Dancing on Achilles Heels BxB (Staten Krown)

3

DESTA

We were all lost. Me. Prince and his sister. My other cousin Tone. It's the only way for me to describe it half the time. We were lost. I didn't know who lost us. Was it our parents? Was it our community? Was it our country? I just felt lost though, as though I was supposed to be somewhere that I wasn't. I'm just wandering around trying to find that place and the longer I wander the more lost I get.

Sooner or later I forget what I'm looking for. Does anyone notice I'm missing? Does anyone notice I'm gone?

I guess little nigga babies don't really end up on milk cartons huh?

"Tone...Tone you there?"

My cousin is staring out. He does it sometimes where he just stares out. He looks right through the wall as though he's trying to search for something. You can talk to him and he'd just ignore you like you don't even fuckin exist. It's some shit really. Here goes Prince striking his fingers in the motherfucker's face like a match until he snaps out of it.

Tone comes to himself with the confusion of disturbing two hours into the best sleep of his life. His eyes had been open the whole time. He walks over past me in the kitchen without really acknowledging me.

"Ain't nothing to eat in here?"

Tone Montel Harsh Bradley was 6'1". He has a face that would have been handsome if he wasn't missing a few teeth, had a broken nose that never healed correctly and had been sliced with a razor blade across his face. When he walks in his tight pants are sagging so low that all we see is underwear. He has his hair dyed orange on one side and red on the other. Tats are all over his face and body. He opens up my fridge and drinks out of the orange juice like he's done a million times. When he puts the orange juice back he tightens up his red blood bandana around his forehead.

"Ma's foodstamps didn't come through," I state.

Tone gives me a look. He strokes his multi-colored hair in the direction that his waves are going and sighs a little bit. You would think by his disappointment that he was putting a dime into all of this to come in my house complaining the way he did. Across from him is Prince. The three of us have always been close...real close. In the case of Prince and I we were a little too close. My relationship with my cousin Tone was a little bit more complicated.

For one, he was my real cousin.

"It's all good, we can just eat our enemies," Tone responds with a wicked laugh that causes Prince and I to exchange looks.

For two, he was crazy as shit.

Tone was the one family member in most black families that everyone knew had a mental disorder. Or at least that's what we all thought. No one knew what it was. No one knew why he used to go around the playground lighting ants on fire for kicks. No one knew why he sometimes he stared out into the distance and for days just became a ghost pacing around the hood. When he came back he never really had a memory of where he'd been or what he'd did. That was Tone for you. See in the hood you didn't have medical benefits. We couldn't get something like this checked out. So Aunt Tonnet just said her son was different and she put him to work the best way she knew how.

After a few awkward seconds of silence Prince looks over at me, "Tell him."

"Man...it's not even that serious."

"Tell me what?" Tone asks.

I hesitate. Things had been...peaceful for some time now. Minor infractions here and there. Stupid shit like my dad robbing the local bodega. Careless deaths when people crossed the lines. Here and there. I know it sounded like ridiculous I think these are minor but it wasn't war. No one wanted full blown war. Or at least that's what I thought.