Mr. Tan

Chapter 32: A Friend In Need

It was now October, around Halloween. The days are warm and short and night comes early and are a bit chilly. Most front porches in Sunnydale Mobile Estate were decorated with creative Halloween decorations. Earl and I set out two carefully carved jack-o-lanterns on the front porch of his pine green double wide. I hung fake cobwebs with a big, black fake spider centered in the middle on the banisters. As long as I've been living with Earl, he wasn't the type to hand out candy to trick or treaters, not that there was ever a lot of trick or treaters in the trailer park, anyway. Most of the kids that did trick or treat participated in that in the affluent suburban neighborhoods that were pretty far from here. Halloweens around here were spent.....well, like any other day. However, Earl is a big fan of watching documentaries about serial killers and horror movies that were usually featured around this time of year. We'd turn all the lights off in the trailer while we watched scary movies. We'd chow down on pizza, wings or other junk, Earl would have numerous beers while I had soda or chocolate milk. Let's just say I've been honing my musical skills lately. I still sang covers of popular blues songs whenever I performed at Earl's Place, but I recently started writing my own song lyrics, something I've been doing since September. Whenever I wrote lyrics, it felt like my heart and soul was overflowing with inspiration. Amateur night was coming up at the end of the week and I practiced every single moment that I got, usually after school. Usually after I finished homework, fed and cleaned up after Duke, I would drive over to Earl's Place to practice backstage. Most times, I would practice with Earl's old blues group Anywhere But Home. We would harmonize, talk about the lyrics, change words, Marlon Harris even begin showing me how to play the piano. Earl would bring his electric guitar and jam with us back stage, too. I wrote lyrics to my very first original song "Rainy Days". The song focused on all of the pain I've carried around with me for so long. Earl and his fellas looked over my lyrics and they loved it right off of the bat. "A natural poet" is what they liked to call me. Since we've been practicing so much but still had some work to do, Earl suggested I sing Saturday night instead of Friday. It was on a Thursday night when I got a very alarming phone call from Adrian. It was a quarter to 10:00 and Earl was still at work. I was home alone playing with Duke in the living room after dinner when my cellphone rang. My cellphone was on kitchen table, so I ran to answer it before it could it go to my voice mail.

"Hello", I said.

"Hello....hello....hello", the voice replied, whoever she was, she was panicking and I couldn't quit make out who she was.

"Hello", I said again. Adrian?

"It's me", she replied. She sounded like she was or had been crying.

"What's wrong?!", I asked.

"J-just p-please come and g-get me", she cried.

"Calm down and tell me what happened and where you are", I replied, sounding calm.

"I-I was at a house party with Adam, I l-left and I'm at a b-bus stop shelter a-a block away from his apartment", she replied. Just come and get me please!