Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,26

clear as day. I get this funny feeling again, like I did at Dad’s funeral, and when Ma brought Ravi home. This is wrong. The vials shouldn’t be here. Aren’t people dying left, right and centre in our hood from fentanyl?

But here they are.

Ma doesn’t really talk about her work, and she definitely doesn’t bring it home, so I’m standing there wondering what the hell medication that looks like it’s from the hospital is doing here until someone pounds on the door.

“Hurry up!” calls Ravi.

I open the door to find him standing there with his arms crossed. He’s shirtless, quelle surprise.

(Why, God? Why do you do this to me?)

So I’m extra careful not to brush past him. Something’s wrong with him; I can see it in his eyes. Like he’s just taken a jab to the face and needs a minute to shake it off. “What you looking at?” he says to me, with a sneer. But it comes slow, like he’s underwater.

I slide past him, no problem. “Nothing,” I say, as I go to my room. I’m not scared of him, but I can’t help but wonder who put those little vials underneath the sink. I thought my dad was a bad influence on Ma, I really did.

I think Ravi might be something worse.

When I creep downstairs the next morning, I see Ravi’s duffel bag on the sofa. He’s nowhere to be found. The bag is open. There’s a phone peeking out. One that looks pretty familiar, an older model…but it can’t be whose I think it is.

I reach for it and turn it on.

While I’m waiting for it to boot up, I see a little baggie of pills in the duffel. Each pill is imprinted with the initials TEC. After the vials, it feels wrong, this whole thing, so I put the phone and the baggie back and am about to leave when I hear it.

The beat of a steel pan coming from Ravi’s bag, playing a very familiar song.

I recognize that ring tone. That old calypso. It’s “Bassman.”

I slip the ringing phone into my own bag and leave as quickly as I can. I run all the way to the bus stop. When the bus comes and I get on, I can’t help but look back to see if anyone else is springing down the street after me.

Then I pull out the phone. It’s Dad’s.

I don’t recognize the number that called right when I turned it on, but that doesn’t really matter so much because what I do know is that somehow, Ravi had my dad’s phone.

* * *

The next day I look for the little vials, but they’re not under the sink anymore. I want to ask Ma where they are, but she’s already gone and there’s no way I’m going to initiate a conversation with Ravi. Besides, I don’t want to let him know what I found, because then he might wonder if I know about the pills in his bag, which I do. According to Ricky, TEC is how you identify bootleg painkillers on the streets. I know he got hurt at his warehouse job, so maybe that’s why he’s got to take pills?

Speaking of painkillers, there’s still no Advil, so I go to school on an ankle that feels like it’s on fire.

After class, I’m walking home from the bus stop when a car pulls up beside me. The window rolls down. I start walking faster, but then I hear Columbus’s voice. “Get in!” he shouts, a huge smile on his pimply face. He’s leaning out the window of a silver Honda Civic from about a decade ago.

“When did you get a car?” I say.

“Mom bought it for me this afternoon. Paid for the whole thing in cash, like a boss.” The potential sexiness he maybe had for a second disappears. I think about poor Pammy, having to buy his car for him.

“How much was it?”

“She wouldn’t let me see. A few Gs, I think. But I’ve got to pay the insurance, she says, so I’m thinking delivery. If you want to chip in, I’ll add you on the policy,” he offers.

I sense a trap. Besides, how much does insurance cost on an old car like this? But I tell him I’ll think about it as I get in.

When Ma comes home later, she’s tired but starts to put dinner on anyway, even though I told her I already ate. I’m shocked that she’s cooking. It’s like Dad isn’t even gone. She comes