THREE MONTHS LATER
“Are you sure you’re okay to go traipsing around downtown looking for a chai place?” Dejonae asks with a concerned toss of her head.
I push my stroller. Baby Ollie is safely nestled inside with her wrench-shaped toys from Dawn and Max.
“Listen, Deej. If I don’t get out of the house, I’ll go crazy. Hadyn’s overprotective to the max. I can’t breathe without him magically showing up and asking if I need something. The man doesn’t want me lifting a finger!”
“You poor thing. What a terrible life you have,” she mumbles dryly.
“You try having a shadow follow you from one room to the next listening in when you pee and see how that feels.”
“He listens when you pee?” Her eyes bulge.
“I might have gotten light-headed once during the pregnancy and almost passed out in the bathroom. But dizziness is common in pregnant women and I haven’t felt dizzy again since Ollie was born.”
Dejonae ropes her arms around mine. “You should have told me that new moms come with hazard warnings. I wouldn’t have been your accomplice.”
“Back out now and I’m telling Hadyn you’ve been secretly supplying me with chai.”
She gives me horrified eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“You’re in too deep, sweetie. There’s no escaping now. If we go down, we go down together.”
Dejonae rolls her eyes and laughs. “This is why I don’t get involved with addicts.”
“Ah, yes, but you’ve developed a fondness for me. Which is why you sprung me from prison.” I look down at the stroller. “Isn’t that right, Ollie?”
“She’s so cute,” Dejonae says. “And motherhood looks good on you.”
“Everything looks good on me,” I say cockily, adjusting my sunshades.
“Okay. That’s the last time I pay you a compliment.”
I grin and look over. “You look nice too.” She’s wearing a cropped T-shirt, mom jeans and chucks. It’s casual, but it looks great on her tiny body. Her curls are out and they spring around her face like a soft cloud.
Dejonae’s that ridiculously annoying girl with dewy skin who looks pretty without a stick of makeup. I’d resent her if she wasn’t so darn sweet with a side of vicious. Even though I’m not big on making friends, I love being around independent women who make great chai.
“Hey, do you hear that?” Dejonae asks, stopping abruptly.
“What?” I tilt my head. We’re near an alley next to Bailey, Micheal and Beth’s middle school.
In the distance, I hear grunts and sounds of a struggle.
“Stupid deaf girl.”
“Ching-chon-chang can’t hear us, man.”
“Why are your eyes like this?”
I turn my head. Dejonae does the same.
“What do you think is going…” Before I can finish the statement, Dejonae takes off like a bolt of lightning, running toward the sounds.
My grip on the stroller tightens. I run through a mental checklist in my head.
I’m a new mom.
I have to keep my baby safe.
Hadyn would kill me if he found out I wheeled Ollie into a dangerous situation.
But I can’t leave my girl hanging. A part of this new ‘relying on friends’ path is showing that my friends can rely on me right back.
I pull out my cell phone, prepared to either phone Hadyn or the police and inch closer to the alley.
When I get there, I’m shocked to see three boys who look to be around twelve years old on the ground. A slim little girl—my inner age reader would put her at around Micheal’s age—is standing in the circle of groaning bodies. She’s holding a rolled-up comic book in her hands and seems as calm as a lily.
Dejonae is ahead of me, but she’s standing stock-still. Probably just as shocked as I am.
As if she can sense us, the kid ninja turns around. She has caramel-colored skin, pretty almond-shaped eyes, and a thin, lithe body. There’s something about her gaze that demands respect. Like she’s seen a lot of life and has an untapped well of wisdom locked inside her.
I’m so arrested by her gaze that I don’t realize she’s not looking at me anymore. Instead, her eyes are on Dejonae who is cautiously approaching her.
“Hey, are you alright?” Dejonae asks.
The boys get up at that moment. They see Dejonae tiptoeing closer and scramble away. Their shirts flap behind them like wings.
“Are they from your school?” Dejonae asks the girl. “Did they try to hurt you?”
Kid Ninja keeps staring at us, not saying anything.
I swallow hard. Something feels… strange about this. I can’t put a finger on it. My grip tightens on the stroller.
“Deej,” I say, “maybe we should call the police and try to find her parents. I don’t think she trusts us.”
“I don’t think she can hear us,” Dejonae says.
“What?” My eyebrows hike.
“Didn’t the boys say something about a ‘deaf girl’. Maybe she’s…” With a flick of her fingers, Dejonae signs something. “Deaf.”
The girl’s eyes light up when she sees Dejonae sign. She immediately lifts her hands and does a musical mix of gestures and open mouth movements.
I stand, rooted to my spot, when Dejonae communicates with her.
“Am I hallucinating right now? You know sign language?” I cry out.
Dejonae twists around to look at me. “I told you my sister is different.”
“I thought… maybe you meant she was short for a model or something.”
“No, Vanya.” Dejonae laughs. Her fingers flutter, punctuating each word. “My. Sister. Is. Deaf.”
At that moment, the sound of car tires screaming to a stop explodes behind us. I hear a car door slam and a harried voice yells, “Niko!”
The sheer panic in the guy’s voice has me spinning around. Instinctively, I swerve Ollie’s stroller out of his way before he runs over my baby in his haste to get to the little girl.
A tall, lean blur wearing a suit sprints past me. He kneels in front of the little girl who smiles when she sees him.
Dejonae steps back so they can reunite and walks over to me.
“What did she say?” I ask, staring hard at the back of the man’s head. There’s something familiar about him.
“I think she was walking to the comic book shop when those boys from the school surrounded her.”
“Ah.” I nod.
The man rises to his feet and turns around.
I almost keel over when I recognize the haughty pianist from the Belle’s Beauty gala.
Dejonae looks horrified.
“You!” She lifts a finger and points.
“Mr. Sazuki,” I croak out.
“What are you doing here? How do you know this little girl?” Dejonae demands, looking ready to grab the kid’s hand and run off with her.
“Is it not obvious?” Sazuki’s sharp gaze cuts into Dejonae as he says darkly, “She is my daughter.”
