Fast Forward by Celeste O. Norfleet

to Penn right?” she asked. I nodded. “Yeah, I saw you there. So your sister’s Jade.” Inodded again. “She was nice. She was my dance teacher when I went to Freeman a while back.”
    “You went to Freeman. When?”
    “A long time ago.”
    “You stopped?” I asked. She nodded. “Why?”
    “I don’t know. I keep saying that I’m gonna go back, but I guess I just never did.”
    “You should go back.”
    “Yeah, I’m thinking about it. Maybe I will. Anyway, don’t worry about Sierra. She’ll just roll her eyes and act all loud, but since D told her to back off, she will. There’s no way she’s not going to listen to him,” she said, starting to walk backward.
    “Thanks Ursula, I appreciate that,” I said as she turned and headed back to her house. I kept walking. I noticed a car parked outside my house. The guy, Ursula’s half brother, was leaning back smoking a cigarette. He watched me as I walked up. I cracked a half smile and kept on walking.
    “So what, you think you gonna take all of them at one time?” he asked. “They would have kicked your ass.”
    I stopped. This was apparently unavoidable. “Whatever, I wasn’t going down alone.”
    “You got guts,” he said, chuckling.
    I turned around and looked at him. He was fine with a capital F. “You gotta do what you gotta do, right?” I said, trying not to sound too corny.
    He flicked his cigarette into the street, pushed away from the car then walked up to me. He stood too close, but just like Sierra, I didn’t move an inch. “I’m Darien.”
    “Kenisha.”
    He nodded then stepped back and walked around to the driver’s side of his car. I watched him. He watched me. He got in, smiled, then drove away.

ten
    Common Ground
    “My equilibrium is all off. I’m off balance. Everything I thought I knew is wrong, and everything I thought I had, I don’t. Family, friends, acquaintances, lovers, they’re all blurry now. I can’t tell who’s who anymore. Can you? ”
    —MySpace.com
    “Who was that?”
    “Hey, Grandmom,” I said walking up the path. She’d just come out of the house and sat down in her chair on the front porch. She was holding a glass of something with ice in it. “I don’t know, some guy. He stopped to talk.”
    “What did some guy want?” she asked, suspiciously.
    “What every guy wants,” I said cynically, sitting down in the chair beside her. “But don’t worry, I have no intention of doing anything with anybody—and that includes lawn mower guy. I’m not ready.”
    “Uh-huh. Many a young lady said that exact same thing. And many a young lady turned into a youngmother. Saying you’re not ready and a boy hearing it are two different things. They needle you, they beg, they plead and they cry. They say they’re going to be there if anything happens. But two minutes of bliss isn’t worth the rest of your life, especially these days. Sex is just too dangerous. Do you know about sex?”
    “Yes, Grandmom.”
    “In my day, we didn’t talk so openly about such things. Good girls kept their legs closed until they got married. And even then, good girls got in trouble. Do you know about sexually transmitted diseases?”
    “Yes, Grandmom.”
    “Good, but I can always get you a book from the library or from the bookstore in town.”
    “I know about STDs,” I said dryly, hoping to end the conversation as soon as possible.
    “In my day, we feared getting pregnant. Nowadays you need to fear getting dead. Having sex is like playing Russian roulette. You never know what you’ll get when that trigger is pulled.”
    “Isn’t that a game?” I asked, not sure exactly what it was but knowing that I heard it mentioned before.
    “It’s definitely not a game. It’s when you put one bullet in a revolver and spin the chamber. You put the gun to your temple. The trigger is pulled, and you have a one in six chance of the bullet splitting your head open.”
    “Grandmom,” I said, completely stunned by her out-spoken