章 1: Amani
"Amani!"
Amani heard Becca her best friend shout her name from the stair landing that separated their two floors from each other. Amani who was lying on her bed with a plate of chocolate chip cookies placed on her lap, ignored the person calling her and happily munched away on her cookies.
She already have her bedroom door wide open so she could listen to everything Becca says and also hear whenever she grew tired of waiting and decided to come up the stairs to find her.
"Amani... How much longer!?" Becca called again with a pleading tone in her voice this time but Amani just giggled to herself
Five more minutes..." She shouted back and giggled again.
"You said five more minutes, five minutes ago, which was five minutes before the last five minutes I gave you. What exactly are you still doing? Do you need help with anything or are you trying to get back at me for making you miss your date with that asshole?
Amani rolled her eyes at her friend and tried to make sense out of the string of five minutes words that her friend just uttered. She gave up when she couldn't and said without making her voice loud enough...
"Well he might be an asshole to you but I liked him!" After which she shouted back to Becca from the comfort of her bed.
"No, of course not. Don't be silly! Even though Becca was right about Amani getting back at her. Amani has seen a perfect opportunity to take her revenge on Becca and she wasn't about to let that opportunity pass her by.
"What exactly have you been doing then?..." Becca demanded
"Welllll I just came out of the shower... I had to wash my hair and make sure my legs are properly waxed just like you thought me and me..."
"Okay, okay, okay... No more explanations! Just get on with it will ya..." Becca shouted, cutting Amani off mid-sentence. "And it had better not be more than five minutes this time otherwise..." Becca said finally and stomped down the stairs towards her own room leaving the rest of her threat hanging for Amani to find out what her punishment would be if she dare delay her any further.
"Yeah right!" Amani said, picked up the glass of milk on the small table beside her bed, and drank leisurely while flipping through her phone to see if there's a scoop about any juicy story she could follow up on. A particular one that interested her the most, where a popular but now washed-out model accused her ex-billionaire boyfriend of rape on Twitter. She read through the gist for a while and decided against it before moving on to another news prospect.
Amani and Becca have been friends ever since they were in diapers. They both came from New Jersey. Not the city, but a small town of not more than three thousand five hundred people.
Ever since the two friends left home for college in California, Becca who was just a year older than Amani assumed the position of the big sister to keep her fiery friend who has the temper to match her red hair out of trouble.
A few weeks to the end of their final exams, they both answered an advert posted on their department's notice board for the position of a newspaper journalist. The job promised not only good pay but also free accommodation.
It was later that they found out that the job was a freelance journalist where they only get paid according to the juicy news they were able to lay their hands on, and the accommodation promised was an old two-story building that needed an entire house re-plumb and some fresh coats of paint.
Los Angeles was not a cheap city to live in which made the two friends to considered themselves lucky even with the dilapidated condition of the house they just moved into. At least they have a roof over their heads, otherwise, it's back to Cape May, the small town where they came from.
"Five minutes later, Amani was already lolling on her bed, half-asleep with her phone almost falling off from her flaccid fingers when Becca's voice from the stair landing startled her awake.
"Amaniiiiii!" Becca screamed this time, earning herself some cuss words from some of the borders who claimed to have worked all night and needed their sleep.
"Five more minutes Bec!... I promised this time!... Cross my heart and..." She didn't get to finish the popular saying they used when they were kids to emphasize the truthfulness and sincerity of their words when she heard Becca running up the stairs
"Oh, you're so gonna die alright! I'm going to tickle you to an inch of your life I promise." Becca threatened while running up the stairs. She decided on what Amani's punishment would be because she knew her friend disliked being tickled. Hearing this, Amani quickly rushed into her bathroom room and lock the door behind her.
When Becca entered Amani's room and saw there was no dress laid on the bed that indicated her friend wanted to go out, she knew Amani had just taken her revenge.
'How could she be so hard-hearted!?' Becca wondered and plopped on Amani's bed.
"Common Ama, I thought I already apologized to you..." Becca said feeling a little down about what Amani did
"Yeah, you did apologize, but you refused to promise me you will stop meddling... I'm not your child Becca stop treating me like I am!" Amani said seriously
"Yeah you're not my child but you are the infamous trouble magnet and you are rebellious by nature. How many times have I actually saved your skinny ass from your mouth that tends to run away from you?... And the fiery temper that would have gotten you in jail so many times if I was not there to control the situation?"
There was a brief pause after what Becca said. Amani had no words to retort back when she realized that her friend was right. Becca has actually saved her from herself so many times that Amani has lost count of. The bathroom door slowly creaked opened on its old hinges and Amani walked out of the bathroom looking guilty
"I'm sorry I made you miss your date even though I knew for a fact that he's an irresponsible asshole who was up to no good with you... And I promise I won't ever meddle again."
Amani moved closer to the bed and sat down beside her friend. "Thank you for having my back all these years sis... I love you!" She said and hugged Becca around the waist closely to herself
"Love you too... Sis" Becca replied with a smile, resting her head on Amani's head that was resting on her shoulder.
'Ughh... you're so lucky!" Becca suddenly grumbled, breaking the silence after some seconds has passed between them. She looked towards the rest of the chocolate chip cookies left on Amani's nightstand with longing.
"What?... Why did you say that?" Amani asked, breaking away from their hug and looking into her friend's eyes.
"How come you got to eat whatever you want and not get fat while I've always counted calories all my life so I could keep my figure? God, I'm jealous of you!" Becca said
"Yeah right!.." Amani replied and they both laughed
Just then, Amani's phone rang and their smile slowly died down. She reached for the phone on the table where she kept it, check the caller ID, and groaned loudly when she saw the caller was her editor, Percy.
She kept the phone back on the table where she picked it from and laid back on her bed feeling unconcerned
"Well aren't gonna pick it? Becca asked, wondering why her friend choose to lay back on her bed instead of answering her editor's call.
'No, I won't! Why don't you just pick it and tell him... Uhmmm... tell him I'm dead or something, I don't give a shit!"
"It might be a story, Amani..."
"Of course it's a story. The asshole hates me that's why he's always giving me shitty stories that nobody would take. The last time he asked me to report about some old people running around in their rockers and the one before that was even shittier.
It's always gonna be stories that nobody cares about for me and even when I did my job perfectly, the bastard would still find something to edit till the whole story is reduced to about three paragraphs that would end up being buried so deep in the paper where nobody would ever find it and know about my name" Amani said sadly
"I understand dear but look on the bright side... At least you still get paid for them and you still have a roof over your head. Can you not manage it until a better offer comes along." Becca pleaded, picked up Amani's phone, and handed it over to her. The phone stopped ringing then but started over almost immediately.
"What do you want Percy?" Amani said as soon as she answered the call
"Get your shit down here right now! The big boss wants to see you!... You have just fifteen minutes and if you delay, then kiss your job goodbye! "
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