After Tupac & D Foster Read Online Free Page A

know a lot of other kids?” I asked her.
    D shrugged. “Not really . . .”
    “Here we go again with the vagueness,” Neeka said.
    “Nah, I’m for real,” D said. “I meet a lot of kids, but I don’t know a lot of kids. Either they act shady or their mamas act shady, you know.”
    “People just stupid sometimes,” Neeka said. “Be thinking they know stuff and they don’t.”
    D nodded and her and Neeka smiled at each other. I almost felt jealous, but then I didn’t. Neeka’s brother Tash was a queen and people used to always try to talk junk about him around us. When we were little kids, me and Neeka would get into fights over it, but we finally just started ignoring and making believe it didn’t hurt us deep to hear people hating on Tash. I figured that’s what Neeka was talking about and if it was like a bonding thing, then we could all bond on it, because Tash was just as much my brother as he was Neeka’s.
    I looked down at my boots—they were new, dark green with black laces and thick soles that made me a little bit taller. But they were heavy and my feet were sweating and itchy.
    When I looked up, D was watching me. She’d tucked one of her feet behind her leg like she was trying to hide her white-girl clogs. “I guess I should get going. I’ll probably come back around this way, though.”
    “The trees’ll be waiting for you,” Neeka said. Then she smiled. “You got a rope?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, next time you come,” Neeka said, “bring it, all right?”
    D nodded then and smiled, that same smile—but this time, her whole face relaxed and it was one of the prettiest smiles I’d ever seen in my life.
    “I’m cool with that,” D said.
    Me and Neeka watched D walk down the block and turn the corner.
    “She seems cool,” Neeka said.
    I shrugged, staring at the corner long after D had disappeared around it. A part of me was still with her—turning that corner and heading off the block—on my own. Free like that.
     
    And a few days later, when D showed up, she was wearing new sneakers and carrying the rope in her knapsack. As we stood there, unraveling it, talking about who’d be first and what rhymes we knew, D got real quiet.
    “Feels like forever since I had me some friends to jump double Dutch with.”
    “Wherever Flo living is the wrong place to be,” Neeka said. “ ’Cause around here, if you got a rope, you’re gonna have some peeps to jump with.”
    “That’s what it feels like,” D said. “Feels real good coming back here.”
    “Long as you bring the rope,” Neeka said.
    “Oh, it’s like that?” D said, playing along with Neeka’s craziness.
    “You know it is, girlfriend,” Neeka said. “You know you gotta come to the table with something if you wanna eat.”
    “You can come even if you don’t have no rope,” I said. “Neeka’s just messing with you. Repeating something she probably heard her mama saying.”
    “Don’t talk about my mama,” Neeka said.
    “Ain’t talking about your mama. I’m talking about you. That’s why Jayjones be calling her a parrot.”
    “Who’s Jayjones?” D wanted to know.
    “Nobody,” Neeka said. “A big nobody.”
    “A big fine nobody,” I said. “He’s Neeka’s big brother.”
    A group of little girls came over and stood near us, watching us untangle the rope.
    “Y’all doing double Dutch?” one of them asked.
    “Yeah,” Neeka said. “You can watch, but don’t even be thinking about asking for a jump.”
    The little girls all nodded and it made me remember being little like that, watching the big girls jump.
    “I don’t mind going last,” D said. She took the open end of the rope.
    “I don’t mind going first,” Neeka said.
    I picked up the closed end and me and D started turning.
    “Slow down, y’all. It ain’t a double Dutch race ,” Neeka said, and we slowed the ropes a little bit. When Neeka jumped in, we started counting.
    “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty . . .”
    And the three of