People Person, page 14
Nikisha put the steaming plate down next to her and took her phone out of her pocket as the doorbell rang.
“That must be Prynce now.”
“I’ll get it,” Dimple said, getting up.
“No, it’s fine, I’m closest to the door,” Lizzie told her, jumping up and out of the room.
When she came back in and sat down on the stool, Prynce was behind her, wrapping up a phone call. Most of his locs were in a knot at the top of his head, with a few loose tendrils trailing down onto his navy-blue Nike sweater.
“All right, Kayla, I’ll see you later. You too.” He put his phone into his pocket. “Ah, it’s everyone!” he exclaimed happily. “What’s good, everyone?”
“Kayla? Is she number four or five?” Dimple asked him. “I’ve lost count.”
“Dimple, you’re saying that like these girls are disposable to me.” Prynce shook his head, his locs dancing around his big smile. “I care about them all.”
Dimple rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, what’s going on? Why we all here?” Prynce smiled as he looked around the room.
Nikisha sat back at the table, Danny was concentrating on his stir-fry, Dimple looked like she hadn’t ever slept a day in her life, Lizzie’s jaw was visibly clenched tight. Prynce decided to perch next to Dimple on the cabinet as she looked the most stressed and he thought his presence would offer support by vibe osmosis.
“This is, like, a trap house,” Prynce said, looking at the walls. “Is this why you’ve never let me come here? Do the kids come here? I hope not. Danger everywhere.”
“You’re probably all wondering why you’re here,” Nikisha said, ignoring Prynce as usual.
“I’m not wondering why we’re here,” Lizzie piped up. “I’m going to guess that it’s something to do with—” She looked up at the ceiling. “Is anyone else here?”
Nikisha shook her head.
“Kyron knows,” Dimple said flatly. “He remembers. Well, I’m guessing he remembers.”
“Whaaat?” Lizzie jumped up so quickly that the stool fell backward. “What do you mean?”
“I went to his mum’s and he just… turned up,” Dimple said, her voice wavering. “And at first, when he saw me, I thought he was going to say something in front of her, but then when she asked what happened to him and where he’d been, he said he didn’t remember.”
“Okay, so when did he remember, then?” Danny asked, crossing his arms as he always did when he was trying to work something out.
“Well, then his mum had a welcome home party for him, ’cause Lynette loves a party, and then his boy Roman turned up, and I don’t know how Kyron knew about me and Roman––”
“What about you and Roman?” Prynce asked.
“Well, we’ve been kind of in it for a while,” Dimple said quickly.
“In what?” Prynce asked.
“What do you think?” Nikisha sighed, looking at Prynce.
“All right, all right.” Danny uncrossed his arms and waved his hands to stop this line of conversation.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you’re not a very good storyteller, are you?” Prynce said. “You take too long to get to the point and somehow you still leave out all the good bits.”
“As I was saying,” Dimple said. “Kyron was all where’s your friend? and I was, like, who? because I didn’t know who he meant, and then Roman walked in and he was, like, there he is, and then there was a tussle, and then—actually, this is quite interesting––”
Lizzie cut in. “Is it?”
“Yes!” Dimple waved Lizzie’s question away. “I would have said that Kyron is stronger than Roman, but it seemed to be kind of even. I think Roman was holding back, actually.”
Dimple looked around and saw that none of her siblings wanted this kind of detail.
“Long story short, Kyron fell again, hit his head again—God, it was horrible to see a second time around—and when he got up, there was this look on his face that told me he remembers.”
“When was all of this?” Lizzie demanded. “How long have you been sitting on this information?”
“This all happened in the last couple of days! I’m not hiding stuff from you!” Dimple said.
“Well you can’t blame me for asking questions, can you?” Lizzie pursed her lips. “Given why we are where we are.”
“Lizzie,” Nikisha warned her half sister. “Dimple, continue.”
“So I left sharpish, didn’t say bye to anyone, and the next day he messaged me, and all it said was ‘two hundred and fifty bags,’ ” Dimple told her siblings.
“Ah, so he’s on a blackmail ting?” Prynce asked. “Makes sense, makes sense.”
Lizzie glared at Prynce.
“What?” Prynce said. “He’s well within his rights to ask for compensation—we was literally gonna bury him in the ground.”
“How am I going to find two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, though?” Dimple bit her lip.
“Not trying to be rude or anything like that, but haven’t you got money?” Prynce asked. “Isn’t your mum rich?”
“I mean, we’re comfortable, but I don’t think she has a quarter of a mill to lend me, Prynce.” Dimple rubbed her temples.
“It’s not just your problem, Dimple,” Nikisha said. “It’s on all of us.”
“Speak for yourself,” Lizzie blurted out.
Everyone turned to look at her.
“Sorry, but it’s true!” Lizzie said.
“Okay, well, how about this,” Nikisha said. “When Dimple talks to Kyron and sees what he can remember, if he can’t recall you or your involvement, how you helped to clean up his blood, and how you sat in the back of the van talking while he was probably playing dead, then you can opt out and leave us to it.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes while Dimple dealt with the wound of what Lizzie had said. She knew Lizzie was right, though. This shouldn’t have been on them, it was all on her.
“Here’s how we play it for now,” Nikisha said. “Dimple, you’re going to go and talk to Kyron. See what he remembers. I personally haven’t ever been blackmailed before, but I suspect the best thing to do is admit to nothing. In case he wants a recording of you saying what we did.”
“But Dimple said he won’t go to the police,” Danny said. “So what does a recording matter?”
“He’ll put it on social media,” Dimple exclaimed. “He knows that’ll ruin me, and I’ve only just come up!”
“Or all of us,” Prynce said. “I dunno about you lot, but I don’t want people searching my name on Twitter and they see that in the winter of this year I tried to bury a body.”
“Why do you care about social media in any of this?” Lizzie asked in total disbelief.
“We need to think of an alibi in case he does decide to say what happened,” Nikisha told her siblings. “We need to have somewhere we were that night. To protect ourselves, and to protect Dimple if the police, anyone, whoever, suspects anything.”
“But we hadn’t seen each other for years before that night. They’re not going to think we all got together to hide a body, are they?” Prynce asked. “So we’re really doing it to protect Dimple.”
“Yes, Prynce,” Nikisha said firmly. “Unless you’re giving solutions, you’re just talking for the sake of it.”
“All right!” Prynce exclaimed. “Just making sure we cover all bases!”
“But Karen,” Dimple whispered.
“Fucking Karen,” Danny spat, even though it wasn’t in his nature to swear.
“We don’t know who she saw, remember?” Nikisha told them. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”
“Maybe we could ask Dad to be our alibi?” Dimple said, and all of her half-siblings burst into laughter that carried on for, in Dimple’s opinion, too long.
Dimple felt her face go hot.
“I was just saying,” she whispered.
“We could say we were all here, but it’s better for us to be somewhere with a witness,” Nikisha told her half-siblings.
“I—I don’t think we should pull anyone else into this, d-do you?” Dimple stuttered.
“Well,” Lizzie said, “the only person I was with was my girlfriend, and there is no way I’m getting her involved.”
“None of my friends are going to go for that,” Prynce said. “I jumped off Vanguard when I got your call though, Nikisha.”
“What’s Vanguard?” Lizzie asked Prynce, annoyed. “Why are you making words up at a time like this?”
“Relax, it’s the new CoD.”
“What is CoD?” Lizzie’s temper was rising.
“Call of Duty, man!” Prynce said, holding his hands up. “Just chill, Lizzie?”
“What about one of your girls?” Danny asked his half brother in an attempt to defuse the situation. “You could say you were with them.”
“I’m not tryna pull any of them into any of this.” Prynce shook his head. “ ’Cause next thing you know, someone is saying if they can give me an alibi, I can give them a label, and I’m too young for all that.”
“You know I had my son—your nephew—when I was two years older than you,” Nikisha said to her youngest brother.
“And that’s all cool. But I can’t even look after myself, sis,” Prynce told her. “You know that.”
“I mean, followers or googling or not, we did try to bury his body rather than taking him to a hospital,” Lizzie said. “I think he’s gonna be pretty angry at her. Is it safe for Dimple to go alone?”
“She can just tell him she was scared,” Prynce said. “It’s not like that’s a lie.”
“Why don’t we just try and get the money?” Danny said.
“From? Look,” Nikisha said. “Dimple needs to talk to Kyron. And in the event of anything, anything at all, we need to get one story straight. Unified.”
“Can’t we just say he’s lying?” Lizzie asked. “Isn’t it our word against his?”
“It might be his word against ours, but people love a story, don’t they?” Danny told them all. “Especially ’cause Dimple is trying to be famous. It might even help you, Dimple, actually?
“First of all, I don’t want to be famous, second of all, if I did, that is not the route I’d want to take to get me there.” Dimple crossed her arms.
“You can’t be famous with a couple hundred followers,” Prynce informed his siblings.
“Actually, since I uploaded the Kyron video I’ve got seventeen thousand followers on Insta and loads of YouTube subscribers,” Dimple said, correcting him.
“That’s all right but it’s not that many,” Prynce said. “One of my friends does natural hair videos and she’s in the hundreds of thousands. Maybe you could start doing that if we get through all this without anything coming out.”
“Thanks for the suggestion.” Dimple punched Prynce on the arm.
“Can’t we all just say we were in our own houses?” Prynce asked, rubbing his arm.
“We could,” Nikisha said. “But that means Dimple is out on her own. And you’re forgetting about Karen, Prynce.”
“I don’t want you all to be dropped into anything because of me,” Dimple said quietly. “It’s my fault. I should have called the ambulance, or the police, or—”
“—called the who?” Nikisha said, cutting Dimple off. “Have any of you ever had a good experience with the police?”
The half-siblings all shook their heads.
“Obviously goes without saying for you, Danny, after your stretch,” Nikisha said.
“Are you ever going to tell us why?” Lizzie asked.
“Nothing that bad, sis.” Danny returned to his food. “Well, depends what you think is bad.”
Lizzie narrowed her eyes.
“But,” Dimple said. “Maybe I should have just called the police. I could have just explained that he fell.”
“We don’t need to go over this again.” Nikisha held her hands up. “Let’s stop dwelling on it. No wardens of the state are looking after people like us, so we did what we had to do. But the best thing is, he’s fine.”
“Yeah, fine enough to be asking for two hundred and fifty grand.” Danny laughed. “Dimple, you couldn’t find yourself a man who has any shame?”
“Sorry, just to divert us back to the point,” Lizzie said. “Are you saying we need a plan, then, to figure out how we’re going to get a quarter of a million pounds?”
“Let’s have a break and regroup in half an hour,” Nikisha said. “But keep thinking.”
“Has this place got a garden?” Prynce asked Nikisha.
“If you can call it that,” she said. “It’s mostly weeds. Go out there at your peril. Through the kitchen—the key’s in the door.”
Prynce jumped up off the cabinet and pulled a vape out of his pocket.
“What’s in there?” Dimple asked him.
“What d’you think?” Prynce smiled. “Want some?”
“Please.” Dimple put her hands on Prynce’s shoulders and steered him out of the living room.
“Wait, shoes!” Prynce said, bending down on the way and grabbing two pairs of sneakers. “I’m assuming these expensive ones are yours? How much they cost?”
“They were gifted.” Dimple rolled her eyes at herself and pushed Prynce toward the garden.
“You’re strong, you know!” Prynce laughed as he went hurtling down the hallway.
Surrounded by weeds that came up past their thighs, Dimple and Prynce stood close to each other, sharing the one solid block of concrete that had been placed arbitrarily in the garden.
“So you do actually want to be”—Prynce took a drag on his vape, a slim black thing that looked no different in size and shape than a tube of liquid eyeliner—“an influencer?”
Dimple nodded. “I was trying to be for so long.”
“And how was that for you, then?”
Dimple shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Well it wasn’t what it is now,” Dimple told him.
Prynce passed her the vape, then looked up at the sky. His dark skin seemed to absorb the final offering of sun the winter afternoon gave them and hold it in there, glistening.
“How you mean, ‘it wasn’t what it is now’? You must have more to say than that now you’ve got the numbers.”
Dimple took a small pull.
“I thought I’d like it more. All those people talking to me, all the time.”
“But why did you think you’d like it at all? Why did you even want to be that?” Prynce asked. “ ’Cause it’s not like it was an option at your school careers fair.”
“Because I’m a people person,” Dimple told him.
“Are you?” Prynce asked her. He wasn’t so sure. “Don’t you have to be an extrovert to be a people person? You aren’t very outward facing. You see Dad? From what I remember, he’s a people person.”
There was a trace of admiration for their dad in Prynce’s voice that surprised and annoyed Dimple. When had Prynce last seen him?
“It’s not just about that. And the whole thing is harder than you realize, so.”
“Okay, okay,” Prynce said, narrowing his eyes to think about it. “But, like, it’s not that hard to do, is it? Like, all you need to do is talk to a camera and get sent stuff.”
Dimple took a deeper pull as Prynce stepped away from her and waded into the weeds. He bent down and grabbed a handful, pulling them from the earth.
“Yeah. I don’t follow you or anything, ’cause I don’t have social media, obviously. But look at when we helped you with that video—it’s not like what you do is hard.”
“Why don’t you have social media? What’s wrong with it?” Dimple asked Prynce. “You one of those people who think they’re on a higher plane because they don’t have Instagram?”
Prynce carried on through the garden, bending and pulling, bending and pulling. He started to build a pile of weeds by Dimple’s legs.
“Nah. Not that. I just think it’s easy to get sucked in to a fake lifestyle,” he said. “I know you know that none of it’s real, blah blah. But do your thing, init. Let other people validate you.”
“Remind me what your job is?” Dimple asked, folding her arms.
“I’m not making a dig or anything, you know?” Prynce said. “I’m just asking questions. It’s not that deep. You don’t need to be spiteful.”
“Okay, well, I’m asking you a question,” Dimple mimicked Prynce’s voice, so well that he jerked his head back, impressed.
Prynce bent over again. “I dunno what I want to do yet.”
“I see.”
“But, like, last thing I’ll say on this…”
“Mmm?”
“Don’t you feel a bit like you’re feeding into people’s insecurities? Genuine question. And, like… aren’t you insecure yourself? You know what I mean?”
It was Dimple’s turn to jerk her head back, amazed that her brother could ask such pointed and rude questions as if he was asking her what the time was.
“ ’Cause, like, I don’t see how you couldn’t be insecure. If I was, like, putting myself out there all day every day for people to watch me, I’d just be paranoid that people were always watching me. Where does it stop?”
“You’re a Sagittarius, right?” Dimple asked her brother.
“What month is that?” Prynce cocked his head as he asked.
“December.”
“Yeah.” Prynce nodded. “I’m the ninth. But I don’t know about any of that stuff. You’ll have to tell me what a Sagittarius is like.”
“Flighty,” Dimple said. “You like your freedom. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual. And, most annoyingly, you’re blunt. Text me your time of birth later and I’ll tell you your big three.”
“My big…” Prynce was lost. “Anything positive about us?”
“You’re loyal.” Dimple shrugged. “And quite fun. But probably because you’re not dragged down with worries like the rest of us.”
“Ha!” Prynce laughed. “Do you think it helps you to apply these—what can I call them?—‘astrological tropes’ to people because you’re insecure in who you are? Like, projecting an identity onto people of what they are somehow gives you an identity?”
“It’s more that I care about people so much that I want to know as much about them as possible without them having to tell me. And I’m not insecure,” Dimple said to Prynce. “And if you’d watched any of my videos you’d know how much I try to empower myself, and women like me.”
