Double Dippin' Read Free Page B

still sprinting toward them.
    Hope lit their tear-stained faces.
    That hope faded at the sound of more gunfire. Marguerite stumbled, her body lifted slightly, twisting at an impossible angle. And then she fell face down. The red stain that spread on the back of the blue flannel robe she wore over her white top seemed to take the form of a bird with its wings spread. In flight.

CHAPTER 3
    P
retty boys
. Those words were frequently uttered as Shane and Tariq drew stares of admiration from just about everyone who encountered them. Their great-aunt Mazie usually puffed up with pride and would cast an appreciative smile at the person who’d bestowed the compliment.
    But not today. Fuming mad, Mazie ignored the whispered compliments from passersby. Holding the hands of the six-year-old twins, she walked as fast as her swollen feet would allow.
    Great-aunt Mazie, their reluctant guardian considered Shane’s and Tariq’s physical attractiveness one of the few perks in raising them—the other being the monthly check the state paid her for giving the two orphans a home. Otherwise, raising the two little rascals was a pain in the neck she could have lived without. She blamed her gutless brother for putting her in her present condition. That damn alcoholic didn’t have the guts to stand up to his wife and put a roof over his own grandchildren’s heads.
    No, he’d left the burden on Mazie. And being a good Christian woman, she couldn’t turn her back on two motherless children
    You gonna be blessed, Sister Matthews
. That’s what the members of her congregation always said when she complained about being saddled with the boys for the past two years.
    “Whoever heard of a first-grader getting suspended from school?” she wondered aloud and then yanked Shane’s hand to emphasize her displeasure.
    “They’re so cuuute,” cooed a teenage girl who exited the pizza parlor on the corner of Forty-sixth and Spruce Streets. With long, multi-colored braids, a short leather jacket, and skin-tight jeans, she looked like a fast number toMazie. Mazie acknowledged the compliment with narrowed eyes, which she hoped conveyed her disapproval of the little trollop. Then she turned her attention back to Shane.
    Shane, however, had eased his hand out of his aunt’s grasp and started to walk backward. Looking the young lady up and down suggestively, he then gestured holding a phone to his ear, indicating he wanted to get the teenager’s phone number.
    “Ooo! You better watch that big one,” the young girl called out with a giggle. “He’s fresh!”
    Mazie grabbed Shane’s hand and pulled him close. She didn’t know exactly what he’d done; but she knew it was something he shouldn’t have been doing.
    “Now what did you do?” she asked, her voice a coarse whisper.
    “I ain’t do nothing. That girl’s trippin’.”
    “She’s what?” Mazie popped him upside the head. She hated making a spectacle of herself out in public, but Shane was enough to drive her to drinking. “Boy, don’t use that gutter language. I don’t know where you’re picking it up from, but you better keep it out of your mouth. How come you don’t act more like Tariq?” She gave Tariq a quick smile but then drew her lips into a tight knot and rolled her eyes at Shane.
    With his shoulders slouched, Shane dragged his feet defiantly.
    Mazie latched on to his arm and yanked him forward. “Pick up your feet! I guess that principal didn’t have much choice but to suspend you since you’re so bad; always fighting with the kids.” She let out a long, exasperated breath and fixed her gaze on Tariq once again. “Honey, don’t follow in your brother’s footsteps. Do you hear me?”
    “Yes,” Tariq said, meekly.
    “Shane’s headed for reform school and I don’t want you to end up in there with him.”
    “Dag, I ain’t even do nothing ’til Devon lied on me. I punched him because he said I stole his money.”
    “Well…did you?”
    “No! That big-headed