Her name was Oasis Kai Evans, and she was sick of being the oddball in life. She was that black girl who was always stuck in between. Oasis is always underappreciated and taken for granted. At school in the morning, nobody would want to talk to her...
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September 19, 2016 | Monday
In a short span of 96 hours, (four days) things got much worse for Medina. Though it wasn't planned for me to run into her at Target while I was trying to find a pair of slippers, I ran into her going down the escalator. She had a swollen eye and bruises up and down her arms and neck. If I wasn't mistaken, the bruises on her neck looked more like hickeys to me.
"What happened this time? Who did this to you?"
"No one. I-I fell off of my b-bike and got these s-scratches on the way here." It wasn't rocket science, she was blatantly lying.
"So you fell that hard onto the ground?"
"Uh... Yeah!"
"There's no need to lie to me, I'm no fool. He touched you didn't he?"
"Brad? No! H-He u-uh wasn't even around a-at-"
"You know, everyone has a tell for when they're lying. Yours is stuttering and blinking excessively, Medina. You're better off telling me the truth."
Here's the truth: Medina's parents died years ago in an automobile accident, so for a short time she was in a foster home. Later on, Brad came about and adopted her a few years back. At first he was a nice guy but then he snapped and got abusive. She put up with him because anything, in her mind, was worth not having to go back to a foster home. Brad had been sexually abusing this little girl as well as beating her up when he felt like it.
I used to believe that nobody had problems worse than mine, but I was very wrong. Sure I had a gang on my tail, but I was glad not to have someone constantly abusing me. Knowing myself, I wouldn't have the ability to handle it. Medina was strong, but she needed a way out. Until I could help her find one, I would try my best to protect her.
"For the rest of the week, you can stay with me. I can drive you to school and pick you up. Deal?" I suggested.
"Deal," she said. We shook on it.
"So, why are you here at a Target? Are you shopping?"
She shook her head no. "A friend of mine said he would meet me here. So I'm waiting for him."
"I guess we're waiting together."
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, one whole hour. It's about time.
The friend who she had been waiting for this entire hour, was nobody other than the last person in the universe I expected. Jesus Christ or Beyoncé could have walked through those automatic doors and surprised me less. OCEAN. OCEAN EVANS. My older brother who was dead, six feet under dead to be exact. Was this man a lookalike? If this was real, Tupac Amaru Shakur is more than likely living in Cuba. My bottom lip practically collapsed on the white floor and then went back to my mouth. I pinched myself twice to make sure that I wasn't dreaming, and I was wide awake.
