Cold Blooded

16. 😓

Nobody pov

I fed the Wendy's to my dog. I hate Wendy's.

Flashback still on

Ayleo is now 5 years old, and has been brung back to the Bowles family. They had another baby secretly named Mateo who was born 3 years after Ayleo, and Mateo is now 2 and still being taken care of by Lassie. Ayleo doesn't even know that his parents see him every day, and he does as well. He is just known as a young slave, that happened to be lighter skinned than the rest.

Ashanti now 20 years old, shoveled the dirt next to Ayleo who was quietly planting corn, digging little holes with his toe.

"Hi Leonard." She smiled.

He looked up. "Why do they call me that? I'm Ayleo. Every time I say that, I get beat with the whip. The only person who calls me by my real name is Mrs. Bowles, and massa Cleo. Did you know we all have the same last name? It's cool. Mr. Bowles didn't care, but was suspicious. Ion know why though, I never seen them in my life." He laughed.

She smiled. "On inside you Ayleo, but outside, to them, you Leonard. Understand?"

Ayleo looked down and nodded.

Cleo walked by, and stopped at Ayleo. He patted his back. "He Ayleo."

Ayleo looked and waved. "Hi massa Cleo."

"Want juice? I brought some for you."

Ayleo nodded, and wiped his sweat off his forehead with the sun beaming down at him.

Cleo gave Ayleo a glass jar, and Ayleo drank the cold homemade lemonade. He finished the cup, and went back to planting the corn seeds.

"Thank you sir." Ayleo smiled.

Cleo nodded. "You're welcome."

He looked at Ashanti who was shoveling, and looking at him with a smile. He smiled at her and walked away.

Ashanti taught Ayleo how to cook berries, and make them into a nice sugary paste, and to be stored in freezing bins as refreshments for the Bowles.

Others helped raise Ayleo to be strong, and mature. Time went by, and Mateo grew up also being taken in and put as a slave. The boys grew up together being bestfriends, finding out that they were brothers at Ayleo being 13, and Mateo 10 causing them to be happier than ever before. They however still didn't know about their parents.

It is now dark, hearing crickets, owles, and stars paint the sky. Ashanti and Amari gathered berries, and meat. Cleo got his father to make Ashanti work in the kitchen again, since on the rice fields, it is often nesr water, and crockadiles, and venomous water snakes roam killing a slave almost everyday of drowning, bait, or being bitten. Ashanti is relieved being back in the kitchen with her now best friend.

Mateo and Ayleo, now the age of 15 and 12, walk into the cabin that they share with Ashanti. Ashanti does it secretly, and lies to the boys saying that they were forced.

Ashanti taught Ayleo to braid, so he often braids his hair in cornrows, or Mateo's.

Ayleo put his own hair in cornrows, but Mateo used cloth to put his Afro in a bun to keep his hair away from his face.

"Maggie." Mateo called softly while drawing pictures on the dirt floor.

Ashanti who was half sleep, sat up. "Yes Mateo?"