I Use To Love You: A Hood Chick's Revenge by Shaun Wanzo Page A

Meka had her shop open. Which I told her not to do, just in case something went wrong I wanted everything to fall on me. I was a young street bitch who played the game by the old school street rule: Carry Your Own Weight.
    When I busted through the back door and into the alley, I thought I was in the clear for a few moments, until the same two cops came running around the corner and into the alley, yelling for me to stop. I did the exact opposite by running even faster. There was no way I was going to let those pigs catch me in my own hood that I knew like the back of my hand. Throw in the fact I was madder than a muthafucka that there was going to be a delay in killing Ivan and Kim K. and being able to get my hands on the cash.
    I could’ve shot the bitch on my way out of the apartment. But I would’ve been running from a lot more serious charges than carrying a concealed weapon, disorderly conduct and fleeing from the police. When I made it out of the alley I raced across Forty-Ninth Street without looking and almost got hit by an old ass Jeep Cherokee with tint
    On the windows damn near darker than its black paint. I stiff armed the hood and kept on running. Most of the streets in Uptown were narrow one-ways that cats treated like a race track. It had cost more than a few shorties in the hood their lives.
    I cut through a gangway that separated two houses and then turned into another alley after I made it through the backyard. The po-pos were still on my ass but they had fell farther behind. Both of them had looked to be in their mid-thirties with guts made of beer. Those pigs didn’t have a chance against a young street bitch who’d been running from the law her entire life. Don’t get it twisted, my lungs were on fire from all of the weed smoke, but my fear of a jail cell was more than enough to fight through that shit.
    I found the abandoned garage on my left hand side in the middle of the alley that served all types of purposes in our hood. It was in the back of a boarded up house. The po-pos caught on to what the d-boys, smokers, homeless, and horny ass teenagers in the hood were using abandoned cribs for. So muthafuckas started taking the action out back. And when I went in the side door of the garage I was greeted by the different stanking ass odors they left behind. It didn’t help that I was gasping for air like a muthafucka who needed their asthma pump. I was wheezing and coughing so bad I had to cover my mouth with both hands when I heard the cops jog past the garage.
    “Where the hell did she go?” I heard one cop ask as he was sucking for air.
    They both were huffing and puffing when they stopped what sounded like a couple of garages away from the one I was hiding in.
    “I have no freakin’ idea,” the other cop said as they began to walk and search.
    I breathed in and out as deeply as I could a few times. I was trying to prepare my lungs for more running. I couldn’t take the chance of them doubling back once they got to the end of the alley. They sounded far enough away when I peeked out of the garage door. It’s hard to be quiet when you’re tired, but I managed when I snuck out and looked around the peeling white paint of the garage next to the one I’d been hiding in. The po-pos were standing at the end of the alley still trying to catch their breath. The black ass one was speaking into his walkie talkie, probably requesting backup. I had to get the hell out of there before they were able to box me in.
    I made sure the pockets on my Pelle Pelle varsity jacket were still clasped shut. The last thing a bitch needed was for my iPhone or nine milli to fall out. I was going to need both along the way. Then I did the dumbest shit in the world. The type of dumb shit actors do in scary movies when they have the chance to get away. They always have to look one more time before running in the opposite direction. Well, I decided to peek around the cracked and chipped paint of that garage one more time