Concrete Rose - Angie Thomas Page 0,1

my pops, ain’t as good at anything as him.

They got no clue what I’m doing on the low. “I’m more like my pops than you think,” I tell P-Nut.

“Could’a fooled me. Next time, big boy there oughta put as much effort into the game as he do into eating.”

King step toward P-Nut. “Or I could whoop your ass instead.”

P-Nut step toward him, too. “What it is, then, fool?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I say, pulling King back. He real quick to fight. “Chill!”

“Yeah, calm down,” says Shawn. “It’s only ball.”

“You right, you right. My bad, Shawn,” P-Nut says with his hands up. “I can be a bit temperish.”

Temper-what? I swear, P-Nut be making up words to sound smart.

The way King nostrils flare, I got a feeling this ’bout more than ball for him. He shake me off and march across the park. Shawn, Dre, and everybody look at me.

“He got a lot going on, that’s all,” I mumble.

“Yeah,” Dre add in, and lower his voice to Shawn. “You remember that situation with him, Mav, and ol’ girl that I told you about? They find out today.”

“No excuses, Dre. He always popping off,” Shawn says. “He either get that temper in check or get checked.”

In other words, a beatdown. That’s how the big homies keep us li’l homies in line. See, there’s levels to King Lords. You got youngins, badass middle schoolers who swear they got next. They do whatever the rest of us tell them to do. Then you got li’l homies like me, King, and our boys Rico and Junie. We handle initiations, recruitment, and sell weed. Next is the big homies, like Dre and Shawn. They sell the harder stuff, make sure the rest of us have what we need, make alliances, and discipline anybody who step outta line. When we have beef with the Garden Disciples, the gang from the east side, they usually take care of it. Then there’s the OGs, original gangstas. Grown dudes who been in this a long time. They advise Shawn. Problem is, there ain’t a lot of OGs left in the streets. Most of them locked up like my pops, or dead.

A beatdown by the big homies is no joke. I can’t let King go out like that.

“I’ll talk to him,” I tell Shawn.

“Somebody better,” he says, and turns to the others. “Now who wanna get whooped on this court next?”

King nearly out the park. I run to catch up with him. “Dawg, you can’t be going off on folks. You tryna cause us some problems?”

“I ain’t gon’ let nobody diss me, Mav,” King growls. “I don’t give a damn if he a big homie.”

I glance back at the courts. We far enough that Shawn and them won’t hear me. “We gotta keep our cool, remember?”

For the past six months, me and King been slinging behind the big homies’ backs. Like I said, li’l homies can only sell weed, but there ain’t nearly as much money in that as there is in the other stuff. On top of that, we gotta give most of our dough to Shawn and them ’cause they supply the product. One day King decided to do his own thing on the side and get his own supplier. He brought me on real quick. Our pockets stay fat.

We gon’ be in deep shit if Shawn and them ever find out. This almost as bad as taking their turf. But ay, my momma work two jobs. She shouldn’t have to get me kicks and clothes when she struggling to keep a roof over our heads. Real talk.

“Let P-Nut or anybody else say whatever the hell they want,” I tell King. “We doing our thing, and that’s all we need to focus on. A’ight?”

I hold my hand out to King. At first he stare at it, and I don’t know if that’s ’cause of Shawn and P-Nut or that other situation we got going on.

He finally slap my palm. “Yeah, a’ight.”

I pull him into me and hit his back with my fist. “Don’t worry ’bout that other thing. It’s gon’ work out like it’s supposed to.”

“I ain’t tripping either way. It is what it is.”

That’s the same thing he say ’bout his parents getting murdered when he was eleven and ’bout everything he went through with his foster families. I guess if he wanna leave it at that so can I.

He head out the park, and I head over to Lisa. She looking finer than a mug. Got on a shirt