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shoulder.
    “I don’t leave home without ’em. You must have forgotten … I graduated from my sex education class magnum cum laude.”
    This bitch is silly
, Yarni thought to herself, trying not to burst into laughter. “Well, I’ll call you later. Don’t do anything you’ll regret in the morning.”
    “I don’t do regrets,” Vanessa retorted. “They get in the way of the fun.”
    Yarni was thinking about some of the crazy antics Vanessa had pulled in the past as she turned the corner at Grace Street. It was packed with cars, but as far as people, it was a ghost town. Everyone must have still been getting their groove on inside the various bars and clubs, getting liquored up and/or trying to find somebody to go home with.
    With her car a block ahead, Yarni fumbled in her purse searching for her keys, to have them on standby. Preoccupied, she never heard the blue Caravan creep up from behind until it was almost too late. The side door slid open and a young man clad in dark jeans and a black T-shirt jumped out.
    “Lookie at what I done stumbled upon,” he sang as he pulled up his sagging pants to his waist with an up-to-no-good mischievous grin plastered on his face. “It must be one of our lucky days.”
    Totally caught off guard, alone and vulnerable, Yarni couldbarely keep up with all the wild thoughts that started running through her head.
    The young hoodlum had pockmarked skin and the arrogant swagger of a playground bully. She wanted to say something that would, maybe, persuade him to second-guess his plans, but she was unable to trust her own voice from giving away her secret: she was afraid for her life.
    A dark minivan filled with God only knew how many people on a back street with a harmless young girl as their prey. Nothing good usually came from these types of situations. Rape? Robbery? Kidnapping? Or worse, murder? Her mind raced back to the past and she thought to herself,
Not again. History could not and was not going to repeat
.
    She had gotten snatched and held for ransom almost a year ago to the day. For the most part the ambitious thugs didn’t mean her any harm. They were hungry and saw her as a quick come-up. She was to be nothing more than a meal ticket, to get them what made the world go around: money. But when her then big-time, dope-dealing boyfriend, Bengee, got the ransom call, he laughed and hung up, but not before informing the kidnappers that it was cheaper for them to keep her because he wasn’t coming off one copper penny. And he never paid the ransom they were requesting. It was one of the scariest things Yarni had ever had happen to her. If it weren’t for the hundred thousand dollars her mother and Uncle Stanka somehow came up with—not to mention her not panicking, keeping her composure and thinking on her feet—she was sure the kidnappers would have raped and killed her.
    Now Yarni feared a repeat episode, knowing that most people are not lucky enough to be spared twice in a row. She took a deep breath as adrenaline overtook her body. The thug in the baggy pants inched closer, and whatever this dude had on his mind, Yarni knew she wanted no part of it. Scared or not, she was prepared to fight until there wasn’t a breath left in her body.
    Inside her purse, she wrapped her hand around the .380 small caliber pistol her uncle Stanka had given to her after she had been kidnapped. She deliberately had some loose stitching in the lining of one of the pockets to hide the gun. That way when club security searched the contents of her purse with their flashlights, it would go undetected. So thanks to Yarni’s weapon of choice, this clown in front of her wouldn’t be the only one with a bag full of surprises tonight. Yarni contemplated her next move, and it was so unpredictable that nobody, not even Yarni, had expected it.
    Without warning a brazen sound erupted. Pop! Pop! Yarni let off two shots straight through her pocketbook. It stunned the van passengers, causing an “Oh