Page 47 of Call Me Mrs. Taylor

“You need me to keep going, or you gon’ get your shit together?”

“Nah, I hear you.”

“Good. Don’t miss next week, or we’re coming over there as a group to whoop yo ass.”

“Yeah, yeah. I hear you. Thanks, bruh.”

“You got it.”

I hang up feeling not much different than I did before, but I at least have the wherewithal to drag my ass out of my car. I’m at my front door when my phone vibrates.

Raya

1286 Omestan Way. 11 pm. Come to the 1st floor window on the right side of the house.

A chill moves through me.

We’re so back.

Is that where she lives?

It’s 10:15, and I’ve been thinking about this for the last few hours.

While I ate. While I showered. While I watched TV. It’s bothering me.

It’s lowkey hood over there. For a minute, I consider Ubering instead of taking the whip. Some little knucklehead will surely break into my shit the second I take my eye off of it. But do I really wanna be stuck there without transportation for who knows how long? That’s even worse.

Funny that it’s never a question of me going or not. Raya has that effect on me, hate it or love it.

Tighten up.

I keep hearing that echoing through my head.

Titus wasn’t wrong. Not even a little bit. That shit haunts me, because it’s a warning.

Tighten up. Tighten up.

The words are red like a siren, swirling behind my eyes, making the world around me look sinister and threatening.

I don’t know what the fuck I’m walking into. Niggas get set up and robbed all the time out here. But Raya wouldn’t do that. She’s pissed at me, yeah, but not enough to set me up. I don’t even know why that crossed my mind.

But she’s up to something.

And dammit, I wanna know. I can’t think about anything else.

I’m in my car before I can talk myself out of it. GPS tells me I’m twenty-four minutes away. That’s long enough for me to get in my right mind and turn around. Long enough to text her back telling her to take her little electronic subpoena and kick rocks.

But I don’t.

I’m locked in now. I gotta know. At this point, there’s no going back.

Raya’s wasted at whatever school she’s teaching at. Baby girl needs to be in marketing or advertising or some shit. Anticipation is racing through every cell, vein, and artery in my body. I’d pay admission to whatever this shit is.

The neighborhood looks exactly like I imagined—cracked pavement, uneven driveways, overgrown grass and weeds. Some of the houses are decent, some are straight up condemned, and some have bars on the windows, telling me exactly what type shit goes on around here.

What the fuck is she doing living out here?

Maybe the neighborhood was nice once upon a time. Our communities tend to decline after a while for systemic reasons I learned about in Econ class. The houses are brick and look well-built, they’re just in disrepair.

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