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

3.

Ok, so now that you're caught up, let's get back to the crappiest summer ever. You know, it's funny how time has a way of changing how you feel about things. The way I remember it now, that time in my life was full of pain and loss. But while I was living in the moment, we were having the time of our lives. Everything was perfect about that summer. Not because it was perfect, but because that's the way we made it.

The sky was almost always beautiful, which kind of validated our self-created world, and the temperature rarely went above eighty-five degrees. The weather was to be expected, living in Michigan, but a perfect, smogless, cloudless sky every single day was unheard of.

Even though it was never too, too hot, the little kids in the neighborhood faithfully broke the fire hydrants and danced in their magical gutter waterfalls every chance they got. It never occurred to them or us that if there was ever a real fire, there would be no way to put it out.

We were all just so happy to be free from school for the next three months, we couldn't see the rain for the rainbow.

            The past school year had been so so ridiculous, that any positive change was bound to overshadow the remaining traces of our present reality.

Li'l Jay had run away...again...that year and was missing for at least three weeks this time before we found him and made him come home. By that summer, though, he decided that things were finally getting better at home, and he let us know...repeatedly... that we wouldn't have to worry about him anymore. I often wondered if he was lying just to make us feel better and, even more, to make us stop watching him so closely...which he already knew wasn't about to happen. We had always tried our best to look out for Li'l Jay, since his parents didn't seem to do anything but beat him all the time.

            When he ran away the first time and we couldn't find him, Jay had gotten hooked on something. We were never quite sure exactly what it was. Honestly, we had all been down for some form of whatever back in the day, and both Shadow and Ace had even done needles before. But that was when we were all much younger. It never gave us as big a high as fighting and causing general havoc around the city, just to prove that we could get away with it.

The needles...well, those were a little harder to substitute, but my boys did it. And we were all proud.  

It sucks when you've already been through something and try to teach the youngs under you why they shouldn't even want to do what you did, but you just can't make them listen.

Li'l Jay was that kid. It's not even that we were so much older than him...at least Whisper and I weren't, but we had all done a lot more at a much younger age and were through with the whole scene by the time Li'l Jay came up. He was only a little shorty back when we were out of control, but he was fast and could keep up.

Because of this, we would let him do a lot of things with us, but not everything.   

            When we found him that previous school year it amazed me to see how much older Li'l Jay looked, and that we were almost the same height. His eyes were different, too. They didn't seem to be as innocent as before. Sometimes he'd try to focus in on us and what we were saying, but he just couldn't do it. I think that was because of the drugs.

            Ace was the most upset by all of this. "Li'l Jay," he'd say. "Li'l dude, you're trippin'. You gotta stop this shit. You're really starting to piss me off. Wherever you were they may have let you act an ass, but I'm not havin' it. I admit, when I was your age I did a whole lot worse..." Ace would always add before Li'l Jay could throw it up in his face like he usually did, "but I stopped. Don't you remember how I started trippin'? That stuff will make you feel like you're going crazy. You'll get sick, Jay, and shoving a needle in your arm will actually start to feel like you're just scratching!"

            Li'l Jay would just stand there with this stupid grin on his face. Fortunately, he had started shooting up less by the time that summer rolled around. This seemed like a good sign, and I knew he could quit if he wanted to, since I had seen at least two of my friends shake a heroin addiction before. At any rate, at least he was able to carry on regular conversations again.

Sometimes Li'l Jay and I would sit on his roof all day long, telling jokes and talking about whatever came to mind, just waiting for someone to come around with something better for us to do.

            Why can't things ever stay the way they are when you're a kid?

I asked Li'l Jay that once, but judging from his crazy response I figured he was probably on one of his trips again.

            Once, Shadow came across Jay in the street about to shoot up. Shadow, for reasons that I will never fully understand, cussed Li'l Jay out and then shoved the needle into his own arm. It sounds crazy, I know. I totally feel you. But let me tell you, Li'l Jay was deeply affected. Especially after Shadow made him pull the needle out. He over-dramatized the pain, of course, yelling and screaming and cursing Li'l Jay all to hell...well, not to hell, but you know what I mean. And it only made things worse that Li'l Jay was already high and hallucinating before Shadow even rolled up on him.

After Li'l Jay finally got the needle out, Shadow simply said, "I'll be damned if you're gonna kill yourself on my birthday," and walked off.

            Later that day, we were all at the spot, a.k.a. "the bridge" (because our condemned building was under a bridge) celebrating Shadow's birthday when Li'l Jay busted in saying, "Man, this vato's crazy!" and told us what happened. Of course Shadow had already told us about what happened before Li'l Jay got there, and said that it didn't really hurt. Needles had, after all, at one point been his entire life. He was just trying to scare the kid.

I guess it worked because a few nights later, Li'l Jay and I were sitting on his roof when he told me that every time he even saw a needle, he couldn't get the sound of Shadow's screaming out of his head. He kept feeling it hurt, really hurt, before the needle even went in. Exasperated, Jay threw up his hands and shouted to the heavens, "Ok, ok. I give up!" 

I smiled to myself in the darkness.

            This all happened a few weeks before Whisper's birthday.

            About a week after school was out we all decided to take a ferry out to Magic Island - a little fake "island" off the coast of Michigan, which was actually one gigantic amusement park - to celebrate Whisper's sixteenth birthday. Now, this was a great idea...in theory. Unfortunately, we were all broke.

Li'l Jay, in his own little world as usual, volunteered to pay all of our ways to Disney World, because it "would be a lot cheaper." I think this was around the time that he started smoking everything in sight. Finally, after a lot of arguing about what we could afford (nothing), and what we couldn't afford (everything), we talked Whisper's mother into taking us to Magic Island for her sweet sixteen present.

            Now that was a beautiful night...             

THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE READS MOONBEAMS! YOU CAN PURCHASE THIS BOOK AT AMAZON.COM!