Page 5 of Juliet's Echo

Truth be told, if it wasn’t for her, I probably would’ve dropped out. My parents were so consumed with their celebrity lives that they wouldn’t have known until they showed up expecting tosee me walk across a stage at graduation. Simone was the only person who ever slowed me down enough to think about what kind of man I wanted to be, not just the reputation I carried.

“Echo Everette, I have never come across someone who could ace a test without studying, just finish high school and don’t piss me off,” she would fuss.

That girl wanted my dreams and my nightmares. The good parts of me and the ugly ones too. She listened like what I had to say mattered, even while she was trying to survive her own struggles. Normally females I encountered admired me because of my status and who they’d become after dealing with a nigga. Simone was the only one who simply chose me.

There was no way I could treat her like I did any other female and use her for a nut. She was my peace.

Now, don’t get me wrong—my initial plan was to fuck and add her to the long list of girls who had the opportunity to experience the best time of their lives. But Simone deserved better than that.

Sloane, of course, didn’t like our friendship and would give her a hard time about it. He’d do dumb shit like cut her cell phone off, which I immediately added to my plan, or purposely make her miss the last bus home. I handled that too, either by giving her a ride or letting her stay in one of the guest rooms. The latter slowly became her normal routine so she wouldn’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn just to commute back for school.

Eventually my parents contacted hers, and the Hills found comfort in knowing their only child was now experiencing a life they couldn’t always provide. Too prideful to accept direct help from my parents, the Hills allowed Simone to come and go with the Everettes as she pleased.

And truth be told, after a while she stopped feeling like a guest in our house.

She felt like family.

One evening, she texted me that she was outside, and I knew it had to be an emergency because she had a key to the house. When I went to open the door for her, her lip was busted, her shirt ripped and covered in blood.

Without a word, I took Simone in the house for my mother to care for her, then found that coward, Sloane, and beat his ass within an inch of his life. Through negotiations between Sloane’s parents and mine, they agreed that Sloane would leave Simone alone and that no charges would be pressed against anyone.

My mother later told me that Simone informed her she was pregnant, and the baby wasn’t Sloane’s. She didn’t tell Sloane about her pregnancy but instead had gone to officially break up with him. He became angry and lost control. Not having much to call her own and no family support, she feared the unknown — becoming a mother. Of course, I assured her she had nothing to worry about and that there was no way my family and I would turn our backs on her.

“Echo!” my father called again. “I know that look, son, and the answer is no.”

Anger and rage flooded my veins. If my father thought I was going to let this shit slide, he had another thing coming. Batman couldn’t keep me off this nigga Sloane. He was dead on sight, and everyone knew I had the pull to make it happen. Fuck his family’s political ties — this baby now had to grow up without her mother.

“He killed my best friend. Baby girl has no mother,” I managed to get out through my teeth. Saying out loud that my best friend had been murdered sent a rush of tears out of my eyes.

“She has a mother, Echo. I’m right here,” my mother said.

Although she meant no harm, my mother’s words had me looking at her like she was the enemy. That’s the thing about rich motherfuckers—money buys comfort so easily that nobody takes the time to sit with real emotion, let alone someone else’spain. Everything gets smoothed over, replaced, wrapped up in something prettier so the mess doesn’t ruin the outfit.

And that’s exactly what they were doing to Simone.

Carelessly, my mother and Dr. Wilkinson took it upon themselves to start replacing her before her body went cold. The doctor labeling Simone as the baby’s “birth mother,” like she was nothing more than a medical footnote. And my mother stepping forward to claim the position of her now “only mother.”

Like Simone was just some temporary vessel.

Like the girl who fought her way into this hospital, who carried that baby for thirty-eight weeks, who bled and suffered to bring her here… was suddenly just a detail we could erase.

That shit didn’t sit right with me at all.

“You are not her fucking mother!” I screamed at my mother, instantly regretting it when I saw the hurt in her eyes.

“Aye, now hold on. I know you’re hurting, son, but you will watch how you speak to my wife,” my father interjected. “Now we all agreed for your mother and me to raise this baby as ours, so Simone can live a normal life, so what is the issue?”

“The issue?” I questioned, slamming my fist into my palm. “The issue is the baby was still supposed to know Simone as her mother. The issue is Simone is fucking dead and now can never witness her daughter live. The issue is that she never even got to hold her. The issue is this nigga Sloane is still fucking breathing. Seems like we got a lot of fucking issues here, Pop. Pick one.”

“Echo, just calm—” My mother’s sentence was cut short by a knock at the door.

I quickly rushed to the sink to wash my face. If it were my brothers returning, I didn’t want them to see me like this. Just as I patted my face dry, I heard a woman’s voice.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Joan Ross, and I am the pediatrician on staff here today. I’d like to go over baby—”

“Juliet. Her name is Juliet,” I spoke up. “It was her mother’s favorite story.”

“That is beautiful,” Dr. Ross replied. “Well, I would like to go over some tests we ran on Juliet, if that is okay?”