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

12.

The next day, I tapped on Whisper's window to see if she wanted to come with me to see Li'l Jay.

            "Can't."

            "Why not?"

            "He's grounded."

            "Why?"

            "Someone forgot to send him home."

            "Oh," I smiled sheepishly and climbed into her window. Briefly, I wondered when the last time was that I used her front door. Then I wondered when the last time was that I had used my own. "He didn't get hit, did he?"

            "No. He said his dad was more interested in why he had spent the night at your house and how he managed to get a black eye and a limp while he was over there."

            I chuckled. "A Limp?"

            "Yeah. Li'l Jay said dude punched him in the knee...or pulled his ankle. Something like that." She looked around the room, stalling. Then, finally, she looked back at me. "Johnny must have done something pretty bad to you, huh?"

            I looked away. "Why do you say that?"

            "Because Li'l Jay never gets pissed like that, like he actually wants to kill someone. Shadow told us that he must have kicked Johnny in the head...and stabbed him. More than once. You know, like he was trying to kill him."

            I avoided her eyes. "I guess everybody has a button to push."

I had been Li'l Jay's button his whole life. And he proved it the day he tried to run out and kill that other boy. The fact that I was Li'l Jay's Achilles Heel had never been a comforting thought to me. Especially not right then. It just made me feel really, really guilty.               

Brief thoughts of our childhood flashed through my mind. Li'l Jay had always been oddly settled for a little kid. He was so settled, in fact, that no one even believed he had a temper until he lost it on them.

"Guess so. Shadow didn't really say anything about it, but we all know he went after Johnny, too. We also know that he can't go home. I have no idea where he's been staying," she finished with deep feeling, like she was the one that couldn't go home.

I knew as well as she did that we were all going to feel the pain on this one. We always felt each other's pain like that. That's probably what made our crew so tight to begin with.

I felt a slow panic coming on. "Do you think things are really that bad?"

"If Johnny dies, the cops will be asking all of us what happened."

I sighed deeply. "We sure do know how to pick 'em, huh?" It came out more as a compliment than anything because, let's face it, none of this would have happened if they hadn't been trying to protect me.

"Sure do," Whisper sighed as both of us remembered what Blaze had done for her. She cried suddenly, "I'm going to miss you so much!" My heart jumped, thinking that she was thinking that I might have to go to jail, too. Then it dawned on me that she was moving in a few days...like, for real for real. We both sniffed back tears for about half a second before she blurted out, "Let's do something before I make myself sick."

"Well, we could go get Blaze and Faith and go out to the lake like we used to."

I suddenly longed for our childhoods like I subconsciously knew they were already over and from that summer on, we would never be same again.