After Tupac & D Foster (12 page)

“You ever see Sly? After that night in Randall’s house?”

Tash shook his head. “They weren’t trying to put us in the same jail. They knew if they did, only one of us would be walking out alive.”

“Which one?” I said. Even though I already knew.

“The one you talking to, Miss Honey. The one you are talk-
ing
to.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Saturday night, Jayjones came running down the street with the news—Tupac got shot again. Four times in the chest by a drive-by in a Cadillac. Critical condition. Some hospital in Las Vegas.

All day Sunday, me and Neeka sat on my bed listening to the radio station, listening to the news.

Surgery.

A lung removed.

We leaned in close to the radio, waiting for more.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Early Monday morning, the phone rang. I heard Mama walking slow toward it. I heard her call my name. Then I heard D. I heard Desiree saying real soft and real sad,
Hey girl. Our boy ain’t gonna make it.

And it didn’t matter that all those weeks had passed and D had come and gone again. Didn’t matter that she’d never told us about her real name or her white mama. It was our girl. It was D. Across all those miles and all that time. It was D up in my ear, all regular, all familiar.

“Girl,” I said. “Where the frick-frack you been?”

And then I could feel D smiling.

“It’s all complicated with my moms,” she said. “But she’s trying and I’m trying and I’m up here in these crazy
mountains
with a phone that don’t have no long distance! And every day’s like a battle just to get through.”

I leaned back against the wall in the kitchen and listened to D’s voice. I tried to picture her up there in those mountains, wearing a ton of layers and still freezing. Walking the streets with her mama. Roaming.

“Me and Neeka be missing you
crazy
, girl.”

“You were supposed to find another person to hold that rope,” D said, trying to sound all serious.

I sucked my teeth. “None of these double-handed sisters know how to hold a rope like you.”

“I hear that.”

“You really think he’s gonna die, D.”

D got real quiet. Then I heard her say
Yeah,
her voice all shaky and high.

“Me too,” I said.

“My moms says people die to make room for other people. She’s all up into crystals and afterlife and meditating—that kind of crazy-ass stuff.”

I stared out the window. The rain was still coming down and the sky was dark gray and hard-looking. It looked like it was mad at the whole world.

I remembered when my moms said the same thing. I was little then—trying to understand why the two goldfish I’d only had for a week were floating at the top of their bowl. My moms said they’d left this world to make room for other fish. Maybe all mothers learned the same way of talking about dying to their kids.

“You believe her?”

“I guess I do. I hope I do. That would be cool, you know. Then you don’t have to be sad—you could just sit around thinking about who’s gonna come next. You know if they following Tupac they gotta be bad-ass.”

I smiled.

“My moms says you can see where they’re going—the people who die. You can meditate and, I don’t know, follow them or something.”

“That sounds really, really crazy.”

D laughed.

“You telling me?! I know my moms is like three fries short of a Happy Meal, but she my moms, so I take what I get.”

My mother hollered at me to get off the phone and start getting ready for school.

I told D I had to go.

“You gonna call again? Or you got a number I can call you?”

D gave me the number.

“It works most of the time,” she said. “But they be stressing you if you don’t pay the bill on time and my moms isn’t good about that stuff. So if it don’t work, just keep trying. She don’t let it stay cut off
too
long.”

“You called Neeka?”

“Ching-ching. This call is costing me crazy. I got a ten-dollar phone card and I’m sure this call ate it all up! Tell her I thought she’d be at your house where it’s quiet.”

I laughed. “You better come home soon, D.”

A moment passed. And then D said real soft,
You know I will
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

On Friday the thirteenth—Tupac died.

In the morning, the sun was out. By noon, the rain started coming down. And just kept on coming.

Me and Neeka sat on the stairs letting ourselves get wet. We must’ve looked like fools, two girls in rain jackets, our hair all stuck to our heads, ourselves shivering. Maybe we wanted the rain to wash the shock and hurt and confusion away.

Maybe we wanted to go upstairs, dry off and believe Tupac hadn’t really died.

When we dialed D’s number that night, the phone just rang and rang.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Winter came and Jayjones went off to visit Georgetown. When he came back a few days later, he was wearing Georgetown everything—sweatshirt, cap, even his socks said Georgetown. His grin wide. His basketball spinning on the tip of his pointer. When the ball stopped spinning, he looked around—at me and Neeka sitting on the stairs, wearing the caps he’d brought home for us.

At Tash, across the street, leaning out Miss Irene’s window, a pillow on the sill.

At Neeka’s sisters playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.

At Albert, his hands in his pockets, leaning against the stair railing, staring off quietly down the street.

At Emmett, standing near him, trading comic books with his friends.

At my mama, coming down the street, a shopping bag in her hand, saying,
How you doing?
to the people she walked past.

Jayjones held the ball in the crook of his arm. Then he spun it again. Slower, though. And this time, he looked sadder as he watched it turn. Maybe he was already halfway away from all of us. Maybe, inside his own head, he was already shooting baskets and scoring high for Georgetown. Maybe the frown that was between his eyes now was about remembering the summer before and the summer before that when people weren’t dying or moving away or losing some big part of themselves.

He bounced the ball once, real hard. Then stuck it back under his arm and headed across the street and on into his house.

“He thinks just because some tired school wants him that he’s all that now,” Neeka said. “He better remember Tuesday is
still
his day to do dishes!”

I put my arm around Neeka’s shoulder and pulled her closer to me.

“You are a true-blue nut, Neeka.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m your girl anyway.”

“True that,” I said. “True that.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was hard to read anything about Tupac dying and not think about D. Seems D was right—you listen to Tupac’s songs and you know he’s singing about people like D, about all the kids whose mamas went away, about all the injustice. Brenda throwing away her baby, the cops beating some brother down, the hungry kids, sad kids, kids who got big dreams nobody’s listening to. Like over all that time and distance he looked right across the bridge into Queens, New York—right into Desiree’s eyes. Strange how he saw her.

He
saw
her.

Some people say Tupac ain’t really dead, that he’s on some Caribbean island someplace far away from people wanting to shoot him up all the time. And I guess, maybe, I’d do the same thing, I don’t know. I mean, how many times can you get shot and get lucky, and be A Miracle like he was?

Jayjones said, “I bet my boy’s still somewhere writing songs.”

Says he thinks Tupac faked his own death to get away from all that
drama.

I don’t know. Most days I’m still trying to figure it all out. I call D’s number and the phone still rings and rings. I check the mailbox and there’s never any letter from her. And a part of me gets real sad with the missing of her.

But some mornings, I look out my window and see the sun coming up all crazy orange and gold behind the houses across the street. And sitting there watching it, I have to start smiling. It’s hard not to get to hoping that maybe hey’re together ... finally . . . somewhere. Finally meeting each other. Across the miles. Across the years. All the
drama
and
chaos
of their lives dropping away.

D and Tupac. Tupac and D. Walking along some beautiful beach like they be having in the videos. Tupac all dressed in white, his shirt open and blowing in the wind, his beautiful brown chest soaking in all that sun. His sad eyes finally laughing. And D with her hair blowing, her green eyes brighter than anything. Her sweet half smile . . . finally whole.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, thanks, Nancy, for reading this and rereading this and re-rereading this until it became the story I was trying to tell. Thanks, Sara and Meredith and Charlotte, for all you do. And big, big thank you to Stephanie Grant—friend and writer extraordinaire—thanks for your amazing eye.

Donald Douglas—thanks for helping me with the basketball stuff. Roman Woodson—thanks for the research.

And all the others who know who they are—Juliet and Patti and Linda and Jill. And the rest of my big and crazy family—for dinner together every Sunday night and the words and phrases and craziness that sometimes make their way to the pages. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And of course, this novel would never have happened without the inspiration that was Tupac Shakur and the many talented musicians that came before, during and after him.