Jeffery Deaver - The Twelfth Card

She lit another Merit, thinking: There are things we do ’cause we want to and things we do ’cause we gotta. Survival things.

And what she was about now was one of those had-to things.

Why the fuck didn’t Geneva say that after all this shit she was booking on out of town and never coming back?

She was going to Detroit or ’Bama?

Sorry, Keesh, we can’t see each other anymore. I’m talking forever. Bye.

That way, the whole fucking problem’d be gone for good.

Why, why, why?

And it was worse than that: Gen had to go and tell her exactly where she was going to be for the next few hours. Keesh had no excuse to miss the girl now. Oh, she’d kept up her ghetto patter when they’d been talking a while ago so her friend wouldn’t hop to something going down. But now, sitting alone, she sank into sorrow.

Man, I’m feeling bad.

But ain’t got no choice here.

Things we do ’cause we gotta …

Come on, Keesha said to herself. Got to get over. Let’s go. Bring it on…

She crushed out her cigarette and left the park, headed west then north on Malcolm X, past church after church. They were everywhere. Mt. Morris Ascension, Bethelite Community, Ephesus Adventist church, Baptist – plenty of those. A mosque or two, a synagogue.

And the stores and shops: Papaya King, a botanica, a tuxedo-rental shop, a check-cashing outlet. She passed a gypsy cab garage, the owner sitting outside, holding his taped-together dispatch radio, the long cord disappearing into the unlit office. He smiled at her pleasantly. How Lakeesha envied them: the reverends in the grimy storefronts under the neon crosses, the carefree men slipping hot dogs into the steamed buns, the fat man on the cheap chair, with his cigarette and his fucked-up microphone.

They ain’t betraying nobody, she thought.

They ain’t betraying the person was one of their best friends for years.

Snapping her gum, gripping her purse strap hard with her pudgy fingers tipped in black and yellow nails. Ignoring three Dominican boys.

“ Psssst .”

She heard “booty.” She heard “bitch.”

“ Pssssst .”

Keesh reached into her purse and gripped her spring knife. She nearly flicked it open, just to see ’ em flinch. She glared but left the long, sharp blade where it was, deciding she’d have a world of trouble when she got to the school. Let it go for now.

“Pssst.”

She moved on, her nervous hands opening a pack of gum. Shoving two fruity pieces into her mouth, Lakeesha struggled to find her angry heart.

Get yourself mad, girl. Think of everything Geneva done to piss you off, think of everything she be that you ain’t and never gonna be. The fact the girl was so smart it hurt, that she came to school every single fucking day, that she kept her skinny little white-girl figure without looking like some AIDS ho, that she managed to keep her legs together and told other girls to do the same like some prissy moms.

Acting like she better than us all.

But she wasn’t. Geneva Settle was just another kid from a mommy-got-a-habit, daddy-done-run-off family.

She one of us.

Get mad at the fact that she’d look you in the eye and say, “You can do it, girl, you can do it, you can do it, you can get outa here, you got the world ahead of you.”

Well, no, bitch, sometimes you just can’t do it. Sometimes it’s just too fucking much to bear. You need help to get over. You need somebody with benjamins, somebody watching your back.

And for a moment the anger at Geneva boiled up inside her and she gripped the purse strap even tighter.

But she couldn’t hold it. The anger vanished, blew away like it was nothing more than the light brown baby powder she’d sprinkle on her twin cousins’ buns when she changed their diapers.

As Lakeesha walked in a daze past Lenox Terrace toward their school, where Geneva Settle would soon be, she realized that she couldn’t rely on anger or excuses.

All she could rely on was survival. Sometimes you gotta look out for yourself and take the hand somebody offers you.

Things we do ’cause we gotta …

At school, Geneva collected her homework and wouldn’t you know it, her next language arts assignment was to report on Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem , the 1928 book that was the first best-selling novel by a black author.

“Can’t I have e. e. cummings?” she asked. “Or John Cheever?”

“It’s our African-American sequence, Gen,” her language arts teacher pointed out, smiling.

“Then Frank Yerby,” she bargained. “Or Octavia Butler.”

“Ah, they’re wonderful authors, Gen,” her teacher said, “but they don’t write about Harlem. That’s what we’re studying in this segment. But I gave you McKay because I thought you’d like him. He’s one of the most controversial writers to come out of the Renaissance. McKay took a lot of flak because he looked at the underside of Harlem. He wrote about the primitive aspects of the place. That upset DuBois and a lot of other thinkers at the time. It’s right up your alley.”

Maybe her father could help her interpret, she thought cynically, since he loved the neighborhood and its patois so much.

“Try it,” the man offered. “You might like it.”

Oh, no, I won’t, Geneva thought.

Outside the school, she joined her father. They came to the bus stop and both closed their eyes as a swirl of chill, dusty air swept around them. They’d reached a detente of sorts and she’d agreed to let him take her to a Jamaican restaurant that he’d been dreaming about for the past six years.

“Is it even still there?” she asked coolly.

“Dunno. But we’ll find something. Be an adventure.”

“I don’t have much time.” She shivered in the cold.

“Where’s that bus?” he asked.

Geneva looked across the street and frowned. Oh, no… There was Lakeesha. This was so her; she hadn’t even listened to what Geneva’d said and had come here anyway.

Keesh waved.

“Who’s that?” her father asked.

“My girlfriend.”

Lakeesha glanced uncertainly toward her father and then gestured for Gen to cross the street.

What’s wrong? The girl’s face was smiling but it was clear she had something on her mind. Maybe she was wondering what Geneva was doing with an older man.

“Wait here,” she told her father. And she started toward Lakeesha, who blinked and seemed to take a deep breath. She opened her purse and reached inside.

What’s the 411 on this? Geneva wondered. She crossed the street and paused at the curb. Keesha hesitated then stepped forward. “Gen,” she said, her eyes going dark.

Geneva frowned. “Girl, what’s -”

Keesh stopped fast as a car pulled to the curb past Geneva, who blinked in surprise. Behind the wheel was the school counselor, Mrs. Barton. The woman gestured the student to the car. Geneva hesitated, told Keesh to wait a minute and joined the counselor.

“Hey, Geneva. I just missed you inside.”

“Hi.” The girl was cautious, not sure what the woman knew and didn’t about her parents.

“Mr. Rhyme’s assistant told me that they caught the man who tried to hurt you. And your parents finally got back.”

“My father.” She pointed. “That’s him right there.”

The counselor regarded the stocky man in the shabby T-shirt and jacket. “And everything’s okay?”

Out of earshot, Lakeesha watched them with a frown. Her expression was even more troubled than before. She’d seemed cheerful on the phone, but now that Geneva thought about it, maybe she’d been fronting. And who was that guy she’d been talking to?