.
“What bop?”
“Moesha’s diary music. When she’s all introspective and what not,” he explained.
“Oh. Yeah, that beat slaps,” Jada agreed.
“Dude!” Ariana cried as Paris abruptly detoured, rushing past her and toward the bathroom.
“I had to pee like twenty minutes ago!”
Ariana crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall adjoining the kitchen, watching her friends prepare food. For all of her complaining, Megan’s labor was one of love and protection every time she fed them. She purposely stirred counterclockwise sometimes. She often infused her dishes with garlic or cayenne.
Ariana recalled friendless grade school days when they’d written off the girl who always wore black as a weirdo and started a smear campaign that had followed through high school graduation.
She wasn’t entirely convinced that the campaign was finished, but in her friends’ presence, none of that mattered. They loved and accepted each other, and Ariana still couldn’t believe her luck.
Jada set a probing gaze on her as she approached the nearby fridge for the milk. “You good?”
“Yeah. I overreacted, but I’m good now,” Ariana said, and accepted the hug that Jada slipped around her shoulders. “I’m fine.”
“Alright, as long as you’re good. But you know we’re here if you’re not.”
Ariana smiled. “I know.”
She caught sight of a tri-folded sheet of paper stuck to the fridge with a magnet from a local law firm. The notice swung closer as Megan opened the refrigerator's door. The power company’s name and the words ‘overdue’ printed in red ink caught Ariana’s attention; she quickly looked away.
Jada would absolutely tweak if she knew that she’d been found out. She wondered how to ensure that Jada knew they were there for her, too, without stepping on Jada’s pride.
Half an hour later, the food was almost ready. They were just waiting on the cornbread to bake. Then it was chow time.
While they waited, the backwoods went into rotation. They’d swapped Living Single for YouTube, and GoldLink’s ‘Crew’ mingled with the marijuana smoke swirling through the air. The patio door was cracked just so; smoking wasn’t allowed in the building. They’d spent the last three years carelessly breaking that rule.
Jada sighed. “Let me hit it.”
“Hit what?” Megan asked from where she sat with her back to August’s chest, glancing between Jada and the blunt in her hand.
“The blunt, Meg!”
“Since when?”
“Dire times, man. I need to be high to deal with this,” she said as she perused Sade’s photo. The photo was months old, taken during a fundraising car wash they’d organized in hopes to afford new uniforms. Sade had never even gotten to perform in hers; at least not without someone pulling strings. Who’d puppeteered her over that scoreboard? “There’s so much going on. I’m struggling.”
The confession hung in the weed-tinged air. Jada didn’t have problems, as far as anyone knew. Well, as far as she’d let anyone know, anyhow.
“You?” Cairo asked.
“Me,” Jada said, replacing the cap of the marker she’d been using to etch Sade’s name onto the poster board she was crafting and accepted the blunt Megan handed her. “I’m the head majorette now, and that comes with its own set of problems. Then, everything keeps going up. My 529 is fightin’ for its life.”
“I get you, because I’m doin’ Sergio’s job now. Do you need help with anything?” Cairo continued, choosing his words carefully as he probed with empathetic eyes. “You know I got you…”
Jada smiled at him. He seemed just as surprised as anyone else that she hadn’t snapped. “Thank you, Cairo. That’s sweet. I’m good for now,” she decided, taking a hit and holding the smoke for a few seconds before exhaling. “I’m just talkin’.”
“I’ll go check on the food,” Megan said as she stood, glancing through the windows on her way. “I see people goin’ to the chapel.”
Jada sat up after hearing this news, yanked back into reality. “I need to be one of them in about an hour. I’m supposed to meet up with Josiah.”
August’s features screwed up in disgust. “I don’t like his ass.”
Cairo finished his second wine cooler and sat the bottle down beside his socked feet, wiping his mouth. “What did he do to you?”
“He knows better.”
“Then what is it?”
August shrugged with crossed arms, shaking his head, one side of his mouth lifted in repulsion. “He just rub me the wrong way. I ain’t the most humble dude, I know that, but goddamn. He might actually think he’s god.”
Cairo shrugged, mainly because he couldn’t refute that well and widely-known fact. “He asked me why y’all didn’t pledge when I did.”
“Because I hate that mufucka, next question.”
Paris shook his head, chuckling. His legs were stretched out across Jada’s lap. She had given up pushing them away after the fourth try. “Don’t even look this way. I love it for you, but that frat shit just ain’t for me.”
“You don’t want brotherhood, brother?” Cairo asked with a hard slap to Paris’s shoulder. He jerked backwards as Paris winced and bucked at him. With raised hands, he grinned. “I’m on a mission to piss everybody in this room off at least once today, sorry.”
“Don’t forget that I have three brothers, miss me with that brotherhood shit. I hate them bitches, too. Glad they went back to Alabama.” Paris’s family had decided to return to Birmingham during his high school junior year, but he’d begged to stay with his uncle in Sageville instead.
Though Michael’s trailer had been old and small, he’d welcomed his nephew with open arms, as well as Ariana whenever she visited. His uncle Michael had been the sweetest man. Meals on Wheels, soup kitchens, shelters… poverty had never become between him and volunteering time and energy into those things.
His untimely death had tipped Paris’s already unbalanced, homesick scale; it’d been the catalyst to his decision to leave Virginia State. Ariana understood why Paris missed Michael so much.
Paris’s brothers Andre, Rodrick, and D’Wayne had always been assholes. He always said that his big brothers had never fulfilled that role, instead becoming his first bullies. The youngest of the four boys, Rodrick, hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice Paris in order to save himself from the fire and often joined in the bullshit. Ariana understood why Paris loathed them so much.
“The Sigma parties be lit. They basically run PCSU. I don’t get why y’all wouldn’t wanna be involved,” Cairo said, shaking his head. “Ask Jada.”
August stroked his chin as if he pondered a deep thought. “I’ma go out on a limb here and assume you really tryna join because Jada’s a Gamma.”
“That’s not the reason, but it don’t hurt. Paris, your ho ass should be first in line, ‘cause girls will fall into your lap.”
That sort of hung in the air for a while.
“Please excuse me from the narrative.”
August had never been as nice. “Fuck them, okay?”
Cairo rubbed his stomach and burped obnoxiously. “That’s all right. Don’t ask me about the guest list when I’m finally on the money team.”
August looked up from blocking yet another nosy ass person asking inappropriate questions in his DMs. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they really had a guest list.”
“They really do have a guest list,” Jada interjected, laughing. “They can be extra, but they’re harmless.”
Paris’s head whipped toward Cairo in delayed offense. “Hold on, did you call me a ho? Let’s not, community dick–”
“Don’t start none, won’t be none!” Cairo shouted, pointing his finger, raising it once more after Paris slapped it aside.
“Honestly, both of y’all should keep MyChart results on hand,” Ariana said, snickering as August released a long, ignorant howl. She laughed harder as both boys mugged her.
Megan leaned in from the kitchen. “The cornbread is finished. “Babe, you want everything?”
“I do. Thank you, baby,” August said, catching his breath, wiping the tears from his eyes.
“I’ll come help,” Jada said, slowly getting to her feet. “Whoo. Shit’s spinnin’. I hope everybody wants some of everything because that’s what I’m putting on these plates.”
“...I‘m not in the mood for cornbread or greens at this time, but I’m really scared to say it now,” Paris told Ariana, who offered a sympathetic shoulder pat as she listened and didn’t judge.
“Hey. Megan be fixin’ your plates?” Cairo asked August.
“Yes?”
“I thought she was a feminist.”
August rolled his eyes. “This is how I know you don’t know what a feminist is. You think I ain’t learned nothin’ from being with her?”
“Then can somebody explain it to me like I’m five?”
“What don’t we already have to explain to you like you’re five?” Ariana asked, cracking herself up in the process. In turn, she got Paris started, August cracked, and then the three leaned on each other laughing their asses off.
Cairo watched his friends in disdain, sneering. “It ain’t that fuckin’ funny, now.”
Megan sighed as she returned with a loaded plate. “Feminism is equality, duh. If a girl doesn’t want to be a wife and/or a mother, that’s her business. If another girl does, that’s her business, as long as nobody’s judging each other. I wish ‘em both the best of luck, as someone okay with either fate. Besides, I do this kind of thing for him because he does them for me.”
“You so smart, boo. Please tell him. Thank you,” August said, accepting the plate and Megan’s kiss to his cheek. “You need to get you a woman, let her teach you somethin’. Accept that they know more than us.”
“I’m tryin’! She don’t want me,” Cairo added with a whisper. A mostly pointless whisper. Everybody knew he was in love with Jada Cunningham. Including Jada Cunningham.
Paris re-lit the nearest blunt. “You ain’t movin’ right. If you wanted to impress her, you’d be in that kitchen helpin’ her out.”
“My grandma always says that laziness might be the death of me. I should go, right? I’ma go,” he said, stumbling on lightweight-drunk legs as he stood and wandered into the kitchen.
“Pray for y’all’s boy,” Ariana said with a sympathetic shake of the head. Patience was not Jada’s strength, and the ultimate Patience Tester had just hunted her down.
Thankfully, he survived and the group enjoyed a meal together. Jada only fussed once, and it was at Paris, whose cornbread and greens remained after he’d smashed everything else.
“But I don’t want ‘em!” he whined.
“It’s wasteful.”
“Why y’all always on me? If you had asked to start with, this wouldn’t have happened. The way I see it, it’s your problem.”
“I’m giving you problems as soon as I finish this piece of chicken, I promise,” she said, shaking a Texas Pete Hot Sauce bottle over her drumstick. “You fried the hell out of this, though, gotta give you that, too.”
By the time Ariana finally made it to the restroom, the problems had started. Paris was screaming, and it was like any other Sunday night at Jada’s. Everybody was always on him because his reactions were the funniest, and he hadn’t had that epiphany yet. Was it sort of evil? Yes. Could Paris handle it unscathed? Yes.
“Give it to me. I’ll eat it, just stop beatin’ him!” August cried over Megan and Cairo’s loud, shameless cackling.
It was all that sweet tea Cairo had made. Ariana, like most southerners, was particular about tea. Getting it right was a science, and nobody understood sweet tea better than Cairo. She’’d gone overboard after the third glass.
Ariana scanned the room as the sink’s vanity lights flickered. Electrical trouble was typical on campus; there were occasional power outages that annoyed everyone, but hardly lasted long. She was washing her hands when the bathroom light flickered again, then cut out.
“Oh, come on,” Ariana said, feeling around for the light switch, knowing it was useless. She looked down and saw the kitchen light shining through the gap between the door and the gleaming hardwood floor.
The hell was up with the bathroom lights?
She didn’t worry. It wouldn’t last long.
Seconds later, the lights flashed on again. Ariana’s sigh of relief caught in her throat as she choked on fear, realizing she was no longer alone in the mirror.
A dead-eyed Sade stood behind her, her throat torn, the rhinestones on her blood-stained uniform dull with red clay. Through a large gash in the shimmering top, Ariana noted what had to be – what the HELL – autopsy scars. Her light brown skin had taken on a sickly green hue. Her long hair was perfectly styled, and despite being very dead, she was still very pretty. In a grotesque sort of way.
A slack-jawed, lightheaded Ariana kept still and switched to manual breathing, tears of shock falling from her fluttering eyes. She wondered which psych med might solve the issue. She’d never needed anything for hallucinations before.
And she still didn’t. The physical presence was real. She would, however, need the whole armor of heaven as one of Sade’s rhinestones caught onto her hoodie as the body inched closer. Yet? There was no body heat, no warmth. In fact, the closer she got, the cooler the air became.
“Oh my god,” Ariana croaked, terrified at the sight of her own breath, trembling in the suddenly frigid room. She was both afraid to and dying to close her eyes. “Sade?”
Sade’s mouth slowly gaped, thick strings of dark blood pouring from inside. Was there liquid actually hitting the ground? Was she hearing things?
“Call me back, Paris,” came a whisper of a voice that was Sade’s, but a crackling recording of voicemail quality. “Call me back. Paris, please call me back. Paris?”
Meanwhile, Paris was in the living room getting beat up by Jada and none the-wiser to the shit unfolding in Jada’s restroom.
Sade’s request sounded once more, directly into Ariana’s ear. “Paris. Call me.”
Ariana didn’t even realize she was screaming until her friends burst through the door.
Cairo’s eyes darted in search of the threat. “What?”
“Oh my god. Holy fuck. Fuck!” Ariana cried, wringing her hands. The wringing hurt, it always had, but it usually brought her back into reality. There was no more Sade. The floor was clean, no blood, no red clay. The heat that’d been sucked from the room returned in a warm rush. Sunday dinner’s aroma hung in the air. Gone was the odor of formaldehyde that had previously filled the room.
Cairo gently grabbed her hands and held them firmly to his chest as he looked into her eyes. “Ariana! What’s wrong?”
Her heart could’ve thumped right out of her chest, and getting air was still difficult. “I saw her. I fuckin’ saw her, she was in here! She kept asking for Paris to call her back!” she cried with wild eyes, hardly able to keep still.
The color drained from Paris’s face as that bit of news landed, and all eyes landed on him. “Huh?”
“Who?” Jada asked with her fists ready, immediately on guard.
“Sade. I swear to god, she was here. I know everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I know what I saw.” She glanced at her shoulder. Sure enough, the lone rhinestone was still there. More tears, more fear clawing at her insides. “Oh god. Look at this,” she said, pinching the shoulder of her hoodie.
Megan frowned, waving her hands. “Wait, what? Sade? As in ‘just passed away’ Sade?”
“I was putting rhinestones on the board. That’s gotta be what it is,” Jada said, though she didn’t sound too sure herself. She leaned in to investigate.
Ariana hated to admit that the stone was similar to the type Jada had used. Admitting it would mean she had just been seeing things.
“Nobody thinks you’re crazy, my love. Least of all, me,” Megan said, placing her hand over Cairo’s as he continued holding Ariana’s. “That poor girl ain’t at rest.”
“Excuse me, but what the hell are y’all talkin’ about? Sade is dead. I did her hair at the funeral home. I went to the girl’s fuckin’ wake. She was in a casket, dead,” Jada said through shuddering breaths, fighting tears. She leaned into August’s embrace and let herself break just a little. Very unlike Jada.
“I saw her too. Just now,” Ariana said, her voice breaking. Maybe she was losing her goddamn mind after all.
There was hardly time to dwell. A phone chimed from the living room. Uneasy looks were shared as dread filled the air.
Was it Paris’s phone?
Of course it was.
Would there be a new voicemail that hadn’t been there minutes ago?
Of course there would.
“What the fuck did we smoke? We trippin’! Do we hear ourselves? Phones ring, p-people see shit,” August stuttered in an effort to explain the inexplicable as they returned to the living room. They stood shoulder to shoulder around the coffee table, staring at the phone after confirming that there was indeed a new message.
Paris hadn’t said another word. He had gone pale and sort of looked like he was going to be sick.
“P, you okay, man?” August asked, nodding as Paris shook his head. “Yeah, I wouldn’t think so.”
“Am I the only one that wants you to go ahead and play it?”
“Cairo, please!” Jada snapped, rolling her eyes. “But… no. I kinda wanna hear it, too. I think. What?”
“Somebody just do it!” Megan blurted, wincing. “My bad. Curiosity is gon’ kill me.”
Ariana snapped into action as Paris stared at the space ahead. She entered the passcode – her birthday, incidentally – and found the voicemail. She activated the speaker and played the message. Though it was mostly static, Sade’s trembling, panicked voice cut through the noise.
“Paris? ………. Paris, can you call me back, please? ……………………………………. I really need to talk to you. Call me back.”
“She sounded terrified,” Megan said, sighing as tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, I wish I could talk to her.”
Jada held up a hand. “You better not bring no Ouija board up in this house.”
“For your information, I do not use ouija boards. I do own a pendulum I wish I had in my bag. Clearly, she’s tryna tell us something.”
“I should’ve called her back,” Paris said eventually, rubbing his temples, green eyes watery. “I didn’t think it was that serious. Like, what if she needed my help–”
“Don’t do that. We still don’t know what happened exactly or why,” Ariana cut in, gently hugging him. “This is not your fault, Paris.”
It was almost as if he hadn’t heard a word anyone said, pulling in deep, steadying breaths that weren’t helping from the looks of it, his body solid against Ariana’s attempt to soothe him. “That message was not on my phone until now. I promise.”
“For real, what the hell were we smokin’?” Cairo asked, picking up a hastily-abandoned blunt from the ashtray to study.
“It’s just regular weed like I always get,” Jada said, wiping her face. “No Reggie Bush.”
Ariana gave Paris space, keeping her hands apart to prevent wringing them again. “...What the hell do we do, y’all?”
“We move on. That’s all we can do,” Jada said, settling back into her seat like nothing had happened. She resumed drawing perfect letters with long, smooth strokes after relighting the blunt and sticking it into the corner of her mouth.
Everyone else but Paris remained standing. He’d silently tucked himself away in the recliner near the patio and stared through the window. Ariana spied his reflection in the patio door’s glass. His features had settled into hard, somber lines. Not good. It was hard to get him back when he got lost like that.
Ariana bit her tongue right before it’d start to bleed, arms folded across her chest as she turned towards Jada. “Jay… y—… you believe me, right?”
She shook her head, but didn’t look up. “I don’t know, Ari. I’m having a hard time believing that the same girl we saw hangin’ from the scoreboard a week ago was just in my apartment.”
While Ariana fully understood Jada’s logic, it didn’t lessen the sting of her words. Her friend thought she was insane. “Did you or did you not just hear the same message I did?”
“She has a point, y’all. We know what we just heard. All damn six of us,” she said with a stony glare as she scanned them.
“It’s probably damn AI or something!” Jada cried, throwing up her hands. “People do things like that these days, and these idiots around here swear we had some kind of conspiracy going–”
“I believe it,” Cairo interjected Jada’s oncoming rant, crossing himself. He shrugged as his friends stared. “Hey, I been seein’ crazy shit since I was a little kid. And Ari ain’t a liar.”
“Thank you,” she said, gaze lowering to the ground, shame squeezing her throat like a pair of hands. Having to be defended always had done a number on her head, faced with being hard to swallow.
“Then that makes you just as ridiculous–” Jada said, gasping before snapping her mouth closed. She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry. Ariana, I am so sorry. I don’t even know why I said that.”
“Whoa,” Cairo said, frowning and utterly confused. Ariana shared the sentiment, deeply confused why Jada would say such a thing.
“Jada!” Megan scoffed, hands ready to catch the falling pieces once her friend shattered.
Ariana was aware of this and refused to fall apart. She wasn’t that goddamn fragile, was she? “Wow.”
August had reared back a few inches, jaw dropped. Ariana had never seen him so disgusted in all the time she’d known him. “That’s fucked up, Jada,” he said with a humorless chuckle.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Jada’s hands covered her mouth just as thunder shook the building, followed by a crack of lightning illuminating the darkening sky. Then that sky opened and it started to pour. Heavy raindrops pounded the ceiling. The charged air went silent, aside from the occasional creak of the recliner rocking back and forth. The music had long ago died.
Ariana returned to her previous corner and picked up a marker, popping off its top. She added another letter to the board, the ‘a’ in Sade’s ‘Gamble’, then grabbed the rhinestones and glue. “It’s fine, y’all. I’m good. Let’s just finish and go.”
