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

20.

It was Thursday night and I was practicing part of the song that Spider had been teaching me for almost a month now, when Li'l Jay poked his head through my window. Sometimes the summer nights got so cool that we just kept the windows open. Quite often, even in the middle of July, we didn't need the central air on at night.

            "Ready?" he asked.

            "Yeah, just about." I motioned for him to come in, and then placed the guitar down on the floor beside my bed.

            I never did learn the rest of that song.

            I watched Li'l Jay crawl into my window just as easily as he had been doing it his whole life. Shoot, he practically had been doing it his whole life.

"I remember the first time you did that," I said with a nostalgic smile.

            He glanced at me, not amused. "Yeah, that was the first time I ever ran away from home."

            "And all the way to my house," I laughed. "You couldn't have been more than five or six."

            "I was four." He still wasn't smiling.

            "Dang Jay! That young? Man, you been bad all your life!" I bypassed the anger that washed over his face and disappeared, like a wave. "That means I was about..."

            "Six. You'd just had a birthday."

            I nodded, remembering, then pointed to the chair. "There's your shirt. Do you see how I took special care in washing it and folding it, and then placed it right there so neatly for you to see?"

I was trying to make him smile, but it still wasn't working. I hadn't seen Li'l Jay in a mood like this in a long time.

He glanced at the shirt, but made no movements towards it.

"Keep it."

"What? After all the trouble I went through?" I asked dramatically, like I was joking, but really I was serious. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of flannel? "After you almost tried to fight me to get it back?"

"I would never fight you." The graveness in his voice made the teasing grin slide right off my face. "Let's go." He climbed back out of the window.

I watched him go and, for the second time that summer, seriously contemplated whether or not I should follow him. "Well, come on," he called over his shoulder and walked away.

What was the matter with everyone lately? I thought briefly about how I should escape the madness, like Whisper and her mother, while I still could. It was just a passing thought, though, as I climbed out of the window and ran to catch up to Li'l Jay. He had covered a lot of ground with his long, but never rushed strides.

"Hey! Wait for me!"

He stopped and turned around. I could see the lit embers of his cigarette glowing in the fading sun. Smoking cigarettes was a habit that I had never picked up. I tried to remember when Li'l Jay started. After a while, I asked him.

He stopped to think. Not expecting his strides to cease, I kept walking. Then, after a few steps, I turned to him. "What?"

"You know, I can't remember." He started walking again.

I fell into step beside him, my two to his one. I looked up and noticed for the first time how much taller he had gotten since the summer began. He was probably close to Ace's height by now. I made a mental note to compare the two later, and wondered when this sudden growth spurt had occurred.