fast

by Millie Belizaire

“Tie this around your waist,” he said quietly, pushing the jacket into my empty hand as he took the papers from my other. “Go sit back down. I’ll pass out the papers.” Confused, my brows furrowed with questions.

oh she got her period and that was probably why she was feeling discomfort

Still giggling, she dug in her purse and pulled out a tampon wrapped in a pink plastic wrapper. “You might need this,” she spoke louder than she needed to, wanting everyone to hear. She tossed it over to me, and I didn’t reach to catch it. The wrapped tampon hit the front of my shirt, and then fell to my feet. When I looked down at it, it seemed like everyone in the room gave up on trying to hold back their laughter. They erupted.

princess is such a bitch bro…pretty girl who shits on other girls for what though?

Paris didn’t understand where I was coming from. She saw it as disrespect that I would even mention another girl’s name between the both of us. She caught herself asking me to choose between my best friend and herself. I wish I could say Paris was the first girl to have me make that dumbass decision, but that’s how all my relationships ended. With Paris, it just happened a lot faster than it usually did. We lasted maybe twenty-four hours.

girls like that irritate me

In life, there are certain things that you just need. I needed food to eat. I needed air to breathe. I needed water to drink. And I needed Caprice.

you can’t tell me he don’t love that girl STOP IT

Interestingly enough, you would never guess Caprice lived with a smoker. Caprice always smelled like a fresh shower, being one of the biggest neat freaks I knew.

“I take it you two are Shaun Taylor and Caprice… Latimore?” She paused after reading Caprice’s name from her roster, her eyes snapping up to get a second, longer look at her. She squinted. “Alabama?” Caprice’s voice had that same surprised tone when she questioned back, “Ms. Kelly?” They knew each other.

oh my god the lady from summer camp 🥹

The thing is—Caprice wasn’t into me in that way. The best that I could hope for was being her best friend, and I wasn’t going to pressure her for anything more than that. She was… sensitive to that kind of thing. And the last thing I wanted to do was make her uncomfortable by expressing how I actually felt about her.

if only you knew

Just before I let myself out, she absently said, “I’m so relieved that you turned out okay.” What was that supposed to mean? I paused, my hand freezing at the doorknob. I got that prickly feeling I usually got when I felt like people were seeing me a little too well. I hated feeling seen. “Why wouldn’t I have?” “You were a very, um… You were memorable for a reason, Caprice,”

what you mean by that

“Well?” I waited. “Answer the question then. Will we still be friends when I’m twenty-five?”

“Butterscotch,” he used my nickname, head tilted slightly forward, looking at me from the tops of his eyes. Our foreheads were almost touching, and my heart was pounding. This close, I could smell the soap on his skin, and I secretly liked it. Shaun was sincere when he promised, “It’s you and me. Till we’re old as fuck.”

To a girl like Caprice, I had too much to be complaining about wanting more. What else could I possibly want? Caprice didn’t understand what I had meant when she asked me that. I didn’t want a “what.” I wanted a “who.”

“Shut up, Caprice,” she cut me off quietly, the bite of her cigarette fog pricking at my eyes, making them water. “Shut your lyin’ ass up.”

and to think i was rooting for her disgusting ass

I remember when I was twelve, when this game first started, Gracie forced me to say it. She made me say Marcel never touched me. I thought she would leave me alone if I just told her what she wanted to hear. On that day, just a second after I let the words come out… she beat the shit out of me. She screamed insults at me, called me all kinds of lying whores and lying bitches, forced me to the ground and started stomping on me. Saying those words was all the excuse she needed to justify beating me within an inch of my life.

she can never get a damn break

Gracie hovered above my head, a mere shadow looking down at me, and she whispered the word, “Slut.”

that bitch can rot in hell

I guess it was my turn for therapy next. I was careful with how much information I shared as Miss Sylvia started to rub product into my damp coils. I would’ve hated to slip up and reveal that my grandmother put her cigarette out on me on Monday and slapped me across the face on both Thursday and Friday.

karma is gon hit gracie’s sorry ass hard as a mf

“I’m glad I could do this for you, cutie. Those mean girls are gonna have a hard time finding things to knit pick at you for now. Braids look good on you,” Miss Sylvia complimented,

i love miss sylvia

“Mischa, I’m sorryyyyy,” I was apologizing for crying, and even as I did this, I was blinking back more tears. “You’re not even big, Mischaaaaa. Nobody is looking at your aaaarms.” “Put it on before I take it back, you big fat baby!”

i don’t know why this part made me laugh lol

“I’m fine,” I promised. “It’s not as dramatic as you’re making it seem. My grandmother is good to me. Gracie would never hurt me. Gracie loves me.” The lies felt odd on my tongue, but I could remember believing them once upon a time. “Please, Ms. Kelly. Don’t do it. I’m okay. I swear, I’m okay.”

the same lies she told herself when she was younger

There was a silence that fell over us then, with his eyes looking into mine, and my eyes looking into his. Something powerful hung in the air between us, but I didn’t say anything about it. For a moment, neither did Shaun. We were both quiet. And then, I watched as he took in a deep breath, a slow exhale leading into the sincerest, tenderest confession. “I love you, Caprice.”

omgggg he said i love you 🥲

He was slowly stepping off his seat. I didn’t say anything as he walked around to my side of the counter. I think he kept his movements extra slow, just so that he could give me enough time to let him know if I wanted him to stop. I didn’t tell him to stop when he was six feet away. I said nothing when he was three feet away. I still wanted him to come closer by the time we were just a few inches apart.

cause he always took notice about her personal space 🥹

How ever much he desired me, I knew he would never take anything I wasn’t willing to give. With him, I was safe.

yes you are, you’re always safe with him even when yall were eight years old

He loves me. He really loves me.

I slowly peeled back the paper, finding underneath an orange colored shoebox with a Nike logo written across the top. “Shaun…” I opened the shoe box to find a brand-new pair of white Nike Air Force 1’s. At that point in my life, those shoes had just become the most expensive thing I owned. They must’ve been, like, almost a hundred dollars.

I LOVE SHAUN FOR HER SO MUCH

“You baked cookies,” I acknowledged, a budding smile on my face. She remembered my birthday. “Yes, I did.” Gracie set the hot tray in her hand on the kitchen counter, dusting the flour off her hands. I looked at them—warm chocolate chip. A little of my excitement fizzled. I wasn’t a big fan of chocolate—not since I was a little girl. Gracie knew this. The next thing Gracie said let me know who those cookies were really for. She said, “Marcel’s favorite.” My smile faded.

bitch really…but you can’t even remember your own granddaughter’s birthday

“Shiiiiit,” she muttered to herself. “You lucky I don’t make your little freeloadin’ ass go back to sleeping on that couch. And you can thank the uncle you forgot all about for that! He’s the one who told me he didn’t want to take your room from you.” She shook her head at the thought. “Imagine that—after all those lies you told about him, and he’s still got nothing but love for you.”

bro i can literally—she’s probably one of the worst characters i’ve ever read in a book. like i HATE her

Although she had her backpack, she wasn’t wearing her uniform, but instead had on a pink and white shirt, some jeans and the shoes I got her. She looked nice, but she definitely wasn’t dressed for school.

she’s ready to get tf up out of here

I was skipping school with Thee Caprice. Alicia. Latimore. Little Miss Perfect Attendance for the past six years. At first, I thought it was her way of celebrating my birthday, but nah… She liked me a lot. But she didn’t like me that fuckin’ much. Caprice loves school.

well at least you know your girl LMAOO

“I just want to have one perfect day, Shaun. Just me and the person I love most. Please don’t think about who is spending what. Just be here with me. Just one perfect day. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. You and me. Disney World—The Happiest Place on Earth. I want to go to The Happiest Place on Earth. And I want you to come with me.”

she’s tryna say goodbye without saying goodbye

“One more left here, and then the immediate right,” she gave more directions, but at this point, because I knew these roads, I knew there was only one place we could be going. “Caprice…?” “Please just drive me there,” she whispered quickly.

awww she’s tryna leave cause of marcel 😔

Why was she leaving? Things had just started to go right with us. Things had just started to go the way that I always wanted them to. Was it me? Did I do something? “Why are you leaving?”

it’s much more complicated than that sweetie

Shaun got me the ticket. He hated every second of the amount of time it took to purchase it, but he got me the ticket. Not because he wanted to me to leave, but because he loved me.

and that’s the saddest part of it

Love is amazing. Love is a powerful thing to get to experience. Love keeps your body warm when the September night air breezes past your skin. Love is like no other emotion. Unmatched in every aspect. You don’t know what it truly means to be real until you’ve been in love. But for me… Love is also a prison. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave him.

let’s see if you made the right decision (you did)

I wanted to run away from the pink house, but I wanted to stay with Shaun more.

I couldn’t tell him about Marcel without… telling him about Marcel. I never wanted anyone to know that about me. Especially Shaun. It made me feel so dirty. It would’ve shattered me to pieces if Shaun ever thought I was dirty, too. What if I told him, and he stopped looking at me with that love in his eyes?

then you must not know how far gone that man is for you

“You not gon’ give him a hug?” Gracie spoke up, offended by my keeping my distance. “Nah.” Marcel put a hand up in the air. “It’s a’ight. She don’t have to. I don’t even really like it when people touch me like that,” he said. And that’s when I really knew. What he’d done to me as a little girl—someone in that prison had done to him, too.

he should’ve gotten it ten times worse

I didn’t like dirty things. I took as many showers a day as I could get away with. I tried to always have a pack of baby wipes. My clothes were always double washed before I wore them. And as for my bedroom—this place was never a mess. I always felt dirty inside and doing these things helped me feel clean.

All this aggression was because I told him Gracie was hitting me. So, it was in this moment that I realized—if Shaun ever found out about Marcel… Someone was going to die.

i’m glad you know

It must’ve been the way we were looking at each other… Because by the time we made it to calculus, everyone at Jefferson was convinced we were together. And to my surprise, the word ‘finally’ kept being used.

LMAOOO not finally!

“So, if I was your girlfriend, would you keep choosing me?” Shaun kissed the sensitive skin behind my left ear, and then in it he whispered, “I will always choose you.”

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Within forty-eight hours, he’d gotten comfortable, and by Monday… he was talking to me like we didn’t both know he raped me when I was a child.

snakes don’t shed their skin overnight

“You still like David Letterman?” he asked, trying to piece together the few memories of me he had saved. I stopped liking the sound David Letterman’s voice the night Marcel pulled my shirt over my face and touched himself until he came. David Letterman had been on in the background.

david letterman and chocolate are associated with her abuse smh he knows what he’s doing

And then three hours later, as Shaun lay sleeping beside me peacefully, I watched the knob on my locked door twist left, and then twist right. My breathing quickened, and even though Marcel would have had to destroy the door to find his way in, it didn’t matter. He tried. Which meant Marcel was not a changed man. The doorknob twisted four more times. And I didn’t go to sleep that night.

Princess laughed, thinking up a comeback quickly. “Figures you would start losing your patience now that you like moving so—” Princess glanced in my direction again and then back at Caprice. “—fast.”

i never wanted to punch another person like princess

One minute she was sitting next to me, the next minute she was knocking Princess Knight off her seat. Caprice straddled that girl and got six good licks in before Paris tried to jump in and help her little sister.

yeah finally getting her ass beat for talking so much shit

This… this rage was about more than Princess Knight. Knight just happened to be the fuse that set off a ticking bomb. My girl had snapped. “I didn’t want him to.” Caprice was shouting this at Princess over and over as each of her blows connected.

everybody calling her fast when she was literally RAPED as a kid!

“Aht-aht, I’m your best friend, not your yes-bitch. I don’t have to agree with everything you say.”

You can never win against someone if you don’t ever want to see them lose.

“Protect me now by keeping Kahfi safe. You have to make him happy. You have to make sure he’s safe. If Kahfi is happy, then me and Marron don’t never need to come out. That’s the way.” Moreno looked at me like someone getting ready to say goodbye, tears still streaming down his little face. “Me and Marron were never supposed to be here in the first place.”

Age allowed me to understand that pain is unavoidable, and you’d live a very meaningless life trying to avoid it.