Mari had her face pressing up against the hoodie of Akilah’s grey Tupac sweatshirt as they snuggled together inside their college dorm room. She was half asleep when she started to feel the movement of her girlfriend sitting up and leaving the bed that was closest to the bathroom.
“Whitney, I can’t let you go out there,” she heard Akilah tell her new striped kitten she found in a soaked cardboard box by the dumpster behind the movie theater last week that was mewling and pawing the door that led out to the hallway.
“I’ll get in trouble if anybody sees you.”
“She probably hates it here, Keelah,” Mari grumbles, tossing her head to lay flat on her back.
“Pets aren’t allowed to go to college.”
Akilah scooped up the animal she named after singer Whitney Houston and cupped her fuzzy head. She baby whispered to the cat before pecking her face; making her eyes slant shut.
“I’ll sneak over to the Mess Hall and grab more milk cartons,” she says.
“You’re totally buggin’,” Mari declares.
She now watches Akilah slip Whitney inside the large front pocket of her sweatshirt before heading out.
Akilah had been called worse things growing up. Mari’s lack of support and confidence didn’t prevent her from going to find some food for the mewling kitty.
Her former Yellowjacket teammate smiled and greeted Akilah on her way towards the cafeteria building.
Laura Lee.
Akilah was not close to her as she was to Mari.
Whitney kept wriggling her head from one side of the sweatshirt pocket mewling away.
“What is that? A chipmunk?” Laura Lee spotted the pet immediately. When she realized it was a kitten, she gushed from the overload cuteness.
“I found her last week in the dumpster,” Akilah explains.
“So adorable!” Laura Lee reaches her hand out to touch the cat, causing Akilah to swerve away protectively.
“I have to get Whitney some food now. You better not tell a soul about her…”
Laura Lee crosses her heart with a finger.
“I want Whitney to stay. God's honest truth.”
Mari had been listening to Destiny’s Child on stereo by the time Akilah came back with four 2% milk cartons, a Granny Smith apple, and a jar of smooth Skippy peanut butter.
“That’s all you got? That won’t be enough!” Mari snorts.
“Obviously,” Akilah ends the discussion with a scowl. She quickly drops the items on the second bed that’s near the window and pulls Whitney out of her sweatshirt front pocket.
Mari tilts her head back; grinning at the hickey on the side of her neck in front of her beauty mirror on her nightstand.
“You marked me dirty, Akilah! There's a little mole!”
“Don’t pop it,” Akilah giggles. “It’s not a pimple!”