Puff Puff Twist

Chapter 1: “Light That Shit”

The blunt was fat, like *ignorant* fat—two grams easy, rolled so perfect it looked store-bought, but that’s how Rissa always did it. She called it her “therapeutic art.” I called it her only damn skill, but whatever. We were five hits deep in my living room, incense burning like somebody summoned the ancestors, and somebody—probably me—had just dropped Hot Cheeto crumbs on the carpet.

“Nova, your carpet nasty as hell,” Toni said, her lip curled up like the judgmental church auntie she was trying to escape by being here.

“You still sittin’ on it though,” I shot back, coughing through my words. “Let me live.”

She rolled her eyes but stayed posted on my floor with that big-ass wine glass in her hand like she was above us. Toni always acted like she wasn’t one of *us*—like she just visited the hood for seasoning and selfies. Still, she came every Friday, like clockwork. Same chair. Same side-eye. Same five sips of wine and refusal to smoke but loved the damn smell.

Rissa took another long drag and passed it to Imani, who had been scrolling on her phone the whole time. Imani was quiet tonight. Too quiet. Which meant she was either plotting on a man or dodging a text from one. Her boutique had blown up on IG last month after Cardi reposted her skirt, and she’d been on “bad bitch autopilot” ever since.

“Y’all ever think we lowkey cursed?” Rissa asked, exhaling slow like she was about to drop some deep high-ass wisdom. “Like, every time we get close to being chill… some wild sh\*t happens.”

“Ain’t no ‘we,’” Imani said, still scrolling. “You’re the one who let your ex crash on your couch and then caught him stealing your lashes.”

“And your Wi-Fi code,” I added.

Rissa laughed but her eyes flicked to the side. She knew we weren’t joking.

“That’s why I sage now,” Toni muttered, sipping her wine like she wasn’t sipping it. “Y’all play too much.”

I leaned back into my couch, letting the smoke settle in my lungs and the bass from the Spotify playlist melt into my spine. There was something electric in the air that night—not in a good way either. Like static before lightning. Or when you can feel someone watching you but there’s no one there. We’d smoked together hundreds of times, but that night felt… *off*.

That’s when Toni stood up.

“I’m not doing this,” she said, loud, slicing through the vibe like scissors on silk.

“Doing *what*?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. Just stared down at us like she was above it all, again. Like she didn’t come here every Friday, sipping \$8 wine in a thrifted Target hoodie, talking mad sh\*t about her coworkers.

“I know one of y’all ain’t who y’all say you are,” she said finally, voice low and deliberate. “And I’m not gonna be the one to clean up the mess.”

Dead silence. Even the music seemed to cut out like the speaker felt the tension.

“The hell does that mean?” Rissa said, sitting up.

Imani looked up from her phone, finally. Her face didn’t change, but I saw something flicker behind her lashes. Guilt? Annoyance? Hunger? Hell if I knew.

Toni grabbed her purse and slipped on her slides like she had just dropped a mic. “Y’all better pray I don’t say nothing. ’Cause if I do, one of y’all is going *down*.”

And then she left.

No goodbye, no “text me when you get home,” just the sound of my door clicking shut behind her. I stared at the door for a good thirty seconds, waiting for her to come back in, laughing, like it was a joke.

She didn’t.

Rissa blinked. “What the fuck just happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I meant it.

Imani stood up slowly, brushing invisible lint off her leggings. “Y’all don’t hear nothing from me if the cops start sniffing around. I don’t do jail.”

Then *she* left.

Rissa looked at me, eyes wide.

“Nova… did we do something?”

I laughed, short and nervous. “Girl, I can’t even remember what I had for lunch. I’m too high for this.”

But my gut? It wasn’t high. It was sober. Stone cold. And it whispered:

Something bad just started.

Chapter 2: “She Knows”

By the time I lit another blunt the next afternoon, my phone had seventeen missed calls—three from Toni, one from my landlord, and the rest from a number I didn’t recognize. That last part was a red flag. Nobody blows up your phone from a random number unless they’re a debt collector or bringing chaos. I answered on the eighteenth ring.

“Nova James?” a voice asked. Female. Sharp.

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Detective DeWitt. We need to speak to you about an incident involving Toni Bradley. Are you available for questioning?”

The blunt paused mid-air. “Say what now?”

“She named you in a statement.”

“A *what?*”

“We’ll explain when you come down to the precinct.”

Click.

I just sat there, blinking at my phone like it betrayed me. Rissa popped in, fresh from Target, holding a bag of off-brand oat milk and toilet paper.

“Why you look like somebody slapped you with a Bible?” she asked.

“Toni snitched.”

“On *what*?”

“I don’t even know!” I waved the phone around. “Something about an incident. Named me in a statement. Now some Detective DeWitt wants to talk to me.”

Rissa dropped the oat milk.

Chapter 3: “Too High for Handcuffs”

We rolled up before the precinct. Dumb, I know. But I needed to level out. My nerves were shot, and my armpits were slick with stress sweat. Rissa kept saying, “We got this, sis,” but the way her lip was twitching told a different story.

Detective DeWitt was tall, like volleyball-team tall, with eyebrows that looked like they had a vengeance. Her partner, some sleepy-eyed man named Ruiz, looked like he hadn’t clocked into reality since the Obama administration.

“You know why you’re here?” DeWitt asked.

“No.”

She slid a photo across the table. My heart hiccuped.

Toni. In a hospital bed.

“She’s not dead,” Ruiz said casually, like that made this normal. “But someone ran her off the road last night. Says it wasn’t an accident.”

“And you think *I*—”

“She said you threatened her,” DeWitt cut in.

I leaned back, blinking. “I threaten people all the time. Doesn’t mean I actually *do* anything.”

Rissa facepalmed in the corner.

Chapter 4: “No Alibi, Just Vibes”

I got out after six hours and three Styrofoam cups of government coffee. No charges. Yet. Apparently, Toni “wasn’t ready” to make a full statement. Probably because she knew damn well I hadn’t done a thing.

Back at my place, the girls pulled up like we were in a damn Netflix series. Imani had her laptop. Rissa had her tarot cards. I had nothing but nerves and a half-eaten weed brownie.

“We need to figure out what the *hell* is going on,” Imani said.

Rissa laid the cards down. “Somebody’s hiding something.”

“No shit,” I said.

The next card she flipped was the Tower.

Great. Chaos. Disaster. Sudden revelations.

“Cool cool cool,” I muttered. “Love that journey for us.”

Chapter 5: “Trap House Truths”

The truth came wrapped in bad decisions and a dingy address. We followed a sketchy tip from one of Imani’s exes and wound up in the back of a trap house run by a woman named Peaches, who wore mink lashes longer than my fingers and a grill that spelled out “NOPE.”

“You Nova?” she asked.

“Depends who’s asking.”

“You’re the one Toni tried to set up.”

My stomach did a backflip. “Excuse me?”

“She thought you were sleeping with her man. Said she’d make you pay. But then she crashed *herself* trying to chase him down.”

Imani blinked. “She did all this… over a man?”

Peaches shrugged. “Girl, men been causing mayhem since Genesis.”

We left the trap house with more questions than answers, but one thing was clear:

Toni had started something. And it wasn’t over.

Chapter 6: “Motel Mayhem”

The next clue came wrapped in crusty motel sheets and a Domino’s receipt. We tracked Toni’s mystery man to a run-down spot off I-85, where the ice machine didn’t work and the front desk lady looked like she gave up caring in 2003.

Rissa bribed the clerk with a bottle of Hennessy and got a copy of the guest log. There he was: "Sean L. Mitchell."

When we knocked on Room 207, it opened halfway. A shirtless man peeked out, smelling like weed and Axe body spray.

“You Sean?” I asked.

“Who’s askin’?”

“Somebody with a lotta questions and very little patience.”

He let us in. The room looked like a crime scene and smelled worse.

“Look,” he said, collapsing on the bed, “Toni was trippin’. I told her I was done. She ain’t hear me.”

“Why’d she think I was after you?” I asked.

“Cause I *told* her you wasn’t.”

“What kind of reverse logic?” Rissa muttered.

“She twisted it. Said if you wasn’t chasing me, you must be hiding something. Thought y’all were plotting on her.”

“Plotting *what*?”

He shrugged. “Toni things.”

This was messier than we thought.

Chapter 7: “The Setup”

We were in too deep. We had to know what Toni was really up to. So we set a trap.

Imani faked a DM from a burner account, pretending to be Sean. Said he missed her. Wanted to meet up. We staked out the cafe.

Toni showed.

She sat alone, looking twitchy. Kept checking her phone. No Sean. Just us, two tables over with sunglasses and dollar store wigs.

When she got up to leave, we followed.

But someone else was following her too.

A man in a gray hoodie, ducked low.

“Who the hell?” I whispered.

Before we could act, he grabbed her purse and ran. Toni screamed. We ran. Imani tripped. Rissa screamed louder than Toni.

I tackled the guy. High as hell. Landed on concrete and adrenaline.

The purse flew open—cash, keys, and… a flash drive.

Why the hell was she carrying a flash drive?

## Chapter 8: “Flash Drive Fallout”

We cracked open the flash drive back at Imani’s place. Inside: audio recordings.

Conversations. Dozens.

Toni had been recording us. For *months*.

She had dirt on everybody. Rissa’s old weed charges. Imani’s side hustle hacking boutique sites. Even me—talking reckless about my old job.

“She was building a case,” I said, chilled.

“A case for *what*?” Rissa cried.

Imani shook her head. “Blackmail. Revenge. Leverage. Who knows?”

That’s when we heard it—the last file.

Toni’s voice: “If they find this, I’m probably dead. But they need to know—it wasn’t about Sean. It never was.”

Click.

Silence.

To be continued…