Sympathy for the Devil: An Angela Bivens Thriller - Christopher Chambers - Hardcover - 1 ED

1 Friday . . . Three Weeks After Labor Day, 1999 The Spartans of East Anacostia Senior High School whipped the Ballou High Knights by three touchdowns. Now the bleachers were dark and empty, the scoreboard lights dim. And when the victory howls and good-bye hugs ebbed, lingering Spartan marching band members and cheerleaders departed the shadowy school parking lot, leaving their cohort, Tamika McGarry, standing all alone. Tamika had signed up for the Pep Squad as a means of breaking out of her shyness, and for breaking into one of East Anacostia's premier cliques. Being a cheerleader meant you had value. Damn important in a world that reminded you daily that you had no value. Getting the veteran cheerleaders to warm up to her had been slow going, however. Yet Tamika told herself to be patient. She gaped up at the crescent moon. Tamika's mother, dead four years that July, once lullabied her only daughter with a pledge that the Lord would always watch over her with an eye as bright and vast as a full harvest moon. But tonight, all Tamika saw was a pale squinted eye obscured by a milky gauze of clouds. Lemme go find Cassandra's triflin' ass, Tamika thought as she clutched at her own shoulders to suppress the inner chill, an' we can catch the number 33 down Alabama Avenue . . . home. Safe. Well, maybe not altogether safe, as "home" sometimes meant late-night gunfire between competing covens of street dealers. At least it was safer than a deserted high school parking lot. So Tamika called out to Cassandra Brown. For the past thirty minutes, Cassandra'd been trying to vamp up a ride home. Cassandra deemed herself a diva, and divas didn't ride the number 33 Metrobus--not with its passenger manifest of winos and late-shift minimum wagers. So she was leaning hard into the open passenger-side window of an Isuzu Rodeo parked at the school lot's entrance. DMX's lurid chants rocked the SUV's woofers; the rear half of Cassandra's body swayed to the beat like a metronome. Her bright white cheerleader uniform--tunic, miniskirt, and boots--shimmered against the Rodeo's dull matte finish. Tamika's eyes fixed on Cassandra's panties, freshened by the damp wind. Tamika knew that the pooh-butt gangstas in the Rodeo were drooling over what was in those draws. Cassandra had back--and breasts--aplenty, and the cheerleader uniforms she and Tamika were wearing only accentuated what nature had given them both. Tamika's daddy always lectured: Never, ever get into a car with someone you didn't know. Not with all these wanna-be playahs and junior thugs profiling in their suped-up rides, flashing mad loot at any teenage girl who caught their eye. Some girls would jump in, for a thrill. This was benignly called "car-hopping." Being treated like a princess meant a trip to the computer arcade at Iverson Mall for an evening of Zelda or Donkey Kong, then grubbing at TGI Friday's. Yet a lot of girls ended up in jail for what their Prince Charmings had stashed under the front seat or in the trunk. And Tamika knew of one who had been sucked into the night, then spit out into a Dumpster a week later. Naked. Cut. Shot. Pale as that crescent moon. Yvette . . . Cassandra finally unglued herself from the window and leered at Tamika through her stiff bangs. Tamika popped a filmy jawbreaker bubble and flipped her braids off her shoulders. She reminded Cassandra that they couldn't hang late; scholarship exams started promptly at nine o'clock in the morning. Four years of college money was at stake--and that meant a ticket out of Southeast D.C. Cassandra was unmoved, so Tamika tried jogging Cassandra's loyalty to a boy named Darryl Wiggins. "He still love you, Cassie," she insisted. "An' he played his heart out ta-night. You oughta go home an' call him." Just as second thoughts began to congeal in Cassandra's brain, a young man wearing a hooded Phat Farm anorak arChambers, Christopher is the author of 'Sympathy for the Devil: An Angela Bivens Thriller - Christopher Chambers - Hardcover - 1 ED' with ISBN 9780609608494 and ISBN 0609608495.