Riding Dirty on I-95 Read Free

caught in the crossfire or not. It would have been worth it. I would have been dying for what I believed in, and my dad was the one thing that I believed in more than anything. If I didn't have him, what did I have?
    One of the other guys brought over a gasoline can and poured gas all over my father's bullet-ridden body. The fourth guy, a sorry heartless motherfucker, lit a match. My father's body ignited immediately. I screamed,
“No! Nooo!”
    When I saw nobody doing anything, I took matters in my own hands. If nobody had my daddy's back, I did. I ran straight towards my father's body, but somebody grabbed me. To this day I don't remember who it was. I tried to break loose, but I couldn't—the hold was too tight. As I fought, in between the echoes of gunfire and screams, I could hear my mother.
    “Mercy! Mercy!” she cried in despair.
    I stopped fighting and turned around, because I wanted to make sure my mother was okay. I didn't need something to happen to her, too. My eyes met hers. I could see that she was relieved she had been able to bring me back to my senses. I don't know what I had planned on doing once I reached my father's body, but I just wanted to get to him. When I saw that Mother was safe, I turned back around. The guys with the guns were like ghosts. Just like that, they had vanished into thin air, gone, disappeared. ThenI saw that green-eyed man. He stared straight into my eyes before he turned and walked away.
    When I finally saw my father's body, I cried like I had never cried before. My daddy's corpse lay in the middle of the street burning. In a matter of seconds, several of his friends came over with suit jackets and beat the fire out. Better late than never, I guess.
    The street rumors all say my daddy went out in a blaze of glory, but I say there wasn't no glory in burning to a crisp in the middle of the street.
    Most girls experience their first heartbreak when they are a lot older than I was, but I had my first heartbreak when I was just seven years old, and after that they kept coming nonstop. Life had dealt me a dirty hand, but I lived through it and I hoped that someday my cards would be different.

CHAPTER 1

Everybody's Got a Hustle
    “ W ould you like to say anything else before I make my ruling?” the judge asked.
    Mercy looked directly into the judge's eyes as she spoke. “Your Honor, I would just like to say that I have been a model student in spite of my circumstances and it wasn't the state, my social worker, or any of the foster families I was placed with that made that possible. It was me, my determination, and my drive to rise above being molested, beaten, and mistreated while the state turned its back. I persevered and endured until a better day. This day Your Honor. The day my life would be placed into my own hands without any roadblocks to hinder me. If allowed, I could be a productive member of society.” She paused a minute to wipe her eyes. “So, Judge, I am asking you—I am begging you—please grant me independent living.” Her voice went soft as she swallowed. Despair was written all over her face as she prayed for her emancipation. “I can only hope that you don't make me go back to the group home. I am asking you to give me what no one has ever given me since I was seven years old—a chance.”
    At seventeen years old Mercy stood in front of the judge and pleaded her case. Over the past ten years she had been in eleven fosterhomes and one group home and had never even come close to being adopted. At the last foster home, her foster mother's boyfriend tried to molest her. He crept up on her in the kitchen and tried to stick his hands under her skirt. She grabbed the first thing she could, a steak knife. Lucky for him, the butcher knife wasn't closer. Once she stabbed him, there were no more foster homes for her. She was hauled off to a group home, even sent to a nuthouse for evaluation at one point. Now she wanted her independence.
    The judge looked her over. Her