Chapter Six: ❝ rashaad actually had an idea❞

About fifteen minutes away from Annisa's two story, Queen Anne home, going down McAllister Street, making a right on Fortune Avenue, past the Pacific Heights with its stick style homes, and a drive up the steep hills that resembled miniature mountains, was the 19th-century, Italianate row house of Hakeem.

It was a darling shade of banana yellow with its slanted narrow windows, false parapet roofs, and thick columns, a style very common for most San Francisco homes in and near the valley.

The sun nearly slipped away behind the horizon as it layed down beneath the clouds, trails of magenta, honey colored yellows, and soft periwinkles painted the fluffy white balls of cotton in the berry sky. Stars began to dot the atmosphere as if someone were carefully planting them there one by one, while the moon got ready for its nightly shift.

Each house in the city seemed to have their lights on as the darkness approached, including Hakeem's, who finally tore his gaze away from the window and shut its curtains like the end of a play. He turned around to face his disorderly bedroom and the pacing Rashaad, whose fingers were fidgeting with his phone.

"Okay so how about this? We find Manny's address, break into his house, put the wallet on his dresser or somewhere he'll notice it, sneak back out before his parents call the cops, and then we're home free," Rashaad said, his face lit up with impish glee brighter than his phone screen.

Hakeem narrowed his eyes at him and shook his head. "Do you even hear yourself right now? What part of that sentence actually makes sense?!"

"The part where we're home free?" Rashaad asked and shrugged his shoulders. "Look, I'm just trying to keep our options open, all right? I mean this is my fault so—"

"You're damn right this is your fault," Hakeem cut in. "No, you just had to look through his wallet, you just had to say we knew him, you just had to mention baking red velvet cupcakes. Are you missing the part in your brain where your conscience tells you not to do dumb shit?"

"Maybe. My mom did say I was in lots of distress as a baby..." Rashaad replied. "But I am sorry, okay? How many times do you want me to say it?!"

"Until pigs fly," Hakeem said and kicked a pair of wrinkled shirts on the ground off to the side. "But that's probably not gonna get Chase off our asses either. How are we even supposed to get into the clubhouse?!"

Rashaad groaned, but then froze. "What if we just follow Chase there, sneak in when no ones looking and—"

Without warning, a giant baby blue pillow flew across the room and hit Rashaad right in the face and nearly knocked him down to the oatmeal colored carpet. He let out a loud shriek and tripped over his own feet though, falling on his bottom anyways.

After the fiasco that happened at Cup O'Joes, the boys immediately started to panic and quickly left the café, Hakeem kicking Rashaad in the shins and cursing at him the whole car ride to Hakeem's house. Rashaad obviously apologized profusely, but Hakeem wouldn't have it, even refusing to let him change out his now coffee stained T-shirt.

They spent the majority of the evening just walking in circles around Hakeem's bedroom, with Rashaad throwing out random ideas about how to save their asses. Meanwhile, Hakeem combed through each end of his already disorganized room searching for a shovel to bury a body with.

Rashaad threw the jumbo-sized pillow off his face and struggled to get up, using the edge of the bed frame to find his balance. He pushed back his short, dark brown hair out of his face and glared at his best friend.

"That wasn't necessary!"

"You know what else wasn't necessary?! Telling the school's biggest asshole that we're 'best buddies' with the school's scariest asshole!" Hakeem replied, kicking a pair of ripped jeans off his foot.

"Well I already gave you the best ideas I could," Rashaad said as he took a step backward as Hakeem took a step forward. "Maybe we should just accept the fact that we're never going to pull this off and face the consequences of our actions..."

"And have the majority of our classmates laughing at us until graduation?! To be known as the two losers who stole Manny Lockwood's wallet 'cause they wanted to be cool?" Hakeem asked.

Rashaad glanced up at the ceiling for a second before nodding his head. "Yeah, pretty much."

Hakeem rolled his eyes with an aggravated frown, creasing his eyebrows together. "Weren't you the one who said they wanted to 'live on the wild side'? What happened to being a 'little curious'? Or wanting to win over 'the girls of our dreams'?"

"That was before I knew this was going to happen! You can't take everything I say seriously. Not even I can take everything I say seriously," Rashaad said, plopping down on the scattered bed sheets defeated.

"Well unless you know someone with a genie, I suggest you keep brainstorming then, because I am not becoming the laughing stock of the school and getting towel whipped on the same day. Again!"

Rashaad decided to lay down completely on Hakeem's bed, wrapping his chest up in the navy, gray, and white stripes of the bed covers. "Okay, okay. But could I at least get some help here? We are in this together, you know that right?"

Hakeem turned around to face him again, not even sure of what he was looking for at that point. "Oh I've already given my advice, remember? Like when I said you shouldn't be messing with something that doesn't belong to you, or when I signaled for you to stop talking, or when—"

A thunderous banging at the door suddenly cut Hakeem off, each knock getting louder and more aggressive until the high-pitched, girlish voice from behind the door shouted at them.

"Hakeem, are you two done making out now?! 'Cause Dad said dinner will be ready in about seven minutes and if you don't get your ass down here, I get to have your dessert!"

Hakeem rolled his head back and groaned in annoyance, trudging over towards the door and flinging it open so hard, the knob practically hit the wall. He shot daggers down at the short little girl standing in his doorway, her eyes narrowed just like his.

"Did I not say we would be down there three minutes ago Angela? What part of 'we're busy' do you not understand?" Hakeem asked.

Angela, the little girl standing in the doorway, shrugged her tiny shoulders. "Yeah well it's already been three minutes, and you're still not down here, so Dad sent me back up here to remind you fool... if I had it my way, I would let you starve."

"Oh I bet you would," Hakeem said with a fake smile. "Just tell Dad that we'll be down there in two more minutes. The spaghetti is not gonna get up and run away."

"Actually your Dad said it was fettuccine alfredo..." Rashaad spoke up, making Hakeem scowl at him again. "But you know, same difference..."

"Just hurry it up 'cause I want to eat dinner too. And what are you losers doing anyways?" Angela asked as she tried to peer inside her brother's room.

Hakeem shoved her face back with his hand, blocking her view of the room that looked like it got hit by a tornado. "We're plotting world domination, now leave."

"Oooh, I wanna see," Angela said and pried Hakeem's gigantic hand off her small face, dashing right past him, into his room, and sprung onto the bed next to a startled Rashaad.

"Angie, I said get out! You can't be here!" Hakeem exclaimed as his little sister began to make herself cozy underneath the fluffy covers.

"But Dad is gonna send me back up here to get you guys again anyways, so I might as well just wait here with y'all," Angela said as she continued to roll around the sheets and nearly hit Rashaad in the nose with her feet.

Hakeem exhaled slowly and just shut his door halfway behind him. "If you stay here you have to shut your mouth and stop messing up my bed. Rashaad and I have important work to finish."

"Yeah..." Rashaad started, but momentarily forgot what else he was going to say, so he stopped there.

Angela finally popped her head out from underneath the covers and looked back and forth between her big brother and his best friend, her chocolate brown eyes giving them a suspicious look. "Now what are you guys really up too...? You're not making a sex tape are you?!"

"No!" both boys said simultaneously and looked at each other with revulsion.

"Angie we just have a small dilemma at school and we're trying to figure it out," Rashaad said, pulling the bed cover closer to his neck. "How do you even know what that is?"

"The seventh grade teaches you a lot these days," Angela said with a glimmer of humor in her eyes. "Like did you know the impulse to ejaculate comes from the spinal cord—"

"Angie!" Hakeem yelled, motioning to smack her with the pillow he threw at Rashaad earlier.

Just as she was about to duck, Rashaad's phone abruptly dinged, a notification appearing on his home screen from Instagram. He grabbed the device from beneath the twisted sheets and unclocked it, a small grin growing on his face while Angela hid hers from Hakeem.

As Hakeem began to beat his twelve-year-old sister with a pillow for embarrassing him, Rashaad's grin turned into a huge smile as a mini lightbulb appeared above his head. They had spent almost two hours that evening trying to come up with a way to return Manny's wallet to him without getting pounded into the pavement for it, and it was like the angels above finally answered their prayers.

The plan he had in mind wasn't practical, not even in the slightest. It definitely wasn't the safest way either. But it was the only way they would ultimately be able to get the most daunting, popular troublemaker in school to become their closest, maybe even new, best friend.

Rashaad actually had an idea.

"Hey Hakeem, I think I've—"

"AAHHHHHH!" Angela screamed as she leapt off the bed and away from her big brother who continued to chase her with the pillow.

"Hakeem I—"

"AAHHHHHH!"

"'Keem, I think I—"

"AAAHHHHH!"

"Hey there's something I saw on—"

"AAAHHHHH!"

"You have to come see this—"

"AAAHHHHH!"

"I have an idea!" Rashaad yelled over Angela, causing Hakeem to stop in his tracks and his sister to trip and fall over on top of a pile of clothes presumed to be clean.

Hakeem set down his puffy weapon and narrowed his eyes at a cowering Angela. He took a deep breath and said, "I'll deal with you and your mouth later... and what idea?"

Rashaad pushed the heavy covers off his chest and crawled out of the bed with one arm, the other pointing his phone in Hakeem's face. "Look at what Annisa just posted on her spam! Are you reading?!"

"Yeah, if you'd stay still," Hakeem answered as Angela popped her head up from her slumped position on the ground and read some of what Hakeem saw too.

"Is this...?"

"A screenshot from Manny's story? Yes!" Rashaad finished. "Do you see what I see here?!"

Hakeem looked back and forth between Rashaad's brightly lit screen and the excitement in his chestnut brown eyes and raised an eyebrow. "Uh... an Instagram post about someone else's story?"

"Wrong! This is our golden opportunity," Rashaad started. "Think about it. Manny's going to ISS tomorrow. His fight is on Friday..."

Hakeem gradually shook his head from side to side. "I still don't see where you're going with this..."

"Yeah me too," Angela spoke up, but quickly shrunk back down to the floor and crawled for the door after Hakeem gave her a nasty glare.

"How could you not?! It's so simple," Rashaad explained. "Tomorrow before first period starts, we sneak into ISS and find Manny. We'll approach him slowly, you know, try to explain the situation a little bit, give him back his wallet before he tries to kill us, and sneak out of there hopefully by second period."

The door to the room shut again as Angela snuck downstairs to complain to her Dad what Hakeem did, but he never paid any mind to it as a quizzical frown formed upon his face. He tilted his head to the side for a moment before he responded.

"So, let me get this straight," Hakeem said. "You're telling me you want to skip first and possibly second period to purposefully go into ISS, give Manny back his wallet without him strangling us to death, and sneak back out like it's nothing?!"

Rashaad processed his question before he answered. "Yup."

"Uh, and what makes you think that could even work?! What about the Chase situation? How are we going to explain to Manny that we need him to be our fake friend for however long so that Chase doesn't end kicking our asses for thinking we stole his best friends stuff?! How do you even know Manny's going to agree to even lie to his friend in the first place about all of this?!"

"Would you relax? Guys like him can make deals and compromises and whatnot," Rashaad said as he stood upright to stretch his legs and shook his friend's shoulders. "It's a win-win situation. If we do something for him, he'll do something for us."

"So... blackmailing?"

"Well not exactly blackmailing, more like politely asking another benefit from him in return for something of his that he holds near and dear."

Hakeem blinked rapidly. "That's literally the definition of blackmail."

"Damn, well when you put it like that it sounds like blackmail," Rashaad said with a slight frown. "But you're missing the point. This isn't about blackmailing the guy, I'm just as scared of him as you are, trust me. This is about preserving the little reputable social standing we have in that school. And maybe, just maybe, using this as an opportunity to prove Chase and the rest of those morons wrong. Don't you get it 'Keem. If we're able to pull Manny Lockwood on our side as his friends, think about his other friends that we could meet..."

Hakeem lifted both his eyebrows to his hairline as he looked down at Rashaad's phone. "Annisa and O'Dallas... if we become friends with him, we automatically get to meet his other circle of friends... holy shit, I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but this could work... "

Rashaad clapped his hands together and jumped with elation, his smile twinkling brighter than the stars outside. "Yes! I knew—"

"But wait," Hakeem interrupted, making Rashaad's face dim. "How are we supposed to sneak into ISS? What do we do if Manny says no? What do we do afterwards if he says yes—"

"Will you quit it with the questions?! Just leave everything to me," Rashaad said and began searching for his shoes around the room.

"You know that's not very reassuring..."

"Hakeem!"

"All right, sorry, sorry. But where are you going? Didn't you want to stay for dinner?" Hakeem said as he watched Rashaad slip on the right side of his black Converse.

"There's no time to waste! I've already got so much to do in so little time," Rashaad huffed as he grabbed the left side of his Converse by the door. "I'll text you everything in the morning."

"But—"

"Hakeem! Rashaad! Get your asses down here, the fettuccine is ready!" Angela begrudgingly yelled from downstairs.

The scent of Italian pasta wafted through the air and crept into the hallways of the bedrooms, causing Rashaad to pause from tying his shoes while Hakeem smiled at him.

"You know what, who am I kidding? Let's go eat some pasta first, and then we'll continue."

"Sounds like the best plan I've heard all day."

I just want to take this moment real quick and say that this chapter is truly a breakthrough for me, because in all my four years of writing on Wattpad, this is the first time I've ever written a full length novel passed the fifth chapter. So I really just wanted to revel in this and dedicate this one to myself for staying motivated.

I also wanted to say thank y'all so much for over 530 reads! I know, that's prolly not a lot, but for a book that's been out for almost a month, I'd say this is pretty amazing.

Nice Guys, so far, has been taking home all the W's too! The book got second place in The Tigress Teen Fiction Awards and is now featured on Wattpad's StoriesUndiscovered profile in their Teenage Dreams reading list! None of this would have been possible without y'all's support and I appreciate each and every one of you.

Have fun reading 'cause the next chapter is a doozy.

~ Robin ~