The Diary of Aaliyah Anderson Page 14

  The night we did that, D and I were the only ones in the house and I was scared out of my mind. At the time, Momma was working in Atlanta as a midnight DJ for V103 and our “father” was probably out doing some late night creeping. Even when we were younger, Jeff and Elijah would never come home. From what I heard, Jeff was down there and he shot and killed one of the shooters. I don’t know if it’s true, but that could be why he’s such a high-ranking member in the Rydahz at the age of fifteen. I honestly don’t wanna believe it because it’s so sad and terrifying. I could have a murderer as my brother!

  But I’m getting off topic…

  In the end, they paid us each $200 for keeping everyone safe. After that, we started getting calls for more money. I never really had to do the research thing on the neighborhoods because of how fast our popularity shot up. Who knew I’d have to do it this time?

  I once again tried to convince Allison that everything would be cool,

  “Come on, Allison! We haven’t gotten a call in months! This could get us some quick money in our pocket. You know we’re both broke right now.”

  “I’d rather be broke than dead.”

  “Thornton Heights couldn’t be worse than Riverstone Creek. If we did the appointment in Riverstone Creek, we can do it down there. Come on, Allie! You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt us on purpose. Could you please trust me on this one?”

  She sighed. “If you feel that strongly about it, I’ll stop complaining. We’re a team and we stick together.”

  I smiled and put my arm around her shoulder. “Exactly! I promise you, this will be the easiest $175 you’ll get in your life!”

  “You know, that’s the same thing that you said last time?”

  “But this time I’m one hundred percent sure. We’re not gonna get shot or anything like that!”

  And I was right. Everything on the outside was cool. It was what we had to deal with on the inside that truly made it hard work.

  ♠♠♠♠

  The Williamson Family

  After I went to Riverstone Creek and dropped off some of ‘Kiyah’s missing work at her house, Hailey and Allison picked me up around 5:16. We made it all the way to Thornton Heights by 5:40. The Williamson house definitely didn’t look like it belonged in Thornton Heights.

  It was almost comparable to a mansion you’d see in Brentwood. Most of the other houses were super worn down. We passed by one house that had bullet holes going all though the walls. Allison saw that and looked back at me. I just shook my head at how paranoid she was acting. As we were riding, I hoped that her being paranoid about a gang war starting for no reason at all didn’t stop her from doing her job to the best of her abilities.

  When we made it to their house, we went and knocked on the door. Mrs. Williamson opened the door with a smile.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Williamson. You look beautiful tonight,” I said as I observed what she was wearing. She wore a pink, blue, and yellow flowered sundress with tan wedge heels and her hair was in li’l mini dreads.

  She grinned and replied, “Oh no, this is just a little something I put on for the occasion. It’s our anniversary and I wanna do something special.” She then leaned in closer to us and started to whisper, “I’m planning to take my husband to the restaurant we went to on our first date.”

  Allison and I both said, “Aww!”

  “And I thank you guys for coming by. I know I called you guys at such an odd time, but I really wanted to spend time with Mr. Williamson on our exact anniversary date.”

  “It’s completely okay, Mrs. Williamson,” I replied. “As long as we’re getting paid, our schedule is always open.”

  Mrs. Williamson laughed. “I completely understand! Come on in. Let me show you two around.”

  The outside of the house didn’t do any justice to how large the inside of the house was. It really was like a house you’d find in Brentwood. The house had three floors and the hallways were huge! The size of the house definitely worked against us, mainly Allison, if you were to look at what we had to deal with after they left.

  Mr. and Mrs. Williamson had three children: two seven-year-olds named Adonis and Jamal and a twelve-year-old named Theresa who goes to Clarkson and is in the 7th grade. When we found out how old Theresa was, I assumed that our job would be easier. She’s really old enough to watch her brothers, but I’m not mad that her parents called us at all.

  I was left alone keeping children in Riverstone Creek way before we decided to start our babysitting service and I was younger than her. Besides, she’s old enough to take care of herself. After I helped her finish her book report, I thought our focus would be completely on getting the two twins to bed before nine o’clock like their parents told us to do.

  Boy, I was completely wrong!

  Before they left, Mr. Williamson, dressed in an orange, short sleeve button down shirt, tan slacks, and expensive-looking brown alligator shoes, addressed his three children as they sat on the couch in the living room children,

  “Alright, don’t give these two young ladies any problems. If they tell me that had difficulties out of any of you, you’ll have to answer to me. We’ll be back around eleven o’clock tonight. I expect for you two boys to be in your room sleep by nine o’clock since tomorrow is a school night.”

  The boys reluctantly said, “Yes sir.”

  “Speaking of school, Theresa, I expect for you to be working on that report. You know we don’t tolerate slackers in this house. You better have made progress before we get back.”

  Theresa smacked her lips as she played with her phone. “Alright, I got it.”

  Mr. Williamson then went and gave each of his children a kiss on the forehead. “I love you. As I said, we’ll be back by eleven o’clock. Please act like you have sense.”

  I thought that was beautiful. A father caring for his kids! I never see that, since I only see my “father” every once in a while. He hasn’t even told us he loved us ever since the divorce. Seeing a one hundred percent real black father was special to me in more ways than one.

  After Mr. Williamson’s talk with his kids, I felt even better about our chances at having a smooth appointment.

  “I doubt they’ll act crazy after what their dad said,” I whispered to Allison as they began to walk to the garage. We were both sitting on the sofa opposite of the children. “I told you there was nothing to worry about!”

  I spoke too soon!

  Immediately after their parents drove off in their silver Mercedes and the automatic garage started to close, things got crazy. Adonis hopped off the couch and clocked Jamal in the mouth! He fell off the seat head first. We were both caught by surprise. Everything was cool a minute ago! Jamal then got back up and tackled him so hard that they almost knocked over the sofa.

  “If y’all hit me, we’re gonna have a problem!” Theresa said as she kept texting on her phone. She didn’t even look up.

  “Aren’t you gonna do something?” I asked her.

  “Aren’t you the one that’s supposed to be getting paid to babysit? You got it. I’m going up to my room,” she replied as she got up and started walking towards the stairs.

  Jamal, who was caught in Adonis’s headlock, pushed him off and started running towards the kitchen screaming. Adonis hilariously shouted, “Come back here!” and ran after him.

  Allison nudged me on the shoulders as we sat in the living room alone. “You were saying?”

  “We can handle this, Allison. You know how active kids can be. We’ve done this dozens of times.”

  “Yeah, but those twins are violent! And Theresa has a major attitude.”

  “Come on, Allison, we got this. You know how we do it: I get Theresa and help her with that project they were talking about and you find the twins and keep them in one place. They’ll nod off eventually.”

  Allison shrugged. “Are you sure you don’t wanna trade up? That girl has a pretty bad attitude and you’ve been through a lot today. We don’t need you going off on her if she say
s something wrong to you.”

  I smiled. “I’m good, Allie. You can have the twins. I don’t feel like playing hide and go seek in this huge house. I can manage Theresa.”

  She sighed. “Alright, I was just checking.”

  All of a sudden, we heard a huge boom come from the second floor.

  Allison sighed again. “This is gonna be a long night! Let me go on and find those twins before they kill themselves.”

  I said to Allison before she left, “Since this house is so big, I guess we can call each other if we need any help. You got your phone?”

  She pulled her iPhone out of her purse and held it up. “Fully charged.”

  “Let’s go on and get things rolling then!”

  ♠♠♠♠

  Theresa

  It took me about five minutes to find Theresa’s room. It was located on the second floor, right by the family workout room. Allison was right. I honestly didn’t feel like dealing with attitude right now after what happened in school, but I sucked it up because that’s how the job goes.

  Before I walked in, I sighed and tried my best to motivate myself. “This is a $175 appointment. I can keep my emotions under control.”

  Her door was slightly cracked open so I could see that she was laying on her bed and texting. Her radio was blasting and she was listening to Hot 97.3. I smiled to myself, happy that I would have the chance to hear D’s first show. That made things a little more worthwhile.

  I knocked on her door. She asked, “Who is it?”

  “It’s Aaliyah.”

  She sighed. “The door’s open.”

  I walked in her room, amazed. It was huge! Theresa really has it going on, but she seems so down and irritated.

  “So what’s up with this book report? How far have you gotten in it?” I asked as I looked in the room. There were posters and pictures of Chris Brown everywhere. I guess we have something in common.

  “I haven’t started,” she replied nonchalantly as she continued to play on her phone.

  “When is it due?”

  “At the end of the week.”

  I nodded. “You have a lot of time. But don’t you think you should go on and start on it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t feel like doing it right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why do you care? It’s my project; you don’t have to worry about it.”

  I sighed, trying to hold back from going off on this girl. She really was testing me! “Well, I think you should go on and start so I can help you out if you have any problems.”

  She put down her phone and said, “Why are we still talking about this? I told you I don’t feel like doing that report. Are your ears working? You’re really annoying me right now!”

  I just couldn’t let that slide. It was obvious she was testing me. I had to tell her about herself. “Listen, Theresa, I’ve gotten tired of all those li’l disrespectful comments. You really need to chill. I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to solve it because I’m not about to put up with it for the rest of the night. You understand me?”

  She sighed and replied, “Fine.”

  “Now, why don’t you wanna do this book report? Projects are a big part of your grade. If you get a zero for this assignment, it’ll be hard to bring it back up. That’s a lot of hard work. Then your parents will be on your case. Why would you even wanna invite all that drama into your life?”

  She smacked her lips as she sat up on her bed. “I’ma be real with you: I hate reading. Then we gotta present this report to the class? I can’t do it.”

  I was surprised. I’ve honestly never heard any female say that they don’t like reading. You’ll even catch a girl that you thought didn’t even know how to read with an urban book - you know, the ones that are usually about drugs, drama, or the hood? I’m not trying to crack on, disrespect, or stereotype anybody. I’m just telling it like it is. In this city, the guys are the ones that tend to hate reading, mainly the black ones. It’s real messed up too. But, I guess you can never say never.

  “Why do you hate reading? Most of these movies coming out nowadays are based off books. Do you hate going to the movies?”

  “Of course not! I just hate reading. It’s a waste of time and it’s boring. Why read when you can watch it when it comes out on TV or in the movies?”

  “Well, have you picked out a book you were planning to do the report on or did they assign you one?”

  “She gave us a choice of what book to pick. She just said that it can’t have any explicit sex scenes in it. We went to the school library to pick out some books.” She hopped up out of her bed and took two heavy books out of her pink bookbag.

  I smiled and shook my head. “You really picked out these thick textbooks from the library? That’s the problem! You haven’t picked up any books that are worth reading.”

  Fortunately for her, I stay with interesting books. I went to my bookbag and pulled out Drama High: The Fight by L. Divine that I had bought from Books-a-Million on the eastside a few days ago. I’d just finished it. I then walked over and sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “See, the first way you can tell that a book is gonna be good is by how the cover looks. That’s what makes you at least pick up the book. Then you read the back and see what the book is about. If it’s good, you buy it. If you still aren’t sold on the book, you read the first few pages.”

  She looked at the cover of the book. “So this book is all about fights?”

  I handed it over to her, “Not really. It’s more about drama than it is about fights. It’s like That’s So Raven in the hood.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “It was great! I like to read books that I can relate to. This story could happen in real life. I swear, this book would be great for your report. Just read the first few pages and see if you like it. If you don’t, we’ll have to find you another book because you have to do this assignment.”

  Theresa sighed as she reluctantly opened the book. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”

  I grinned. Finally we were on the same page!

  ♠♠♠♠

  Adonis & Jamal

  My rest of the night with Theresa actually went pretty smooth. It was Allison that had it rough until I helped her out. Those twins were giving her hell! It turns out that they stopped fighting and teamed up to get away from her.

  They picked a great hiding spot too. Allison searched around the house trying to find them for an hour. Allison seems to always keep her cool but I could tell she was frustrated. Honestly, I thought it was the end of Beautiful Sistahs, Inc.

  “I thought you said this would be the easiest $175 I’d ever get in my life?”

  “This is not the time to give up, Allison. We’re gonna find them.”

  Allie completely snapped. “We? There is no we! You’re always getting the easy jobs. I always have to run after some bad little kids 24/7. All you do is sit up and help kids who basically can keep themselves do homework. Well, I’m done! It’s your turn to do some real hard work for a change. You find them yourself!”

  She then stormed off into the living room and plopped down on the sofa. I swear, I’ve never seen Allison this mad! I couldn’t even blame her though. It really does seem like I push off the hard work on her. Ever since we’ve started, she’s always held down the babysitting part of Beautiful Sistahs Inc. and I’ve always done the tutoring part. I never took the time to consider how Allie felt about that. I never really took the time to help her!

  Speaking of that outburst, it really started to make me wonder what was going on with Allison. She really took me by surprise. I’ll say it again, I’ve never seen Allie that mad before! Something more had to have been on her mind for her to just go at me like that.

  Anyway, after I soaked in what Allison told me, I went searching for Adonis and Jamal. I immediately understood why she was so heated. Like I said, the house was too big to be running around trying to find some crazy twins! I searched everywhere on all three floors of the
house. I even looked outside. I really couldn’t find them!

  Well, I decided I was gonna take a break from finding them so I went to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water from their purified water dispenser. As I sat down at their dining room table, I heard something moving around in the cabinets under the sink. At first I thought I was hearing things but then I heard whispering coming from that cabinet. I smiled and walked over to open the cabinet. When I opened it, Jamal and Adonis fell out. I had to hold back a laugh because I was really frustrated.

  Adonis smacked Jamal in the forehead. “I told you we should’ve hid in the living room closet!”

  “How was I supposed to know they’d find us?”

  I shook my head and said, “I have an even better question: why were you guys hiding?”

  Adonis smacked his lips as he stood up. “Man, nobody wants to go to bed at nine o’ clock.”

  “Plus, we were just trying to have fun,” Jamal added with a grin.

  “Well, you made Allison mad and I think you owe her an apology. What you guys were doing was cruel and unfunny. She felt like you guys didn’t wanna be around her,” I said, half lying.

  Jamal, obviously being the sweetest out of the two, replied, “We didn’t mean to do that! We were just trying to have fun.” He turned to Adonis. “We really should go and say we’re sorry.”

  Adonis folded his arms. “Why? We really didn’t wanna be around her anyway. What are we sorry for?”

  I asked Adonis, “Why are you so mean? I mean, you’re always bullying your brother and pushing him to do things that he doesn’t want to do. Now you’re popping an attitude with me. What’s your problem?”

  “Why do you keep talking to us like we’re five years old?” he shouted back at me with his lip poked out.

  He has more of an attitude than Theresa! I thought to myself. “Listen, what you guys have been doing for the last hour is crazy and you owe Allison an apology for not listening to her and not being respectful like your dad asked you to do before he left. As a matter of fact, I think I should tell him how you guys have really acted this evening.”