"Yo Ty! Get out of the road man!"
Tyler Natlis turns around to see a giant black hummer, screeching to a stop, leaving only inches between Tyler's skull and the hood.
"Holy shit man!" he shouts, pushing his hands against the front bumper as it comes to a full halt.
Hoooonk! Honk honk! An middle-aged black man sticks his head out the driver-side window and yells "What the hell are you doin' kid! Hey, pothead! Wake-up!"
He looks up at the driver, shocked, then takes his advice and steps over to the sidewalk where Rico is standing, letting his arm hang down, holding a basketball against his hip. Tyler knew that it was his lucky ball. The one Ty's older brother had left for Rico. He smiles as Rico raises an obscene hand gesture in his defense.
"What a dick man!" Rico says, looking over at Tyler, who gives this last comment a smirk of approval.
"Well yeah, dude. Just look at his ride. Guy's a total compensator." Tyler says.
"That guy is a what, now?" asks Rico who is squinting his eyes inquisitively.
"A compensator. You know, 'cause any one who thinks they need to drive a car that big has gotta be compensating for somethin'!" He smirks at the cleverness of his own joke. Really he was surprised that it had taken that long for some on to complain about him walking right in the middle of the road.
Then again, he thought to himself traffic has been, like, really slow today. Which is weird, especially for a nice day in this part of the city.
"Hey Rico!" says a younger looking teen Tyler vaguely recognizes from his second semester History class. "Hey come here for a minute." Rico says "A'ight." then turns to Ty and says "One sec, business bro."
Tyler nods and looks off down the road. He reaches down into the pocket of his black leather jacket, pulls out a pack of Marlboro Reds, and lights one. He puts the cigarette in his right hand and stretches his left hand behind his head, burying his fingers in the messy blond hair that dangled down to about the middle of his neck, and exhales.
Casting his gaze downward, he notices he is standing on a sticky patch of unidentifiable, for lack of a better word, junk. Nice. he thinks to himself, wiping the mysterious crud off onto the curb. Just great!
"Hey man, guess what." says Rico. Tyler turns to see what. "Dude," Rico begins "yo I just made like forty dollars! You hungry bro?"
While the honest answer was no he didn't have a better idea so, rather than try to think of one, he nods his head indifferently. As they walk on down the street Rico drones on about some story he heard about some guy pranking some one with a hot dog while they were asleep while Tyler weaves in and out of listening and pretending to listen to the conversation.
After getting some of the greasiest burgers New York has to offer and the days special of salt with french fries on the side they walk down the street to the park. Rico had another "business arrangement" to take care of.
He looks and at Ty and said "Yo, wait here for a minute okay man."
Tyler looks down.
Rico used to be best friends with his brother, James. When James enlisted in the army Rico was so proud. He even threw him a big party when he got back from basic training. It was only a week before he got shipped out to Iraq. When they heard that his platoon had gotten caught in a crossfire and that there had been casualties ,well, they were both scared.
When Mikey came back, he just wasn't the same. He'd just seen to many people he'd called friends die. Ty remembered seeing him for the first time since he'd come back. His eyes just seemed like... he wasn't even there. Like they were looking into some hellish other world. Dead eyes.
Then, three weeks later, his eyes caught up with him. The police said that he blew his brains out with his shotgun, but Tyler knew he'd been dead for more than a month. It just took awhile for his body to catch onto the fact, but his eyes knew long before.
Rico didn't take it too well. He got expelled from the university for possession of narcotics on school grounds and hadn't been able to keep a real job since. Now he's reduced to this just to pay rent, and it still wasn't enough.
Shouting. Tyler awakes from his thoughts and looks over at Rico who is standing next van, pulled over on the side of the road with driver side window down.
Ty starts to walk towards him. "Hey what's going o..."
"Wait right there! Just one second!" Rico shouts clearly strained. He's still holding the ball against his hip, trying to act normal.
Ty can hear him begging quietly "Just a little bit of time. I can pay you back in full, dawg!"
A voice from the driver's seat laughs. "Pay us back!? Pay us back! This ain't a fuckin' game man."
Rico is shaking, drenched in his own sweat. Lips quivering, Tyler can bearly hear him mutter the words "Please. I can pay youback."
More laughter and the the same voice as before says "Tell you what homes, I'll think about it."
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
And then the van drives off, tires squealing as it exalerates forward into impunity.
Tyler can only stare, dumbstruck by the terrible scene engrained into his head, the overwhelming bark of the gun with each bullet, so that they were like the hounds of Hell sprinting forward in a flash and tearing bloody holes right through Rico's chest. As his brother's basketball bounces, the hollow thud it makes against the pavement is lost behind echo of the gun still lingering in his ears.
Finally he forces one long, heavy step after another until he is looking down at the bloody face of his dying friend.
"Ty?" Rico says in what is almost a whisper. "Where's my lucky ball?"
Tyler's breath shaking, he goes to get the ball.
"No." Rico says grabbing Ty's leg "It don't matter." He pauses, taking deep raspy breaths.
Ty stares into his eyes devoting his full attention. How could he not for dying man's, a dying friend's last words.
"I fucked up man." Blood drips from the side of his mouth down his cheek. "When Mikey died...just lost it. You weren't the only guy who lost his brother," he stops, turns his head over, and coughs blood onto the sidewalk.
As Ty looks down into his blood-spattered, pale face he can't but recognize those eyes, staring a thousand miles off in the distance.
