You Don't Even Know Me Read Online Free

their part.
    My grandmother and me argue a lot over this store. She wants it shut down. So instead of going inside the house where she is, I go in through the garage—his store. There’s a shower in the back.
    Once I’m clean and back in the clothes I had on earlier, I start putting cookies and candy in jars. I bought this stuff with my own money, since she won’t give me any. But as soon as I unpack the Oreos and Twizzlers, here she comes, pointing at me with that cane.
    â€œI told you what I wanted you to do, right?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œSo just do it.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDidn’t he get shot? Didn’t they just walk into this here store,” she says, stabbing the floor with her cane, “and shoot him dead?”
    â€œYes, ma’am, but—”
    â€œThen shut it down. Today.”
    â€œI . . .”
    â€œDon’t sass me. And don’t think I don’t know what you been doing out there . . . behind my back.”
    I stand over her. “I been doing just what you did. Going after them ,” I say, kicking the stool so hard one of the legs cracks.
    She scratches underneath her wig, then straightens it. Then takes a pinch of snuff out the bag and sticks it between her orange lips; shoving it between her gums with her tongue. “You do what I did and . . . You not from around here, boy. Quit doing things like that . . . please.”
    After my granddad died a few months ago, my grandmother sat at the window every day and yelled at guys walking by. “You know my husband? Who shot him?” Or she would be at church—her friends would tell my mom— asking boys my age what they knew about the killing. She quit doing that after I came three weeks ago. Didn’t want to make me no target, she said. But I just took over where she left off, only in my own way. Now she says for me to quit it, before something bad happens to me, too. I usually do exactly what I’m told. But not lately. Lately I feel like getting even. Paying back. Only I guess I need to be smarter. Going empty-handed doesn’t make any sense. I’m not sure why I thought it would.
    My granddad didn’t make any money in this store. Nothing cost more than a dollar and a half, and lots of time kids got candy for free. How could anyone hurt an old man like that? And everybody who says they loved him keeps quiet about who did it. Now my grandmother is telling me to let sleeping dogs lie, and shut down the store. That’s not right. They got the money, even the shoes off his feet. Now they get the store—everything he was working for—if we close it.
    My parents, my uncles and aunts want it shut down too. The neighborhood’s bad. The people are getting what they deserve, they say—no place for their kids to buy candy or soda or to hang out when it gets hot. I’m fourteen. And I’ve never spent a full summer at home. Here in his store is where I like to be. They’re wrong for trying to take it away from me.
    My grandmother and I keep going at it. Before I know it, she’s doing what she did yesterday, asking for her inhaler. “You alright? You okay?” I say, coming back from the house with it.
    â€œHelp me to that chair, baby,” she says, holding on to me and her throat at the same time.
    This is what happened three p.m. yesterday, right before she ended up in the emergency room. I don’t want her dying because of me. So I give in, right after she sits down and can’t get up for a whole hour. Then I put her to bed, and watch over her for thirty minutes. I say it again: I’ll close up the store. Her breathing gets better then. “But I’m staying with you all summer,” I say, swinging a bat my grandfather kept at the store for protection. “Let ’em come after me, too, if they want. I got something for them.”
    After she’s asleep, I go back to my granddad’s place.