Not A Good Look Page 8

  So everybody’s looking at me again, like all of this hangs on my head. The tour is after my college application deadline, so it won’t interfere with that. And I guess if I ask my teachers I can get my classwork turned in early. Sometimes being a teacher’s pet can come in handy.

  “Okay, I’ll ask my mother and my auntie. But I’m not making any promises.”

  Dreya says, “I’m going with you. I’m not leaving my career up to your hating self.”

  “You’ve already messed it up enough, Ms. Drama. Fall back and let your cousin do her thing,” Big D advises.

  “Yeah, and anyway, why would I do that? You make money, I make money. Don’t forget that me and my man here wrote all the songs on your little release. I’m trying to blow up just like you.”

  “Thank you for claiming me,” Sam says.

  Everyone bursts into laughter, including me this time. But while everyone is so jolly, I’m not so sure I’m persuasive enough to convince my mother and Aunt Charlie of anything.

  Maybe we should pray now, laugh later.

  12

  I’ve been waiting all evening, ever since Sam dropped me off from the studio, to bring up the subject of Dreya’s contract to Aunt Charlie and ask my mother about going on tour, but they are in an uproar. My mother’s been crying nonstop ever since she found out that Carlos is missing. And Aunt Charlie’s been cussing and fussing about Big D.

  “Have you heard from Dreya?” Aunt Charlie asks me. “She doesn’t call me, like she’s grown or something. I’m gonna call the police to go over there and charge Big D with kidnapping. He’s probably got her hooked on drugs or something like that.”

  Here’s my opening. “Big D is not like that, Auntie. He’s legit, for real. He’s got a state-of-the-art studio and everything. He’s got a bunch of artists on his label.”

  “Yeah, he told me about Big D in the A Records, or whatever he calls it. I’m not feelin’ it.”

  “He got Dreya a record deal, Auntie. With Epsilon Records.”

  “So what? I ain’t never heard of no Epsilon Records! What’s that supposed to mean to me?”

  “Have you heard of Mystique?”

  Aunt Charlie smiles, stands to her feet, and starts doing a little booty shake. “Yeah, baby. That’s the girl that sings, ‘My name is wifey, my name is wifey, my name is w-w-w-wifey.’”

  She would pick Mystique’s most terrible song. The video is even worse. She’s dressed in a tuxedo and a bridal gown and marrying herself. It’s insane, I tell you, but Mystique is a platinum-selling artist, so what do I know.

  “Yes, Aunt Charlie. That’s the one. She’s signed to Epsilon Records.”

  “For real? Dreya’s gonna be on BET?”

  “Yes, but her stage name is Drama.”

  Aunt Charlie slaps her leg and laughs. “We ’bout to get paid? Is that what you telling me, Sunday?”

  “We will if you sign the contract. They’re not going to wait around for Dreya to turn eighteen.”

  Aunt Charlie holds her hand out. “Give me this contract. Let me read it.”

  I hand her the stack of papers from the table. “It’s really pretty standard. They want to sign her to a three-record deal. She’ll make two percent off the record sales, but make the most money off her tour.”

  “And how do you know it’s pretty standard, smarty-pants?”

  “Because my mom bought me Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business. It’s all good, Auntie.”

  I watch as Aunt Charlie’s eyes skim the document. She doesn’t really know anything about the legal wording used on the contract, but she’s reading every page anyway.

  “The contract sounds like a good idea, but I don’t think I like her living over there, though,” Aunt Charlie says. “Tell her I’ll sign it if she moves back home.”

  I bite my lip slowly, trying to think of a rebuttal. Dreya has no intention of moving back here, and I don’t know how to convince her.

  “At least until she turns eighteen,” Aunt Charlie adds. “Then she can do whatever she wants. I just want to make sure my child is safe.”

  I nod and dial Big D on my cell phone. I think Aunt Charlie’s request is reasonable and I know that he’ll agree.

  “Big D here.”

  “Hey, Big D, this is Sunday.”

  “My miniature hustla. What’s up, baby girl?”

  “Dreya’s contract.”

  Big D clears his throat. “Break it down for me.”

  “Well, my aunt says she’ll sign it on one condition.”

  “She wants more money?” Big D asks. “Because that’s not doable. Epsilon Records is firm in that offer.”

  “Slow down! It’s not money,” I reply.

  “Then what is it?”

  “She wants Dreya to move back home. She doesn’t like her living over there with you.”

  Aunt Charlie crosses her arms and nods in agreement. My mother even takes a break from sobbing to listen to the conversation. She gets up from the table and stands behind Aunt Charlie.

  “Oh, is that all?” Big D asks. “Drama is on her way back to the house.”

  “You haven’t even said anything to her yet!” I say. “What if she won’t come back home?”

  Big D replies, “Like I said, Sunday, she’s on her way home. Please give your aunt my apologies for the whole situation. I would’ve never let her come if I’d known she didn’t have permission.”

  “Why don’t you come over and tell them yourself? I think my mother wants to meet and talk to you, too.”

  Big D takes a long pause before replying. “Are your mother and aunt listening to you on the phone now?” he asks.

  “Yes, they are.”

  He sends an audible sigh over the phone. “Okay, Drama and I are on our way.”

  “Good! See you when you get here.”

  I press End on the phone and Aunt Charlie asks, “So?”

  “He’s bringing Dreya home.”

  Dreya storms into the house like a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast. She doesn’t speak to anyone; just goes straight to our bedroom. And Big D is looking too stressed, as if Dreya lived up to her stage name on the way over. Drama is what Drama does.

  Big D extends his hand for Aunt Charlie to shake. “Good evening, ma’am. I’m Deionte Silver, also known as Big D around Atlanta.”

  Deionte? Wow. I didn’t know that was Big D’s name. That is such an ungangsta kind of name. It makes me look at him in a totally different light. Like for real, Deionte sounds like someone’s grandchild’s name. Can’t you imagine a grandmama saying, Deionte, baby, get over here and give your grandmama some sugar?

  Aunt Charlie does not shake his hand. She looks him up and down and asks, “How much drugs have you sold to get this little music thing off the ground?”

  Did someone say that this was a good idea to have the two of them meet? Oh, that was me? Well, then I totally take that back. Bad idea.

  “Actually, ma’am, I’ve never sold any drugs.”

  “Well, then where’d you get the money to do all these tours and photo shoots and other mess? And how old are you, anyway? You don’t seem old enough to be the man all like that.”

  Big D calmly replies, “Ma’am, I’m twenty-eight years old. I started planning parties my freshman year of college. I invited celebrities to come to my parties, advertised them, and split the money with the club owners. It was actually a good way for a student to make money.”

  “Where did you go to school?” my mother asks.

  “Georgia Tech, ma’am. Played football, but I blew out my knee junior year.”

  “Well, if it was so easy, why didn’t the club owners just do it themselves? Why’d they need you?” Aunt Charlie is not easily convinced and neither is my mother. I hope Big D came with his A game tonight.

  “The clubs I worked with were owned by rich, older men who don’t know what kids like. I made their clubs hot with my charisma and contacts, so it was all love.”

  “So you purchased a recording
studio with the money you made throwing parties?” my mother asks. “I’m in the wrong business.”

  Big D flashes her a smile. “It’s actually harder than it sounds, but yes, pretty much.”

  “So what makes you and this record company think Dreya is ready for the spotlight?” Aunt Charlie asks.

  “She’s good, and kids have already started downloading a song with her vocals on it.”

  “What song?” my mother asks. “And why was there no contract done for that? How much money did she receive?”

  Big D responds, “The song is called ‘What Ya Gonna Do,’ and she sings the chorus. She received five hundred dollars for her work.”

  “That’s all? What about royalties?” Aunt Charlie asks.

  “It’s called a work-for-hire agreement, and she won’t receive royalties on that particular song, but she will off her album. Sunday and another guy named Sam wrote the songs for the album. Your daughters are very talented.”

  My mother looks at me. “Sunday, you didn’t tell me you were writing music for this man. Where’s your contract? And I thought y’all were a singing group. How is it that Dreya is the only one with a record deal? What about Bethany? And where’s the money you got?”

  “My money is in the bank, Mom. I opened a student account. You can call it my college fund.”

  My mother looks at the floor guiltily, but I don’t take it back. I know she’s not about to knock my hustle when my college fund just went up in smoke.

  “These girls are minors,” Aunt Charlie says. “All this under-the-table dealing is not cool. Somebody needs to do a better job of breaking this down for me.”

  I look at Big D and politely give him the floor. He explains all of this much better than I do, and he’s got a way of speaking that will convince anyone. By the time he’s done, he’ll have my aunt and my mother buying swampland in Florida if he’s selling it.

  While he’s talking, I wander back to my bedroom to make sure Dreya isn’t destroying anything of mine. She’s madder than a dog chained up one inch away from the mail carrier. Plus she gave me a really heated glare on her way into the house.

  Dreya is sprawled across her bed when I open the door. She still looks angry, but I can’t see that anything in my room has been trashed. That’s a good thing for her, because I’m so not in the mood for delivering a beat-down.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Who said I wanted anything? Maybe I’m just coming back to my room to chill.”

  “I thought you and Big D were partners. Why don’t you go up there and help get my record deal signed?”

  “Are you for real? Big D asked me to soften up Aunt Charlie. You ought to be happy I did it!”

  “I guess.”

  I sit down on the edge of my bed and stare at Dreya. She truly looks upset. “Are you mad that you can’t stay over there at Big D’s house with Truth?”

  “It’s not fair.”

  I want to tell her she sounds like Manny when he can’t eat cookies before dinner. She even looks like him, with her eyebrows furrowed and her bottom lip poked out. This is soooo not the look of a diva right now.

  “Dreya, suck it up. You’re about to go on tour and get a record deal. Just be grateful for all this stuff that’s happening to you. Lord knows you didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

  Dreya sits up in the bed and narrows her eyes. “What do you mean, I don’t deserve it?”

  I know she didn’t just ask me that. Time for a reality check, Sunday smackdown–style.

  “Let me see. You’re mean, hateful, disrespectful, and oh, your attitude stinks like a sack of dirty diapers.”

  “You’re just jealous! You think it should be you with the record deal.”

  I shrug. “I’ll get my own shot. And you better believe I won’t blow it by throwing tantrums like a two-year-old.”

  Dreya narrows her eyes and jumps up from the bed. She storms back up to the front of our house with me behind her. I don’t know what she’s planning to do, but it can’t be anything good.

  “I don’t want Sunday going on tour with me!” she announces. “She’s a hater and her negativity ruins my creativity.”

  Big D looks at Dreya and bursts into laughter. Dreya frowns. But when my mother and aunt join in on the laugh fest, Dreya fumes.

  “Sunday is part of the package, Dreya,” Aunt Charlie says. “You’re not going anywhere without her, since you’ve proven that I can’t trust you.”

  “What if I refuse to have her?” Dreya asks.

  “Then this contract is going right in my paper shredder,” Aunt Charlie says. “Don’t try to play me.”

  Dreya balls both of her hands into fists, goes out the front door, and slams it.

  “It’s okay. She’ll be back,” my mother says.

  “I know it,” Big D says. “I’ve got a signed contract that says she will.”

  I don’t know about my aunt and my mom, but a chill just ran up my spine. Dreya not wanting me to go on tour with her could definitely make my life complicated. So is all this really a come-up for me or is there drama on the next track?

  13

  “Change me, rearrange me / got that photograph you gave me / Somebody come and save me / you got me going crazy. / You got me going crazy.”

  —Sunday Tolliver

  When you were little did your mother ever tell you that the police were going to lock you up and put you in jail when you misbehaved? That always used to work on me and get me to straighten up quickly. It also gave me an irrational fear of police officers. Even if I’m driving nineteen miles per hour in a twenty-miles-per-hour zone, I still look in my rearview mirror when I pass a police officer.

  So imagine how badly I want to run away screaming when two uniformed police officers show up at my school wanting to talk to me. They didn’t say anything loud enough for my class to hear, but clearly the words Sunday and shooting were both said. That spooked my calc teacher, Ms. Wheatley.

  “Sunday, will you please step outside and talk to the officers for a moment.”

  My first thought is, How do we know these are really police officers? I mean, I’ve watched enough Court TV to know that people show up masquerading as officers all the time, just so they can snatch people. If you ask me, these two look pretty suspect.

  I step into the hallway with the officers, but I keep looking back over my shoulder waiting for someone to rescue me. My supposed-to-be ex-boyfriend, Romell, is leaning all the way out of his chair to see what’s up, but is he trying to have my back? I don’t think so.

  One of the officers closes the classroom door behind me, and there’s not one person walking down the hallway.

  “Hi, Sunday. You haven’t done anything wrong. We just want to let you know that up front,” the first officer says.

  “But you had to come up to my classroom? People are gonna think I’m a criminal.”

  Officer number two says, “Unfortunately, the questions that we have can’t wait until later. We’re trying to apprehend the shooter in the Carlos Acevedo case.”

  Duh! This is about Carlos. With all of the record-deal stuff going down, I forgot we’re still in the middle of that particular unsolved mystery.

  “Well, I wasn’t at home at the time of the shooting. I didn’t show up until the ambulances came.”

  “So you didn’t see anything? Any suspicious cars or anyone unfamiliar in the neighborhood in the days leading up to the shooting?”

  “No, but the day that Carlos got shot, I remember that his baby’s mother, LaKeisha, called my mother about child support money.”

  Officer number one starts scribbling on his pad. Officer number two asks, “Did you hear the conversation? Was it an argument?”

  “I didn’t hear the conversation between my mother and LaKeisha, but I remember my mom fussing at Carlos about it before she left for work.”

  “So you don’t actually know if the conversation took place?” officer number two asks. “You only think it happened.”

  �
�Why would my mother start an argument with her boyfriend over a fake conversation? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Officer number two doesn’t answer, but officer number one continues to scribble details in the notebook.

  “Do your mother and Carlos have a good relationship?”

  I lift my eyebrows. What in the world does that have to do with anything?

  “They have a great relationship. He lives with us, and they’re going to get married when he has enough income to take care of us.”

  “So your mother wouldn’t marry him due to his financial status?” officer number two asks.

  “I didn’t say that! You are putting words in my mouth.”

  “You said your mother fussed with Carlos about the mother of his child. Did they argue frequently about that?”

  “Um, no. I thought you said you had questions about the shooting.”

  I wish I’d never brought up that argument, but I was hoping that they’d start looking LaKeisha’s way for some answers, not try to point the finger at my mother.

  “Are y’all even close to making an arrest?” I ask.

  “Thank you for your time, Sunday. We’ll contact your mother when we have more information.” So I guess I don’t get to ask any questions, huh?

  They walk away from me like they didn’t come up to my school interrupting my day. I mean seriously, they could’ve asked me those questions anytime. They could’ve come to our house.

  When I walk back into my classroom everyone is staring at me. I know exactly what they’re thinking because I’d be thinking it, too. Police only show up at the school when it has something to do with drugs. Do they think I’m a drug dealer? If I was trying to be a rapper, that would probably help my career!

  Since I’m totally stressed by my visit from the boys in blue, I grab my backpack and leave, telling my teacher that I have to go to the principal’s office. She doesn’t object; probably thinks I’m under arrest or something. And I was planning to ask her to write a recommendation letter for my college application.