Keeping Up With the Wind: A 'Burban Tale by Suleyma Moon

1.

            I can't even begin to count how many years it's been since I last laid eyes on my very last friend and, let me tell you, I am sooo much better off without him. It's not that I didn't love Li'l Jay, because I really, really did. He was just such a pain in the butt! We were always worrying about him. What's Li'l Jay doing now? Has anyone seen him lately? I hope he didn't run away again...

            Man! That kid was more trouble than all the rest of us put together! Li'l Jay wasn't hellified or anything. He was actually pretty laid back compared to the rest of us. He just somehow always managed to be in trouble. I never did understand how such a sweet kid could be so bad! It was like he couldn't help it, like trouble just always seemed to find him.

Don't get me wrong, though. Li'l Jay was no angel. He had a heart of pure gold, sure, but he also had a temper like the devil. Come to think of it, we all had pretty bad tempers back then. It just took a lot more to provoke Li'l Jay than the rest of us. But when somebody did manage to strike the right nerve...look out! He was like a volcano ready to erupt.

            Li'l Jay was a handsome little devil, too, Mexican and Black. I have to admit, as far as combinations go, his was the best I'd ever seen...and I've seen a lot. Interracial couples were real big in Alameda, Michigan, which is where we grew up. Li'l Jay was the closest thing that I ever had to a little brother. If you want to know the truth, people were always thinking that he and I really were related, probably because we were always together. He was thirteen that summer, just out of the seventh grade, and had lived across the street from me all his life. Maybe that's why I always worried about Li'l Jay so much. He was the type of kid that everyone wanted to look out for, but no one wanted to be responsible for...not even his parents.

            Always worrying about Li'l Jay, about all of my friends really, may have been what made me grow so old so fast. You see, I somehow managed to lose all of my friends in that one summer. All of them. Of course, the summer started out just like any other, us running around, happy to be free from the oppressive, makeshift institution they try to pass off as school. I'm telling you, once that final bell rang, we ran out of there like there was no tomorrow!

            It's funny how sometimes, when you're a kid, there really is no tomorrow.

            I'm Silvy, almost the baby of the crew, but we were all pretty much around the same age. Whisper, my best friend, was only a few months older than I was, and we were both fifteen at the time. She was great. We had been best friends since she moved into the neighborhood just after the sixth grade began. That summer, though, we had just gotten out of the ninth grade.

Whisper was Puerto Rican and, unlike Li'l Jay, she actually did look a lot like me, even though I'm African American. So it was no surprise when people started to think that we were related, too. She and I were the same height, same measurements, same facial features, same everything...except for the accent. She and her mother had moved to Alameda, seemingly spur of the moment, from the South Bronx, NY.

Whisper's mom, Mrs. Santiago, was pretty cool, too. She reminded me a lot of Whisper, except that sometimes when Mrs. Santiago got really excited, she'd start talking all fast and her accent would get so thick that we could barely understand her.

            Ace and Spider, brothers, were also in the crew and moved into our neighborhood some time during elementary school. Ace was the oldest brother, and the oldest in our group. During the summer in question, he was seventeen years old. We gave him the name Ace because every time he played cards, an ace of spades always seemed to appear in his hand out of thin air.

Ace had the biggest heart of us all, but he was also the angriest. He loved his friends and family so much more than he ever loved himself, but he had always hated white people. I think that because his father, who was a true hell raiser and abuser, was white Ace held all people who looked like his pops accountable for the man's actions. Ace's mother was Mexican-Indian, and as far as looks and personality go, Ace took mostly after her. I'm pretty sure, though, that he got his hellified temper from somewhere else.