Spin by Lamar Giles

Author:Lamar Giles [Giles, Lamar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2018-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

All of me doesn’t fill this space.

All of me is all out of place.

A part of me is all, do I stay?

And all you do is take away …

It was simple, and beautiful, and I stopped it because I had an ear, recognized the incredible singer by her tone alone.

“Kya,” I said, “that’s you.”

It wasn’t a good day. The landlord left this stupid note on my door about keeping my music “to a respectable volume” or there’d be some kind of fine on next month’s rent. Which was a problem because when I checked my bank account for last month’s rent, I only barely made it. The numbers hadn’t improved much since, meaning Paula, who was supposed to be managing my money as well as my gigs, and me were going to have another talk. I didn’t want any more tech toys—my landlord made if very clear he wouldn’t accept a GoPro as partial payment. I didn’t want to hear about unexpected expenses and slow paperwork. Funny how there was never any delay in Paula getting paid.

I still had shoebox money, but that wasn’t going to last forever.

Living on my own was way harder than I thought it would be. Someone always want something. Some payment always due. It’s like everybody’s taking little bites off you all day, every day. My big fat advance check had dwindled. It maybe wasn’t as big as I’d thought, all things considered.

“Is there anything else I should take out with these pizza boxes?” Shameik asked, folding old grease-stained cardboard into a heavy-duty garbage bag.

Gawd. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

I was hunched over my notebook, trying to write a song. He could, literally, see me working on the hook. So of course he needed me to supervise his Mr. Clean activities at this exact moment. Like I didn’t have enough to do already.

The seal broke on the refrigerator, followed by, “Bae. Seriously. It’s nasty in here.”

I let my pencil fall on my notebook and took three deep breaths before answering. Still wasn’t sure I kept my tone in check. “Did you come over here just to nitpick everything?”

Then he was beside me, agitated, not doing a good job of keeping his tone in check either. Our normal lately. “I came here to roll with you to the studio. Since you were working, I figured I’d give you a hand because your crib is crazy right now. You’re welcome.”

“I was going to clean this weekend.”

“You said that last weekend.”

Forget this. I grabbed my earbuds, prepared to drown him out with my latest beat.

This dude—who really must’ve lost his mind—snatched them out of my hand. “You’re trippin’ now, Shameik.”

“Me? I’m—” He stalked from my tiny hand-me-down desk, rounded my beat-up couch, and began plucking up various debris littering my coffee table, TV stand, windowsills, and any other available flat surface. He tossed it all into his bag that was starting to bulge like Santa’s sack. “Soda cans. Dirty Tupperware. Burger wrappers. Beer bottles!” He lingered on the dark green long-necked bottle in his grip.

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