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

29.

            Like I said, Blaze and Faith's parents moved away less than a month later, which was about how much of the summer we had left after Faith's funeral. It was almost a relief to me when that crappy summer finally came to an end. I never got a hold of Spider to tell him about Faith. I don't think anyone was able to, but I knew he had been there at the funeral in spirit, just like he said he would be.

Li'l Jay and I didn't talk much after that. It's not that we were avoiding each other, we just didn't run into one another. When I did see him, though, he was always strung out, and each time it got progressively worse. He walked around like he had just come out of surgery and the drugs hadn't completely worn off yet. It had almost gotten to the point where I didn't even want to run into Li'l Jay if I could help it. It just hurt too much to see my baby brother stumbling around like a zombie all day and all night long.

            On a positive note, my father did come back a few days after the funeral. It turned out that he had not yet gone on his trip to...uh, the Bermuda Triangle...and wasn't going for another couple of weeks.

He was devastated when I told him about Faith, though. I think that she had always reminded both of us of my mother.

            When he first came back from his mysterious disappearance, I slept better than I had in weeks. It had begun to tear at my nerves to be in that house all alone every night after getting used to having contact with people every day of the week. I was so relieved, in fact, that I may have even slept for a few days straight immediately after he got back.

            Once, on one of the off days that I was actually up before noon, I was sitting in my room watching television when the doorbell rang. TV had become my only escape from reality, and I lost myself in it every chance I got.

            "Jay's here!" I heard my father call from the front of the house. Automatically, I glanced over at the window.

            "Hey."

            I raised a curious eyebrow towards the door as he came in and sat down. "Hey."

            "I was just thinking about...stuff." He waited. I didn't know whether I was supposed to respond or not. "Why don't we ever see each other anymore? I mean, we used to be together all the time before...when everyone else was here. Hell, we were together before most of them even moved into the neighborhood." He waited again for me to respond, but still got nothing. "I'm so tired, Silly. So tired. I don't want to be high anymore. It's making me sick."

            I had known that for a long time. I looked dully at Li'l Jay and for the first time ever, I had nothing to say to him. It's funny, but when I looked at him, nothing about his outer appearance had changed. Even still, I may as well have been looking at a total stranger. He pulled a handful of drugs from his pocket and put them on my bed.

I know that this was supposed to mean a lot to me, and a few weeks earlier it probably would have, but by then the empty gesture was in vain. Besides, I had already seen him pull this trick too many times before. I wanted to take the drugs from him, partly because I wanted them for myself, but mostly because I wanted to help the kid out. It was just too bad that I knew he would only buy more if I kept them. I also knew that it wouldn't help either of us for me to get strung out, too.

            "I promise I won't buy anymore," he vowed, and he thought that he meant what he was saying. I shook my head sadly. "I promise," he repeated, a little louder.

            I looked down at his shaking hands, then up into his beautiful thirteen-year-old face, and even further into his hundred year old eyes. It was hard for me to believe that this kid hadn't even made it to high school yet. I looked away from those trembling hands, from his still innocent looking child-like face, and away from his old, sunken in eyes.