Ashley ✓

Eighteen | Xavier

SOTC: Cheap Thrills by Sia (ft. Kendrick Lamar)

Thank you for 1k in 1 1/2 months.

"Do you want us to take—" Sienna's sentence ceased as she popped her head through the opened window, looking at the passenger's side. "Wait, Ashley?" she said, eyebrows raised to the ozone layer.

"Hi," I responded almost sheepishly.

Fedor's fuzzy pale hair brushed back by a red backwards hat popped through the other window with the rest of his head. "Oh! Privyet, Ashley!" he exclaimed.

I scratched the back of my head.

"Just hop in the whip, you weird motherfuckers," Mustafa sighed.

After school got out, Mustafa had driven us back to the school to pick up Sienna and Fedor. Apparently every Friday the three of them gathered in his car to go to their favorite basketball court near the Block.

With reluctant motions, Sienna and Fedor got into the backseat and Mustafa began driving.

"So, uh, bro..." Fedor started with a cracking voice, exchanging a look containing squinted eyes with Sienna.

Sienna started a, "I mean when did you two..."

I pressed my lips together.

Mustafa's eyes peered up to the back mirror so he could see them in the back. "You mean when I stopped hating Ashley over here?" He shrugged nonchalantly and looked at me as he went, "We called a truce."

Sienna's brow furrowed. "A truce. Y'all called a truce?"

"Huh?" Fedor gasped, his brown eyes wide. "Bro, this is the first time you've acknowledged her name! What true could you call that made well.. this!"

"I threw a pencil at his eyeball," I blurted out.

I watched Sienna's jaw drop through the upper mirror.

"YOU THREW A PENCIL AT HIS EYEBALL?" Fedor yelled.

Mustafa gestured to his left eye. "She hit it in the bullseye, too."

Sienna slapped her thighs. "WAIT, FOR REAL?"

"And you didn't kill her?" Fedor whispered.

Please don't say we talked things out. "Nah bro. Ashley and I talked things out like responsible people," Mustafa stated, his eyes focused on the road.

"What?" Sienna breathed out.

"About how his vulgar language and death glares prompted me to act out in rage with a stick of lead," I quickly followed afterward, daring to look at my foster sister and brother at the corner of my eye. We definitely didn't discuss my trauma dumping, too...

"So I apologized for being a dick and she apologized for throwing a pencil at me," Mustafa concluded.

"Damn, that's beautiful. Like lowkey beautiful." Fedor placed a hand over his heart, his voice wielding a mass lighter than a feather. "I think I might cry."

Sienna scoffed. "Bro, you ain't gonna cry."

"No really!" he exclaimed at Sienna. "He told me he wanted to throw my own foster sister off the Golden Gate Bridge and into a shark tank on her period, and now they've bonded!"

"You wanted to throw me off a bridge and into a shark tank on my period?" I asked Mustafa.

"Something like that," Mustafa said, the edges of his lips tugging up.

Sienna leaned into my seat. "I'm still baffled you threw something at someone, especially the most popular guy in our freaking high school. I never knew you were capable of such evil," she giggled at me.

I laughed lightly, an underlying dryness searing my pitches.

If only you knew...

"Aight, we be here," Mustafa suddenly announced, parking the car.

The four of us got out of it, the afternoon Californian sun beating down on us as we walked a short distance to a graffitied blacktop with a basketball hoop whose net donned gaps that shouldn't have been there.

"So who's making the first sho—" Sienna began.

"If I make this shot, Francesca finna think I'm hotter than the blacktop!" Fedor suddenly shouts, and I notice the basketball in his hand before he leaped and launched it straight for the hoop.

Sienna scuffed the blacktop with her flip flop. "Ah shit, I forgot to mention you her today."

"AGAIN?" her brother shrieked shriller than a seal as the basketball smacked against the rim with a throbbing BANG! Before it flew to the left of the court.

"Yeah, I forgot again cause I had to cram for that Bio test."

Fedor whined out.

Oh yeah, Francesca was totally obsessed with Fedor!

SWOOSH!

My thought vanished as I watched Mustafa, who utilized just the flick of the wrist to launch the basketball into the air. The basketball's final destination became the net, which it circled through before it bounced onto the blacktop again.

"Okay... woah," I gasped.

Mustafa visibly licked a canine. "Uh huh, I still got it," he said. "That was clean as fuck."

"Do you play basketball often?"

He smiled. "You talking to a former basketball team captain."

My eyes widened. "You were team captain?"

"Until he quit!" Sienna scoffed, scuffing her flip flop against the blacktop. "Mustafa, I get that you suddenly hate everybody at West or whatever, but what the hell? You could've had a damn scholarship."

A steady exhale went through his nostrils. "Yeah, I could've," he muttered.

She crossed her arms. "So why?"

"Uhm—" he began.

Fedor looked up from his phone. "Yo, what time should Xavier go to be—"

Mustafa shot him a look as Fedor ceased his sentence.

Sienna squinted. "Who's Xavier?"

"It's.. uhm—" Fedor gasped out.

"A badass drug dealer," Mustafa answered without skipping a beat, circulating the ball in his hand.

My stomach lurched, my consciousness flashing the third time gunshots plagued the outside at night before me. There had been a drug dealer screaming outside in the midst of the shots ripping through the noir atmosphere. Or at least what I thought was one; he kept screaming about cocaine.

Sienna squinted. "Since when did y'all take drugs?"

"Since when did you become so nosey?" Mustafa retorted, causing Sienna to scoff and Fedor to cultivate a chuckle riddled with voice cracks.

Then the four of us just continued playing basketball. Sienna had won a game of Horse, and Fedor, despite his tragic first shot, ended up making numerous slam dunks. I even made a few good shots. Mustafa, of course, had clutched his status of superiority in the court, never missing once.

But he had remained eerily quiet the rest of the time.

Who's this Xavier person, you think?

Next Chapter Teaser:
The continuation of Ashley's villain backstory.