Okay, I'm currently close to finishing the next book, entitled Thug Life: Emancipated. The main character will be Shade, the young hustler introduced in She's His Drug, He's Her Thug 3. He was such an interesting character that I thought it would be fun to do more with him. Anyway, below is an excerpt from the book. (And for those interested, I'm kicking around an idea for She's His Drug 4, although a part of me says Book 3 ended well and to leave well enough alone.)
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It only took Shade a few minutes to unclog
the toilet. He generally kept things like the plumbing and electrical in their
house running without a hitch – something his grandfather had taught him.
Occasionally, however, Gin would flush random shit down the toilet: plastic
sandwich bags, dirty handkerchiefs, roach clips, and so on. That’s why his
first thought upon learning about the stopped-up toilet was to ask where she
was. Needless to say, the fact that she wasn’t presently at home didn’t mean
she hadn’t down something to cause the current problem. (And bearing in mind
that his mother had once flushed a dirty needle, he was working with gloves
on.) What he actually pulled out of the toilet line, however, was something
that first surprised and then angered him.
Trying to contain his fury, Shade marched
back to the kitchen, where Goose, Nissa and Cherry were still at the table.
“Goose,” Shade began, trying to keep his
voice even, “can you help me with sommin’ outside for a minute?”
“Ah, sure,” Goose replied, plainly
surprised, since Shade rarely ever spoke to him without prompting. Nissa
however, recognizing her brother’s mood, suddenly looked worried but didn’t say
anything.
As he’d done with Rod the night before,
Shade just started walking towards the back door, and Goose followed. A moment
later, they were in the back yard, at which juncture Shade actually led them to
the side of the house.
Once there, Shade turned and faced Goose,
who looked at him expectedly. Rather than say anything, Shade lifted his right
hand – which was still gloved – and flicked his wrist in Goose’s direction. A
moment later, something wet and rubbery hit Goose in the face.
It wasn’t hard and didn’t hurt, but Goose
closed his eyes and flinched instinctively. He then brought a hand up and wiped
his face; he blinked, and then his eyes went wide when he saw, on the ground,
the item that Shade had hit him with: a used condom.
“What da fuck???!!” he screeched. “Are you
crazy?!”
“Naw, nigga,” Shade shot back. “You da one
crazy, flushin’ fuckin’ rubbers down my toilet.”
“Man, you got that wrong. Me and Nissa
ain’t even doin’ nuthin’.”
Shade’s eyes narrowed. “You might wanna
rethink that last statement.”
Goose frowned. “Whachu mean?”
“What I mean is that you the only nigga
besides me been ’round here lately. Now, my crackhead momma’s in the wind, so
that just leaves my two sistas as the only fems in the house. Now if you sayin’ you ain’t done nuthin’ with
Nissa, that just leaves our lil’ sista Cherry, you, and a used condom. I don’t
like that math and you shouldn’t either, because it mean that shit’s ’bout to
escalate in a way that’s gonna be fuckin’ unhealthy for you.”
Goose gulped. “Okay, um, maybe Nissa and
me–”
“Maybe?”
Shade interjected incredulously.
“Okay, okay. We, uh, we did so sommin’. We was on the
couch, and–”
“Muhfucka, I don’t need no details,” Shade
snapped, cutting him off. Trying to keep his cool, Shade took a deep breath.
“Look, I’m responsible for Nissa, but I don’t try to control her. She does what she wants with who she wants, and she’s smart enough to be careful.”
“Okay, cool,” Goose muttered, sounding
relieved.
“But you need to understand sommin’,”
Shade continued, with a hard edge to his voice now. “If she get pregnant, you
takin’ care of that baby.”
Goose nodded. “Yeah, dawg – I get where
you comin’ from.”
“Naw, nigga,” Shade countered, shaking his
head. “This ain’t gone be one of them hood situations, where you drop off a
pack of diapers every other month then brag to muhfuckas ’bout how you takin’
care of yo kid. You payin’ for everythang.”
Goose look confused for a moment. “Whachu
mean, ‘everythang’?”
“I mean everythang, nigga,” Shade stressed. “The kid need a new pair of
shoes, you buyin’ ’em. They got private school tuition, you payin’. They got a
class trip to muhfuckin’ France, you coughin’ up the funds.”
Goose looked stunned. It was as if he was
hearing something that he had never considered before, something outside the realm of possibility – like being told he had
a vagina.
“Basically,” Shade continued, “if you
knock up my sista, every red cent needed to support that kid is comin’ from you
– even if I have to harvest yo fuckin’ organs to get it.”
