Black Sheep (2 page)

Jukkie was the kind of guy who got mad angry when he was drunk: it was time to get him home. “Come we get out of here, man,” I said, taking Jukkie by the arm. “Tony, you got
your keys?”

DWAYNE

I thought about Misha all the way home in the car. As soon as I got into my room, my palm started to itch. I needed to call her, to make sure she hadn’t given me a fake
number or something. I dialled the number she had written on the card.

“Hello?”

“Misha?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“It’s Dwayne... we met at the party?”

“Oh my God,” she laughed. “You’re supposed to wait at least twenty-four hours before calling me, you know, to make me get all worried that you aren’t going to
call!”

I was embarrassed but I laughed, still. “I just wanted to check your number, innit.”

“Right...” I just knew she could tell I was bluffing. Then she said, “Call me tomorrow, OK?”

“OK, yeah... yeah, sure...”

“You sure you can wait that long?” Her voice was teasing and I could hear her friends laughing in the background.

“Now you’re takin’ liberties, man,” I growled and came off the phone.

That wasn’t my usual style, letting the girl know that I was eager and that. But she had told me to call and, to tell you the truth, I was almost going crazy waiting until the next
afternoon. And when I rang, she laughed and told me, “Congratulations,” saying I had waited “a respectable amount of time” before phoning. I felt stupid, but kinda proud in
a silly way. I could tell that she liked me. Man can just tell these things, y’get me.

MISHA

Dwayne was not my type, not by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, there was something about him.... He was so funny, so different. I began to feel quite giddy whenever I
saw his name flash up – but I had to remind myself: I am Misha Reynolds and I don’t do ‘lovesick teenager’. I will play hard to get. I will not let him charm me. If he puts
one foot wrong, he’s out. Simple. I’ve got things to do – no sixteen-year-old ‘sweetboy’ is getting in the way of that.

At first I actually refused to meet him. I told him I wasn’t sure that we were compatible, that I didn’t go out with random guys. But after a couple of weeks I decided to give it a
try. To be honest, I didn’t expect much: a movie, a meal at Pizza Hut, maybe. But Dwayne surprised me.

“Let’s go Battersea Park,” he said on the phone.

“Yeah?” I smiled, thinking, ‘this is different.’

“Yeah, the weather’s nice, innit? I thought we could chill there... unless you wanna catch a movie.” I heard him catch his breath then – maybe he was worried that he had
read me wrong, thinking maybe I would have preferred to do something ordinary, safe. Not knowing that Battersea Park was one of my favourite places.

“No, no!” I protested. “Battersea Park sounds perfect.”

We met at the gate, shy and hesitant, as if we were seeing each other for the first time.

“You look nice,” he nodded, smiling the smile I remembered so well.

I giggled then and turned away.

“Hey, don’t go all shy on me now, girl, you know you look criss! Come here, are we gonna do this or what?”

And he took me by the hand and we walked in through the tall wrought-iron gates. I expected him to pull his hand away after a while but he didn’t. And I didn’t pull mine away either.
It just felt like the most natural thing to do. We walked like that, hand in hand, through Battersea Park; past the miniature zoo, lingering by the lake, watching the families in paddle boats,
buying ice-cream from the kiosk. While we walked we talked, of a million and one things and of nothing: school, family, friends, music, the latest TV shows, who was better, Chelsea or Man U.

“Can you ride a bike, Misha?” he asked me.

“Yes, of course I can! Can you?”

“Yeah... let’s grab some bikes and go for a ride then, innit.”

“Are you serious?”

“’Course I’m serious – don’t go all stoosh on me now, yeah, all girly and ting. If you know how to ride a bike, let’s see you ride one, innit!”

I tried to punch him but he blocked my fist and made a face at me. “Not bad, not bad – for a girl....”

“Right,” I shouted, laughing, “that’s it – you’re finished!” And I swung my other fist at him (Dad would have been proud). But he dodged and began to
run, over the grass, under the enormous oak trees whose leaves whispered in the breeze, while I chased him, determined to teach him a lesson in gender equality – with my fists.

DWAYNE

True say, I don’t know what got into me that day at Battersea Park. I felt free, like a kid again, living for the moment, not caring what anyone thought. Usually, I would
never act like that – let my guard down – with any girl, but especially not one I’d just met. Mans got a reputation to think about, y’get me. But Misha, Misha was different.
She wasn’t part of all that, you know? I felt like I could relax with her – and I could tell that she felt the same. What did it mean? I didn’t know at the time; I was having too
much fun...

When I got tired of running, I slowed down enough for her to catch me and jump on my back. But then I thought, ‘Nah, man, that was too easy!’ and I grabbed hold of her legs and began
running again. Now she was shouting, laughing, pounding me on the back.

“You’re crazy!” she screamed. “Put me down, you nutter!”

“Ha!” I laughed. “Make me! I ain’t lettin’ you go, girl, you’re stuck with me!”

But then she stopped hitting me and held me, just for a moment.

Something inside me shifted. I let go of her. It was all getting too heavy. I turned round and, when I looked into her face, something passed between us, a spark. I could tell that she felt what
I felt: this – whatever it was that was happening between us – was something special.

It was a moment.

But I couldn’t handle it in the end. What can you do with a girl who looks you in the eye so that you can see exactly what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling? You either do the
same or you fall back, innit. Instead of looking in her eyes again, I took her hand and said, “Let’s get those bikes, yeah?” But my voice was softer than before.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling, riding around the park, going all the way up to the promenade along the River Thames.

After we’d returned the bikes, we bought sandwiches and sat down on the grass to eat.

“What you got in your bag?” I asked. You can tell a lot about a girl by what she carries round with her.

She shrugged. “Not much. Some make-up, a bit of cash, a book...”

“What book you readin’?”

“
Lord of the Flies,
we’re studying it at school.” She passed me her copy, full of tiny scribbles in the margins, thick lines under some of the sentences.

“Yeah, I know it – it was pretty good... I thought the language was kinda tired, though.”

“Oh my God, are you serious?” Misha’s hand was on her heart. “I love the language Golding uses! It’s so poetic!”

“Poetry? That ain’t poetry! That’s just a long ting – this is poetry...” And then I did my thing: I spat a little freestyle, a freestyle rhyme about a girl with
sweet chocolate fudge-coloured skin, with three gold earrings and a weakness for raspberry ripple ice-cream; a girl with a supermodel smile and a mean left hook.

A poem about her.

Have you ever seen a black girl blush? It’s the prettiest thing. I could tell from the way her eyes opened wide and the way she bit her lip that she was blown away. I knew I had her then,
so I decided to deliver the death blow.

“Read some to me then, innit,” I said, handing her the book. “Let’s see if this Golding bredder can spit as good as you say...”

So she read to me from her copy of
Lord of the Flies
. And that book that had made me die from boredom in English class came alive. I lay down next to her on the grass and closed my
eyes, listening to her reading in that pretty, posh voice of hers while the bees buzzed above us, the afternoon sun warm on my skin.

MISHA

It was the thrill of it, really, the thrill of the unknown, the unknowable, that first got me interested. That and his devastating smile. And he had soulful eyes. They
weren’t dead like so many of the others I had seen. His eyes spoke of a depth, a richness, a life within, waiting to be uncovered.

When he looked at me, looked deep into my eyes, I felt as if he was drinking in every word I said, that everything I said mattered, not because it was perfect, but because I had said it.

There were teething problems, of course. His street talk perplexed me – so many double negatives! So many grammatical inconsistencies. But once I learned to listen, to tune into the
essence of his words, I fell under their spell. He was a poet: a street poet, a poet with no respect for Wordsworth, but a poet nonetheless. He wove a spell with his words, making them dance and
jive and shimmy – just for me.

I guess you could say he captured my heart with a poem about chocolate fudge-coloured sweetness, spitting it on a two-step breakbeat.

DWAYNE

“I’m out, man,” said Tony, looking down at the playground in front of the estate. “Last weekend was my last rave. I’m done.”

We were all sitting on the balcony at Jukkie and Tony’s mum’s house, smoking. Misha and I had been seeing each other for a few weeks and I was sending her a text message, the kind I
knew made her melt. When Tony mentioned being ‘out’, I stopped thumb-typing and stared at him.

“What are you talking about, man?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Tony? Quit raving? “But why, man? What’s up?”

“You know I took my
shahadah
, innit, a few months ago now. I became a Muslim. And I’ve just been playing around. But now it’s time to quit messing about and do this
deen
ting. Do it properly. No more raving, no more drugs, I’m out of the game.”

Jukkie kissed his teeth and got up. “Sounds like some lame-arse ting you’re on, Tony. What d’you mean, you’re out? When you’re in the street life, there ain’t
no getting out. As for me, I know what I am: a thug for life.” And he went inside.

This thing was blowing my mind. “You mean you’re really gonna take this Islam ting serious, bruv? Are you sure?” I tried to imagine Tony living a clean life: no more guns, no
more drugs, no more raving... no more money. “Yo, how the hell are you gonna pay for that new ride and the watches and champagne and ting without food? What you gonna do, sign on?”

I laughed at the thought of Tony, Mr Big Stuff himself, going into the Job Seekers’ office to apply for a job as a driver.

But Tony didn’t laugh, y’know. Instead, he chewed at the skin under his thumbnail. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. But I can’t die like this, y’get
me. Imagine we out raving tonight, bunnin’ weed, drinkin’, and we crash the car and – pop – that’s it! Done! I ain’t goin’ out like that...”

“Easy on the drama, man! No one ain’t gonna die, not any time soon. There’s plenty of time for that Muslim stuff later, innit? We’re young now, we’re making money
– life is good. Don’t go mashing tings up by getting too serious... now turn up the volume, man, I love this track.” And soon my head was nodding to the sick beats.

I didn’t care what Tony said: there was no way he was going straight. Not while it was all going so well for us in RDS. Man would have to be a fool to turn his back on the streets when we
were running tings.

RDS had been my crew since I was 11. Only we never called it that back then. We were just a group of friends who all lived on the Saints Town estate. Our mums all knew each
other and we all went to the same school. Trevor, Simon, Leroy, Nicholas, Ali, Ross, Baba, Tony and Marvin.

Tony and Marvin Johnson were brothers – same mum, different dads – and I’d known them forever. Tony was six years older than Marvin and me and I looked up to him big time.

Tony was always smooth, man, always on top of his game. From way back, I could remember seeing him waiting in the stairwell at the bottom of our estate, shotting, waiting for the junkies with
their wild eyes to come for their fix.

In those days, we used to think it was good fun to shout out and warn the older boys if we saw or heard the 5-0 coming. We didn’t know that, one day, we’d be the ones standing in the
stairwell, listening out for the sound of a siren.

But Tony didn’t stay on the street corners for long. Nah, Tony had bigger plans, bigger dreams. He was into fraud, Tony was. It came easy for him because he was a smooth talker and knew
how to con people. Plus he was good with computers and that. So, when Tony began to roll in a Jeep and flash a gold Rolex about, we youngers knew what was up: Mr Big Stuff Tony was scoring
big-time.

Tony became a proper legend on the Saints Town estate. People told nuff stories about him: some said that he had a huge stash of coke hidden in his girl’s ground-floor flat. Others said he
had shot a policeman in New York and got away with it. Some said the police had even made a deal with him to keep the ‘hood under control and keep the drugs on the estates and stop it leaking
out into the suburbs, where the posh people lived.