The first thing I remember my dad teaching me was to put my hands up in surrender whenever I saw a police officer coming toward me with his hand near his gun. I remember it because tears were streaming down my face and he was holding his big hands up in a finger gun screaming at me. I was six years old.

Then years after that, he taught my brother Finn the same thing at the same age in the same place: Our kitchen. Finn didn’t cry though. I guess in some ways he was more man than I. When our father got up and went to his room Finn sat on the couch next to me.

“Why we gotta do that Trey?” he said, his eyes glued to the T.V. I was watching the most recent game between Golden State and Toronto. He tapped me on my arm and I snapped away from the game.

“It’s cause they white and we black,” I told him. His face turned to confusion.

“Yeah,” he shrugged, “so what?”

“Exactly,” I said to him. “So what?”

I never thought that I’d be in that situation five years later. With my hands up and a police gun casually being held to the ground. The Officer’s uniform made him look all slim and professional, but I knew that he was fat under all that. Cause what did police officers do but eat donuts and get drunk when they clocked off?

“What you got in your pocket?” he asked.

“I ain’t got nothin’ in my pocket,” I said. Officer Fat looked at his partner who looked like she belonged in a Hollywood movie. Her hair was blonde and cascaded down her shoulders like you’d have taken a picture of a waterfall. Her face was unsure and annoyed. The Officer nodded for her to pat me down and I wasn’t complaining.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Damn right,” I said. Officer Fat turned around and spoke to me in one of those “my daddy’s from the country and he gets drunk every night” voices.

“What’d you say to me boy?” he spat. I raised my eyebrow and stared him hard in the face not saying anything. “If you disrespecting me-”

“Ryan!” cut in the woman Officer. Ugh, of course his name was Ryan. What an asshole name. Ryan. Officer Ryan groaned and walked back to the cop car. Just as they started the car Lydia came running from down the block.

“Trey!” she leaned over and put her hands on her knees. She was wearing ripped jeans that showed off her carob-colored legs. A stain was splattered on her red tank top. “What happened?”

“It was just some cops,” I rolled my eyes. “They tryin’ to catch me smokin’ shit I don’t even got. What they think Ima do anyway? They think Ima pulled out a gun and shoot they’re ass? I might as well.” I looked down at my baggy jeans and Jordan’s that looked like they were too big for me, but they weren’t. I just got big feet. A gold chain hung around my neck and reflected the street light. Maybe they thought I looked suspicious? You can’t accuse someone of something because of the way they look. That’s plain stupidity. The neighborhood was mostly quiet except for the music from the party down the street.

“They might be headed to the party next,” she folded her hands in front of her and looked at the ground. “Look about the party--”

“No,” I stopped her. “Please. All I need is a ride home. Talk about anything, but what happened at the party.”

As she drove us back to our neighborhood I looked out the window the entire ride. It was a clear night sky so you could see the stars just right in the sky. The moon was just a crescent smiling down at my stupid life. I turned up the music loud enough to block out the awkward silence.

“Sorry about the punch,” I apologized. She looked down at the stain on her shirt and frowned.

“You shouldn’t be the one saying you’re--” I shut the door before she could say anymore. I didn’t want to look her in the eye or stare at her thin body. I didn’t even want to speak to her. Finn was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book when I got in only he was holding it upside down. I went over and plucked it from his hands.

“I told you I’d read you it didn’t I?” I laughed. Finn looked down at the black wooden table.

“I wanted to try reading it on my own,” he complained. I looked at the title.

“Brave New World?” I asked. “Man, are you crazy? Even a normal person can’t read this book. Much less a dysleix fourteen year old.”

“Where were you?” he sighed as if he’d been waiting for me to come home. Which was probably the case. My mind flashed to the party and the red solo cups being passed around like cheap birthday cake. Christmas lights were strung on the balcony even though it was in the middle of the spring. Lydia hadn’t known I was coming, I was going to surprise her but she ended up surprising me.

“Doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Is mom at work?”

“Probably,” he said. I flipped the book over like I was about to read the first page, but I couldn’t get the words out. The images kept flashing in my mind of what happened the night and the way Lydia looked at me. Was it my fault? Did I make her do this?

“I can’t read this to you right now Finn. I got a lot of homework to do,” I lied. Finn knew it too.

“Since when did you care about homework?” he called out to me. I shrugged and walked up the stairs to my bedroom. From my bedroom window I could see Lydia’s car back up from the driveway and onto the street. Something inside of me twisted to anger when I watched her leave. She did all that because I didn’t come to her performance at the Classic Center. Screw Lydia.

I grabbed the edges of my pillow and squeezed them tight, hoping I’d forget all of this in the morning.

Unfortunately when I woke up it was the first thing on my mind and resonated with me the entire day. I knew my mom would be coming home soon and I wasn’t sure how’d she react when I told her my plans for the future. She probably hadn’t checked my grades in the years I’d been in high school because of all the work she had on her shoulders, but I had been trying my absolute hardest. Except in math because I hate math just like every other kid on this planet. She walked in with bags of chips in one hand and a two liter of Dr. Pepper in the other. Dark bags were settling under her eyes like the dark side of the moon.

My heart was racing. If I didn’t tell her now I don’t think I would ever tell her at all.

“Mom, I want to go to college,” I blurted out. I looked down at my plaid pajamas and knew my hair was a nappy mess. She looked at me so dumbfounded that it made we want to crumple to the floor. She was thin like she had left the food all to us instead of taking some for herself. Tears started welling up in her eyes. I don’t think I had ever seen her cry after dad died.

“Trey you know I can’t do that,” she put the chips down on the counter and didn’t look at me. “Nobody in our family has ever gone--”

“I know!” I said, regretting that I had chosen this time to tell her. “But if I keep my grades up mom. I can--I can get a scholarship to go and if I get a good job I could help you with money--” She slammed her hand on the counter and stared at me. Just stared at me. Like her eyes were made of glass. I gulped.

“I can’t do this right now,” she pushed past me and walked upstairs. The last thing I heard was her bedroom door slamming behind her.

The night before the last Lydia had here piano concert and she asked me to come. I told her that it wasn’t possible for me to come cause I had to study for the science final. Apparently it was some big honor to be there but how was I supposed to know? I told her I was sorry.

I thought I could make it up by buying her something really nice for her birthday.

“There was a reason I didn’t ask you to come!” her voice echoed in my head. I grabbed the punch and threw it on her shirt in anger, running down the street where I’d eventually find the cops.

I wondered if the present was still on the table. It was only an envelope about five inches long. I had written her name in the best cursive I could conjure.

As my mom was in her room, I walked out the screen door and into my front yard. A group of boys were playing basketball up the street. Finn was with them, laughing and shooting baskets like he was a regular Micheal Jordan. I held a copy of Brave New World in my hand and began reading. ELA teachers always decided to pick the hardest books.

It was hot outside because spring had just...well sprung up out of nowhere. We didn’t have any plants on our porch except for those ferns that you can hang from the ceiling. Even they looked like they were dying. I tried to concentrate on the words, but I kept checking my phone to see if Lydia would text me. Instead, something worse happened.

Elijah came riding down the street on his black and red bike like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. His eyes were covered with a pair of 90’s shades that blocked the burning sun from hitting his eye. He pushed his tawny colored hair back and rode right up in my driveway. Anger flared inside of me the moment his Vans touched the cement.

“The hell you doin’ at my house?” I cursed. He took his shades off like he was some badass cop. His face looked real guilty when I looked him in the eye. “You think you can come here after what you did? With Lydia?” My voice broke and I balled my fists. A breeze blew Elijah’s curly hair across his face. He was so scrawny I could hit him right now and his knees would buckle.

“It wasn’t my fault--” he started.

“Oh it let me guess, it was a damn accident. What’d you do? Trip over and accidentally make out with my girlfriend?” I put down the book and walked over to him. His bike crashed to the ground.

“She kissed me first!” he yelled before I could say anything else. I bit the inside of my cheek.

“What? Why would she do that?” I cursed. Elijah stood back and gripped his sunglasses. His knuckles were almost as white as mine. “Was it because of the damn Classic Center performance?”

“She told me it was more than that Trey,” he said threw his hands out in front of him and shook his head. “She told me that you don’t support her like she does you. She said it was a dream for her to perform in front of so many people and the person she loved most didn’t want to share it with her.” It felt like a hundred tiny needles had struck my chest.

“So do you know why she kissed me Trey?” he taunted. Even though he was two inches smaller than me I could have knocked him off his feet, so why wasn’t I? “Because I came. She called me and I decided to come. Damn it was amazing. Maybe that’s why she didn’t invite you to her birthday party cause she didn’t think you’d come either.”

“But I apologized,” I told him. “Did she see the envelope that I put on the table? Did she open the letter?”

“She threw the letter away,” he smirked. Instead of anger tears were welling up in my eyes. Tears like the ones I cried when I was six years old. Tears that Finn didn’t even shed.

“This wasn’t all her fault and I know it,” I said turning around. I couldn’t let him see my face. It showed he was stronger than me. It felt like everyone was stronger than me. Elijah, Finn, and even my own mom. “This isn’t all about her and you know it. It’s about you. You don’t care for anyone but yourself. This is about me turning my back on you. Just remember Elijah: The reason I’m not in your life is because you drove me away. Don’t forget it.”

And with that I took the book from the glass table and walked inside. Elijah laughed and hopped onto his bike, waving at Finn on his way out. Finn waved back.

When my dad died Elijah was my crutch. He told me what to think, told me what to say, and gave me just enough to take away the pain. At school he would slip Xanax into the palm of my hands when we did our handshake. After school behind the Library he passed me weed and we’d laugh for hours about teachers and hot girls. He didn’t make me pay for a single thing.

My closest friend Nia stopped talking to me after my dad’s death because I wouldn’t talk back to her. Every text on my phone rang into dead silence. My father’s dead silence. He was shot and killed in his job by a black boy in a supermarket. I’d seen the video when I walked into the police station. When I was eight and I found out he was a police officer it didn’t feel right that he made me fear them. Was that his motive? If it was to be cautious that sure wasn’t the case because only fear and rebellion remained when I saw one. That includes when I saw my own dad.

The video showed him without his hand at his gun. He was talking to the boy, who was also holding a gun, but at one of the casier ladies. The boy was shaking his head and screaming at him. Then finally his hand moved and pulled the trigger right before my dad could pull his. The bullet nestled in his shirt and his body crumpled to the ground.

After the funeral I found Elijah who had texted me two blocks away.

“Give me whatever you got,” I told him. So he did. When I went to school all I could think about was what he’d give me next. Then the principal told me that if I didn’t pass more than three classes that I’d have to get held back. My mom would never forgive me if that happened.

I knew what I had to do. I had to cut Elijah off from my life, so I did it quietly and without confrontation. I didn’t talk to him in the halls. I deleted his number from my phone and blocked him on all forms of social media. It would have been like we were never friends. It would be like I was a ghost and he was a maniac who decided to talk to one.

That’s when I found Lydia. She had been going to East Washington High for as long as me if not longer and I don’t think I had ever acknowledged her. After previous days of avoiding Elijah in the hallway Lydia sat next to me outside. She was reading over our papers for the lab assignment.

Her hair was tucked behind her ear revealing her naturally beautiful face except for the thick mascara she wore on her eyelashes. The sun had hit her eyes to look almost bronze. Her finger pointed at the confusing mass of molecules on the page. Apparently she had been staring at me for a long time because she snapped her fingers in front of my face.

“Trey,” she laughed. “Do you understand?”

“Huh?” I said to her completely dumbfounded. “No, I don’t understand a single thing.” She rolled her eyes, but then smiled. She was beautiful. She snapped her fingers in front of my face again.

“Hey,” she scolded. “I’ll ask Mr. Boswell to change my partner if you don’t start doing your part.”

“No,” I put my hand out. “You don’t have to do that.”

I caught Elijah staring at me from across the room. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the good type of “staring at you from across the room” kind of the stare. It was more “I’m going to kill you once school ends” kind of stare. Lydia hit my arm.

“I’m serious!” she exclaimed, a little more irritated than the last. She looked at Elijah and I grabbed her arm. “What? Why are you staring at him?”

“He’s a friend--well, he used to be my friend, but I stopped talking to him after…”

“After what?”

“Doesn’t matter. The point is he hates me because I never told him why I left and now it’s too late for me to say anything.”

“Isn’t he a dealer?” she asked. My eyebrows furrowed. “I would understand if you left.” Elijah started walking over. Apparently, I was wrong. It was the “I’m going to kill you right now” kind of stare.

“Okay I gotta go,” I told her. She sighed and I exited. Instead of Elijah coming after me he walked up to Lydia instead.

Lydia became my best friend, but all in the same she became Elijah’s best friend too. I asked her out and when she said yes it was no secret that if Elijah hadn’t had it out for me in the beginning he definitely did now.

I didn’t want him to be in the dark. I decided to confront him. I walked behind the Library like he did every day after school and found him.

“What’re you doing here?” he scowled. “You think you have a right to show up here?”

“No,” I looked down at my shoes and a crumpled Doritos bag rolling on the pavement. “Elijah, I had to get through school. My mom was working three jobs a week and my grades were dropping like nobody’s business. Someone like you wasn’t helping.”

“I WAS DOING WHAT I COULD TO SURVIVE!” he screamed. “You think someone like me could ever get a job that paid enough for my mom’s medical bills and the payments on the house? You were never my friend. You used me to drown out your pain and once you were done you left.”

“I CAN’T TAKE CARE OF EVERYBODY!” I yelled back at him.

“And neither can I,” he scoffed. I had to leave. I had to leave before I took his head and pounded it into the ground. “Y’know what Trey? Go to hell.”

Fire burned inside of me. How could he say that I used him? He was keeping me from a future that I knew would benefit me in the long run. He stole a year of my education and now Lydia had kissed him because I had to work hard to pass a failing class? There was only one way to understand why. I had to ask Lydia myself. This time I wasn’t going to avoid confrontation. I was headed to her house right now.

Both of the cars at her house were gone, which meant she was home alone. Nervously, I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel then walked up to the front door. The blinds were closed and the wind made the trees sway quietly in the wind. A bird perched on one of the branches and began to squawk like a lunatic. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I knocked harder.

Lydia opened the door. Her hair was in a messy ponytail and there was a very faint smudge under her eyes from her mascara. She looked like she had stayed up all night.

“Trey…” she stared at me. I couldn’t decide whether to blame her or blame myself. “Do you want to come insi--”

“No,” I cut her off. “I want you to tell me why you did it? You know how I feel about him. You know.” Saying it somehow made it feel a lot more painful.

“I think we all got something in common,” she told me. “We all want to do something great. No matter where we come from or what we do and that concert was me doing something great. I wanted you to be there, but Elijah came instead. Here’s the thing Trey. I go to every. single. basketball game that you play in. I even go to the ones that are far away and then the one time I win the Allstate competition you’re not there. Elijah is.”

She won? I thought. I bit the inside of my cheek again, but not in anger. In regret. Somehow it felt like I was losing the most important part of my life.

“Did you see what I got you? For your birthday?” I asked stupidly. Like any gift could amount to the mistake I made. She opened her door and I saw it lying on the table unopened.

“No,” she confessed. How could I have been so arrogant? She was right and I hated to admit it.

“I’m sorry, but--”

“--we both have things to be sorry for. I know,” she finished my sentence. Something erupted inside of me and I felt like it had in her too. A tear rolled down her cheek and somehow to my surprise I was crying too. Finn was definitely more man that I was.

“I never wanted you to feel that way,” I wiped the tears so she wouldn’t see them, but I was afraid I was too late. She embraced me in a hug.

“I was wrong,” I could feel her body warming mine. “We were both terribly wrong.”

“But Elijah?” I asked. She pulled away. Her eyes were red.

“I think we should help him.”

I would have never thought that she’d say this. She was asking me to help the boy who hurt me.

“Why should we?” Even thinking of the possibility made me angry. Elijah was one of the kids that no matter what would get you in trouble. Cops would always come around if you hung with him.

“Elijah’s just trying to survive. Like you. Like me. We all think that we have to choose our own path. We all think that we need to do it alone.”

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“Our parents have told us since we were little that ain’t nobody gonna help us, but they’re wrong,” she said. “Imagine how far we could get if we worked together. Together we could help pay for Elijah’s mom’s medical bills. Together we could help you study for a test and get into college. And most importantly we’d all support each other. Maybe we weren’t supposed to leave him. Maybe we’re supposed to save him.”

I wondered how she could say this about someone so far from redemption, but she was right. I hated to admit it, but she was right. All my life I had been told that I had to make it on my own, we all had, but here she was helping me through it and somehow, for some crazy reason she wanted to help Elijah too.

Mattea Brown

Love others as yourself

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