Chapter 2: What I saw

Welcome to West Oakland, another day in the ghetto.

Jamal and his crew were hangin on the corner when the car went by. Now Jamal was dead -the price of membership. The shooter got away. Cops didn't care much, they made a show, but it was just another dead nigga wrapped in a bag. These things happen.

Cindy was a white girl from Napa, 14 and ready to shine. She was all that, on top of the world; but she wanted to go higher. She wanted to soar. She found her angels in Oakland, waiting on the corner outside homes locked up tight, with the windows barred and the curtains pulled. They took her up to soar in the clouds, and when they let go she smiled in bliss as the asphalt of the concrete jungle came rushing up to embrace her. Just another crack whore, these things happen.

Six kids were playing in the street, running around tossing a ball. They scattered to the sides when the car passed by. Four thugs and a bitch scan the street, guns at the ready. The bitch smiled and waved to kids, they waved back. This was her old block. But wasn't anything to see here; Jamal was already dead. They'd'a known, but the cell phone was broken.

Ness Wilson drove by the laundry mat on the way home. She saw the young girl lying on the bus stop bench, the same one all week. A white girl; couldn't be more than a few years younger than her own daughters. "Someone should do something about that girl..." She almost pulled over, but a john in his beamer beat her to it. The Man -coming back from the City- here for a cheap thrill before going home to the wife and kids out in the suburbs.

A few more blocks and she parked the car. Six kids stopped to wave when she passed by. One them calling out "Aunt Nessy! Momma wanna know if Tisha can sit Wednesday."

"Tell her I'll check, but I think she's free."

Only moment earlier in the house, two girls said it in unison: "You'll never believe what happened today!"

Marya stood naked in front of her mirror, facing her sister Tisha; who'd just burst into the room beating her mother home by mere minutes.

Marya was about to start, but Tisha beat her to it "Check this: Latoya saw a naked super today! Some girl on campus."

Marya got ready to open her mouth, but Tisha was there already "God, what a ho. If I was naked; it'd be so tight!"

"Tisha, sometimes you trippin'." Marya hid her blush well.

"Just think 'bout it. I be flossin' all over, everybody watching; checking it out. Keith'd be so jealous, all the guys wanting to fuck me."

"Girl, what is you sayin'? Guys're already juz mackin. They just wanna fuck anyway..."

"Word..."

"Who wants to fuck who... ?" Nessy asked from the hallway downstairs.

"Mom!" Tisha was mortified, not at her words, but over her privacy.

"Tisha wants to run around naked so she can get all the guys to jump her ass." Marya offered by way of explanation.

Nessy shook her head as she moved up the stairs. She gave her daughters the stare of long ended arguments and a worn down parent before moving on and ending with: "Tisha, you get that easy 'nough with your clothes on..." As she moved into her bedroom she thought 'at least I kept them clean of drugs and gangs.'

She saw the picture by her bedside, a young blond boy in a tux, holding Tisha's hand as she wore her best. A prom picture, the boy was Keith. 'I hope he knows what he's getting into.' His parents must hate her -their best son, lost to a black girl from the ghetto. But she'd met the boy enough times to know they were a strangely fitting couple, even if his parents couldn't see past color.

She called out from her room "Tell Keith before you go running naked down Telegraph; he might want to film it."

She didn't have to see it to feel Tisha roll her eyes as the two girls went back to work gossiping.

Tisha looked over her sister's body. "You beat me anyway, you still naked girl."

"Oh!" Marya rummaged around for nightgown, finally slipping a simple cotton affair over her body.

"So what did Latoya say?"

"Oh! Yeah, it was so tight. She was on fire and she shredded a tree. Latoya said she was Crackin'." Tisha cupped her breasts for emphasis "Looking like a Twirk. Mexican or somth'n. She didn't say shit, just looked scared and flew off."

'Looking like a Twirk... I sure felt ready, dripping with sex.' Just thinking about it made Marya go wet. "She didn't recognize her?"

"No. She didn't look local. Ain't seen no naked chics in Metahuman Journal. Latoya thinks she be new."

Marya wanted to say 'So she didn't look like me?', but thought better of it. Instead she just put her finger to her mouth and thought.

"Whasup?" Tisha asked, seeing the familiar gesture.

"Oh... noth'n. Guess ya got better news than me. All I did was my first day at Berkeley."

"Any fine playas?"

"hmm?"

"In class, how're the guys?" Tisha translated.

"Oh." How to handle this... "I... I didn't really notice."

"You... didn't notice... any of the guys in school... ? Helloooo..." Sometimes Tisha wondered how her older sister ever hit it.

"Well, I guess I was too caught in the scene." That was true in a way.

The two sisters spent the next few hours gossiping about their day, life, boys, and so on. Marya wondered to herself; why didn't she tell her sister what really happened. For some reason it just felt better to hold off for the time being.

"I seen Sparrow again."

"Oh?"

"Keith and I were marinating over pizza, he come running by looking skirby. Word is he moved out of his co-op. Maybe he lost a scrap with Naked Girl. Or maybe she super-fucked his brains out."

Marya hit her sister with a pillow "Really Tisha! It ain't all about beating it."

"It ain't?" Tisha looked genuinely baffled.

"Well at least I know why Keith is always smiling." This got a return strike from another pillow.

A bit later they were back to talking.

"I wonder why he moved out though." Marya pondered.

"Well I got it from Marissa, she in the same co-op." Marissa and Marya were schoolmates, and the only two girls from her class to get into Berkeley. Not good friends by any stretch, but shared circumstance made them civil and somewhat social. Marissa was a white Brazilian, Keith's ex; yet still his friend. Unlike stay at home Marya, she'd chosen if not dorm life, at least the co-op system.

"Maybe he decided to stay at the Guard's facility."

"Yeah but that's in Frisco."

"He can fly can't he?" That was an idea, given how fast she could fly... no more traffic jams. If she didn't mind arriving nude...

There wasn't much else to say, so the two went off to their rooms. Marya going online to see if any of her professors from today had a syllabus available. Tisha tying up Keith's phone, it was a rare day when you encountered supers, rarer when there were two involved, and even rarer still when one was your sister. Not that she knew that.

Marya took her bath before dinner. She needed the relaxation after a day like this one. The warm water covered her like a lover and she fell into a peaceful bliss, looking at her breasts poking out of the bubbles and thinking about her super body. 'Am I really all that when I change?' She looked carefully at the water line around her tits and thought of being super. There was the same blur as before and then everything felt different -more alive, more sensitive. She could feel the warm water on her snatch, aware of it like never before. 'Wow, if it's like this, what would happen in the shower?' Then she looked down to her breasts, they were about an inch further out of the bubbles. "Shit!" Marya called out, then whispered: "Check out my tits... They're huge." She giggled, thinking of the bad dialog in porn flicks. 'Guess this is the part where some playa comes in to hit it with me... ' She made to look around the bathroom. 'nope; guess I'll juz have to do it myself.'

Remembering the last time, she gently cupped her breasts and ran her hands along them "Ooohh..." 'Damn, Tisha's gonna hear me.' She stroked across the surface of her body, coming back to breasts only after feeling the wonders of being so alive. When the fingers of her hands hit her nipples she couldn't hold it back anymore. "Aoooh... !" she squealed out as quietly as she could. In an adjacent room, Tisha paused on the phone for a second thinking 'What was that?' Ness was obliviously busy in the kitchen.