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MILLS & BOON
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Dear Reader,
What you’re holding is very special. Something fresh, new and true to your unique experience as a young African-American! We are proud to introduce a new fiction imprint—Kimani TRU. You’ll find Kimani TRU speaks to the triumphs, problems and concerns of today’s black teens with candor, wit and realism. The stories are told from your perspective and in your own voice, and will spotlight young, emerging literary talent.
Kimani TRU will feature stories that are down-to-earth, yet empowering. Feel like an outsider? Afraid you’ll never fit in, find your true love or have a boyfriend who accepts you for who you really are? Maybe you feel that your life is a disaster and your future is going nowhere? In Kimani TRU novels, discover the emotional issues that young blacks face every day. In one story, a young man struggles to get out of a neighborhood that holds little promise by attending a historically black college. In another, a young woman’s life drastically changes when she goes to live with the father she has never known and his middle-class family in the suburbs.
With Kimani TRU, we are committed to providing a strong and unique voice that will appeal to all young readers! Our goal is to touch your heart, mind and soul, and give you a literary voice that reflects your creativity and your world.
Spread the word…Kimani TRU. True to you!
Linda Gill
General Manager
Kimani Press
Acknowledgments
God is the source of my talent and blessings.
To my sons who took me back to being a teenager for the sake of this story. To my husband, who is the ringleader of my cheering section. And my family and close friends who keep me grounded.
To my editor, Evette Porter: Thank you for putting Indigo Summer on the map and other titles just like it. The minds of our youth depend on the voices in fiction that Kimani TRU books represent.
For my Granny, Rosa A. Heggie:
You are special in so many ways, and the
strongest woman I know. My life is rich because of you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 1
Indigo
“What kind of name is that for a dog?”
“What, Killer?”
“Yes. That’s stupid!”
“What’s stupid about it?”
“It just is.”
“What kind of name is Indigo?”
“A perfect name, for a perfect girl.” I rolled my eyes at him, placed my hands on my hips and was about to give him a piece of my mind. But I decided not to. “How did you know my name anyway?”
He was silent for a moment, standing there with waves all in his hair, as if he slept in a doo-rag or something. His teeth were perfect, and I knew without asking that he used to wear braces. I wished my parents would spring for some braces for me, so that I could have perfect teeth like that. But instead, they were always complaining about having to pay bills and telling me that my teeth weren’t that bad.
“Money don’t grow on trees, Indi,” Daddy was always telling me. “But you got it better than most kids. We provide a nice home for you, you eat good, and you have your own room. That’s more than I had when I was your age. I had to share a room with your uncle Keith when I was coming up. Never had my own room.” Then he’d go into his spiel about having to walk ten miles to school in a Chicago blizzard. Imagine that. Ten miles in a Chicago blizzard? He’d lose me at that point.
“Daddy, come on,” I would laugh. “Ten miles is a lot of miles.”
“Don’t forget the part about the Chicago blizzard, girl’d have to laugh himself, because he knew that he was only telling half the truth.
Sometimes I loved listening to my daddy’s stories about growing up in Chicago at my nana Summer’s house. It was an old house, two stories tall, with an old porch and shutters that needed to be painted, but the house always smelled so good. Like fried chicken, or my all-time favorite, macaroni and cheese as only Nana could make. But she was older now, and not quite the Nana I remembered when I was little. She couldn’t remember anything anymore, and was always having aches and pains somewhere on her body. I missed the Nana that would come for visits in the summertime, creep into my room at night with chocolate chip cookies and sit in the wooden rocker next to my bedroom window. I could see my grandmother’s caramel face in the moonlight, as she rocked back and forth with her eyes just barely closed.
“Don’t get crumbs in the bed, either, little girl,” she’d say.
“I won’t, Nana.” I’d promise, but still have to brush the crumbs from the sheets.
Nana and I would talk about everything we could possibly think of. I could talk to her about any and everything. Whenever something was bothering me, she always knew. Even if I tried to smile and pretend everything was okay, Nana knew. And she’d always make me laugh even when I didn’t feel like it.
Nana insisted that I teach her all the latest dances. I taught her how to do the Harlem Shake and had to admit, she had rhythm. Before long, she could do the Harlem Shake better than some of the girls I knew from school.
Nana would come to our house in June and stay the whole summer. I wished she could’ve stayed the entire year, but she always went back to Chicago at the end of August.
“I gotta go check on my house, baby,” she would say whenever I would ask her to stay forever. “But I’ll be back for Christmas. And we’ll decorate that old tree together, make hot apple cider and stay up all night on Christmas eve.”
“Can I open at least one gift on Christmas Eve?”
“You always do, and end up picking the biggest package under the tree,” she’d chuckle. “When will you learn that the best things don’t always come in the big packages? Good things come in small packages, too.”
She was right, too, because I remembered last year when I got that sapphire necklace with the matching ankle bracelet. It was my favorite gift under the tree, and it came in the smallest package. And in the big box was a bunch of bras, panties and socks—things I didn’t care about.
I always cried for a week after Nana was gone.
I’d tell her about all the ugly, stupid boys in my class and tell her how much I hated them.
“You just wait until they grow up,” Nana would laugh and say. “You’ll like boys one of these days, trust me.”
“I don’t think so, Nana.” I couldn’t even imagine looking at a boy for more than ten seconds without being ready to puke. And to like them? Now that was taking it a bit too far. “Why are boys so stupid?”
“I don’t know, baby.” I could see Nana’s smile in the moonlight; her calmness is what I admired most about her. “They just are. And they don’t get much better with age, either. In fact, some of them get worse. You’ll see when you get married.”
“I’m never getting married, Nana.” I wanted to make that crystal clear!
“Never?” Nana would ask with a look of surprise.
“Never!” My mind was made up. She’d see.
And I swore I’d never have kids either. Because if all little kids worked my nerves like my little cousin, Keith Jr. did, then I was never becoming anybody’s mama. Good thing I only had to see him on holidays. Since my uncle Keith and his wife were divorced, he only had Keith Jr. every other weekend and on Thanksgiving, during spring break and on the Fourth of July.
It seemed that everybody was getting a divorce, and I hoped that it would never happen to my parents. It happened to my best friend Jade’s parents. Just when she thought they were this big happy family, boom, that’s when it happened. And it seemed to happen overnight. Her folks had a big argument one night and the next thing Jade knew, her daddy was loading his stuff into the back of a U-Haul. I watched the whole thing from my bedroom window. They lived next door since Jade and I were in the third grade. We had been best friends just that long.
I still remember when they moved in, and Mama made me go over and introduce myself to the little girl next door. She had baked them a lemon cake and said for me to take it over there. Jade was on her front porch playing with her Barbies, and when she let me see her Barbie doll—and I told her I had four of them at home—it was on. From that day forward we were inseparable.
In fifth grade we had our own Kool-Aid stand, selling beverages to the neighbors as they passed by our little makeshift stand. In seventh grade we both tried out for cheerleading, and neither one of us made the team because we couldn’t do the splits. In the eighth grade we played volleyball together, but decided it wasn’t our game. We both knew that when we got to high school we’d try out for the dance team. That was our sole purpose for wanting to attend George Washington Carver High, to join their dance team, which was known throughout the city for their outstanding performances. They often performed during parades and stuff, and the whole town recognized their talent. Articles were written about them in the newspaper. To make that team meant you were one of the most talented dancers in all of Atlanta.
It’s all we talked about the summer after eighth grade. We spent hours learning all the latest dances and brushing up on our moves. We were determined to make that dance team if it was the last thing we did in this lifetime! But then her folks split up. I never knew that when I watched her daddy load his things into that U-Haul, it was the beginning of the end.
“What your mama cook for dinner?” I remember asking her that day.
“Nothing. She’s mad at my daddy.”
“What did he do?”
“He came home late again last night,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Real late.”
“Where do you think he was?”
“I don’t know, but she was really mad. They had a bad argument, too,” she said. “I don’t think they love each other anymore.”
“For real?” I asked, lying across my canopy bed and talking to Jade on my cell phone, as she sat on her bed in her room just a spit’s distance away.
If I stood in my bedroom window, I could see Jade’s pink-and-white comforter on her bed, her bookshelf and the Usher poster she had plastered on her wall. I knew when she brushed her teeth and said her prayers at night, and I knew when she awakened in the morning, because the light from her room would creep across my face and wake me up, too. I would often throw Skittles at her window in order to wake her up when she tried to sleep in on Saturday mornings.
“Yes, for real,” she said, almost in tears after her parents’ big fight. “She told him to move out.”
“Do you think she was serious?”
“He’s packing his stuff right now, as we speak,” she said.
My heart skipped a beat when she said that. That night, I closed my eyes real tight, knelt beside my bed and prayed that God would not only keep Jade’s parents together, but mine, too. I didn’t ever want my daddy packing his things and moving away.
I guess he missed the part about Jade’s parents, because the next day her father was gone.
Mama had sent me to the new neighbor’s with a pound cake. It did something to my heart walking over there, knowing that Jade was gone. Knowing that these new people were living in her house, with different furniture and art of their own on her walls. No longer would I smell her mama’s pork chops, smothered in gravy and onions, floating through the air.
“I know your name is Indigo Summer, because I used to sit behind you in Miss Everett’s second grade class.”
“The boy who used to sit behind me in Miss Everett’s class was a bucktoothed ugly boy named Marcus Carter.”
“You thought I was bucktoothed and ugly?”
“You’re Marcus Carter from the second grade?”
“In the flesh.”
I was embarrassed and wanted to crawl under a rock, but I stood there and assessed him from the top of his head, all the way down to his white Air Force Ones. I had to admit, he looked much better than he had in the second grade.
“I still think your dog’s name is stupid,” I said. “He doesn’t even look like a killer.”
Marcus held onto the leash which was wrapped tight around Killer’s neck.
“You’re much prettier than you were in the second grade. I’ll give you that,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I rolled my eyes and placed both hands on small hips.
“Well, first of all, you were shaped like a light pole. No shape. Nappy hair. Missing your two front teeth. I see they grew back at least.”
“What about you, with your buckteeth and Mister Peabody glasses?” I asked. “It’s amazing what braces and a pair of contacts can do, huh?”
“I guess it is. And when do you plan on getting a relaxer on your hair?”
“I don’t need a relaxer,” I said, and ran my fingers through my wild, thick hair that hung past my shoulders. “I wear my hair naturally for a reason. You don’t know anything about hair. Wearing my hair in a natural style represents my heritage, for your information.”
“Well, excuse me.”
“You’re excused,” I said and sashayed toward my house, hoping Marcus wasn’t watching as I stumbled over the bottom step leading to my porch.
When I turned and saw that he was not only watching, but cracking up, I wanted to choke my daddy for not fixing that step last Saturday.
Chapter 2
Marcus
Marcus Frederick Henry Carter is my name. Marcus, named after Marcus Garvey, a man of color who organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association: an organization designed to bring unity among all blacks and to establish the greatness of the African heritage. Frederick, named after Frederick Douglass who fought to end slavery in America before the Civil War. And Henry. Well, Henry was my great-grandfather’s name on my father’s side of the family. All I got from my father was his last name, Carter and the wavy hair that every man in our family possessed. My intellect came from my mother. At least that’s what she told me.
After my parents divorced two years ago, I ended up living with my pop because Mother relocated back to New Orleans, where her and Pop both grew up. It was her idea that I live with him. She thought I would receive a better education in the state of Georgia, than I would in Louisiana. And she thought a boy needed his father much more than he needed a mother. I still think she’s wrong on that one, because I miss her more and more each day. And I think a boy needs both parents in order to be successful. I still remember when my parents got divorced; it was as if my life stood still. My grades did a nosedive, and I thought I would flunk the eighth grade. It was the therapist my pop took me to who explained that what I was experiencing was depression.
As time went on, things got better. That’s when I implemented this master plan of mine: maintaining a four-point-oh grade point average, serving as class president, tutoring kids after school, volunteering in my community…all of this would work to my benefit when I filled out my application for Yale or Princeton, whichever I decided to go to.
Transferring to a different school district was about to mess up my master plan, but trying to explain that to my pop was like pulling teeth. He didn’t understand that the high school I was attending in Stone Mountain was a much better school than the new one I’d be attending in College Park. I had done my research, checked out each school and how they panned out on statewide tests. My school could run rings around the ones across town. And the better high school always looked better when trying to apply for college. Not only that, but the better high school would help me to accomplish my master plan. The new school in College Park probably already had somebody groomed for class president, and I wasn’t even sure they had a tutoring program. This was all messed up!
I blamed Gloria, my wicked stepmother. She had my pop wrapped around her skinny little finger and jumping through hoops to try and please her. Had him spending some of my college savings on their stupid fairytale wedding; the one where she had too many bridesmaids with ugly dresses. And the tux she made me wear had me sweating like a pig in heat as I had suffered through a photo shoot that seemed to last for hours. And when it was all over, I couldn’t see where all my college money had gone.
That’s why I definitely had to get a scholarship. Who’s to say there would be any money left after Step-Mommy-Dearest was done trying to spend it all.
It was her idea that we move to College Park in the first place.
“Rufus, I need to be close to my mother,” she told Pop, as I sat on the steps next to the kitchen eavesdropping on their conversation one morning before school. “She’s getting up there in age, and I need to be able to take her to her doctor’s appointments and to the grocery store. It takes forever just to get over there to her from where we live now. And God forbid she has an emergency.”
She’s a drama queen, I thought, as I laced up my Air Force Ones.
“Why don’t we just move Evelyn over to this side of town?” Pop tried to reason with her. “I’ve got a nice little piece of property just two blocks from here. It wouldn’t take much work to fix it up for your mother.”
That’s what my pop did for living. Fixed up old houses and rented them out. Or sold them, whichever made him the most money. Since before I was born, he and my grandfather owned the same real estate investment company; the family business is what they called it. After Granddad passed away, my father inherited the family business, and talked of passing it on to me. Every chance he got, he was pressuring me about working with him, wanting to teach me the odds and ends of the business. He couldn’t wait for my graduation day, so I could start full-time the day after.
The problem was, I wasn’t interested in selling or managing real estate. And the family business was definitely not my idea of a future. I had my master plan and I was going to college. I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life than manage a bunch of run-down properties. That’s where Pop and I bumped heads. We each had a different plan for my future.
Killer, my German Shepherd, plopped his huge body down next to me on the step, licking on my shoe, and trying to chew on my shoestrings until I smacked him.
“Stop, dude!” I said and made a mental note to give his stinking behind a bath when I got home from school that day. I didn’t want Gloria fussing about the dog smell in the house again. My backpack at my feet, I removed my doo-rag and brushed my waves as I continued to listen to the Drama Queen plead her case to my father.
“Rufus, you know Mama. She ain’t gonna move to Stone Mountain and leave her house. Not the house that her and Daddy shared all those years,” Gloria said. “And all her friends are right there in the neighborhood where she lives.”
“I understand, Gloria.”
That was all Pop said that day. But next thing I knew, a RE/MAX sign was stuck in the middle of our front yard. Our house sold a lot faster than Pop and Gloria had expected and the new owners were anxious to move in and wanted us out. Before I knew it, we were packing our stuff into boxes. The problem was, we had nowhere to go. She and Pop had looked at dozens of houses in the newer subdivisions of College Park, but Gloria couldn’t seem to settle on one that she liked. She had to have the perfect house, with custom-made cabinets, the master bedroom had to be a certain square footage, and it needed to have a certain number of windows. She actually would walk through each house counting windows. Wow!
“Why don’t we just have a house built?” She finally made a suggestion.
“But where do we go while our house is being built?” Pop asked.
“We can move into one of your rental properties temporarily.”
“That would be fine, Gloria, but the problem is, I don’t have any available on that side of town.”
“Don’t you have any tenants who are behind on their rent?” I could just picture that wicked little smile of hers. “One who’s just begging to be evicted?”
“They’re all a little slow paying, Gloria, but I work with them. Always have. They’re good working-class people who just fall behind from time to time. That’s all.”
“What about that woman in the property on Madison Place? The one whose husband left her. You’ve given her more than enough time to get caught up. And now that her husband is gone, she struggles just to make the rent every month. It’s always late, and sometimes short,” she said. “That’s a cute little house too, and I love it so much, Rufus!”
“That family has lived in that property for nearly fifteen years,” Pop said. “I wouldn’t feel right asking Barbara to leave. And she’s got those children…and…”
“I thought you wanted me to be happy.” I would’ve bet my lunch money that Gloria’s lip was all poked out as she began pouting, and I could just see her rubbing her index finger across my father’s face. “You could put her in one of your smaller places. You could put her in that place just two blocks from here.”
Pop’s demeanor softened. I could tell. He was falling under her spell.
“I could talk to Barbara. See if she wants that old place. It’s a lot older than the one she lives in now, but I could fix it up for her,” Pop reasoned. “The rent over here would be a little cheaper than what she’s paying now. That way she wouldn’t be out on a limb every month. She’d have to uproot her kids and send them to another school, but…”
“It’s better than being homeless,” Gloria added.
“If I’m going to do it, I’d better do it before school starts again in the fall.”
“Is that a yes?” Gloria asked my father.
“I’ll call Barbara when I get to the office,” he said.
Gloria always seemed to get her way no matter what.
On moving day, I carefully placed all my CDs—50 Cent, T.I., Kanye West—into a cardboard box. Packed away my DVDs—Friday, Next Friday, Friday After Next, and some of my old Kung Fu movies—into the same box. And I couldn’t forget my all-time favorite DVD, Rush Hour, and every episode of The Dave Chappelle Show, which was packed in the same box. I didn’t want the movers packing my sacred items. I needed to pack them myself, to make sure they made it to the new place safely.
I placed the box on the backseat of my ’92 Jeep Cherokee that I’d saved up for and bought with money that I had earned by working the drive-thru at Wendy’s. As 50 Cent’s “Just A Little Bit” blasted through my speakers, Killer took his place in the passenger’s seat of my Jeep, his head hanging out the window as I pulled out of the subdivision I grew up in…a place where I had chased the ice cream man down the street at full speed every day just to buy a red, white and blue bomb pop; the same neighborhood where I had my first kiss with Ashley Thomas right in between Mrs. Fisher’s house and the vacant house at the end of the block, the place where I was chased by Mr. Palmer’s Doberman every time I took the short cut through his yard, and where I fell out of the tree in Miss Booker’s front yard and broke my arm when I was nine; the same place where I pushed a lawn mower up and down the street and made money cutting lawns every summer since I was twelve, and where the entire neighborhood gathered for cookouts and block parties every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and on Labor Day.