A day after her release Arnessa entered a small dimly lit bar on Eighth Avenue. From inside it was hard to tell that the sun was shining brightly on the other side of the windowless door.

Like quite a few establishments uptown, it was often referred to as a coke-head bar. Arnessa scanned the room for her mentor, Black Rap. She spotted him seated at the bar. Rap and Arnessa’s older brother, Deon, had been best friends. Together, the two of them had made plenty of money slanging yayo, right up until the day Deon had been murdered. Witnessing his best friend’s brutal murder was enough to make Rap leave the game behind.

Against Rap’s advice, Arnessa picked up where Deon left off. Prior to his death, Deon had been the financial backbone of a single-mother home. Unlike Rap, Deon spent more than he saved. He’d also chosen to stash his money in the home of three not-so-trustworthy females. The day that he died, those females had kept the cash as their own. His main girl, Chanel, was the only one of three who had given Deon’s family any of his money. Nevertheless, she surely didn’t deserve a medal, because all Chanel had given his mother, Maria, was thirty thousand out of the one hundred ninety-seven thousand dollars that he’d kept at her house.

In the months after Deon’s death, Maria grieved harder than when he’d initially been murdered. Grief and severe depression took over her life. The loss of her oldest child, her only son, was too much for her to bear. Even her daughters became nothing to her but a constant reminder of her sweet Deon. Maria barely said anything to Arnessa or Cenise, which was horrible for fourteen-year-old Cenise. All she wanted was some attention from her mother, especially since she hadn’t come to terms with losing her brother.

So one day during the spring of Arnessa’s senior year in high school, Arnessa came home to find Maria gone. She knew her mother wasn’t coming back when she checked Maria’s bedroom. All of Maria’s clothes, jewelry, and toiletries were missing. She didn’t care, since Maria had long stopped being a mother to them anyhow.

At an early age Arnessa had been taught by Deon to be strong, even when facing fear or danger. With that train of thought, Arnessa made the decision to do what she needed to do in order to take care of herself and Cenise. So Arnessa put her college dreams on hold and entered the game feet-first.

* * *

“What up, Rap?” Arnessa took a seat next to him at the bar.

“Ain’t shit, ain’t shit.” He smiled. Rap was such a real good-looking dude. He had the prettiest dark skin, and at five feet ten inches he had a lovable stocky frame. Arnessa always jokingly called him Gerald Levert. He and his wife, Jess, were always there when Arnessa or Cenise needed them. “I heard TNT grabbed your little ass yesterday morning.”