Dignity's Worth

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Time flew by like I never knew it. We all eventually got over Mr. Rosenthal's death. The guys who killed him were never found though, that's one thing that hurts me to this day. I mean those motherfuckers got away with murdering an innocent man, and for what? For doing his goddamn job? Even you gotta admit that's messed up.

But what could we do? Mary and her mother never really forgot the injustice that had been brought over them, and neither did I. But there was no opportunity to prove myself. Or at least that's what I thought.

TOKENTOWN, 1978

I'd just turned sixteen. It was a glorious year for me in many ways, some of the reasons of which I shall reveal later. But you have to understand that at this point both I and Sal were one of the handsomest kids around school. Hell, I'd even heard rumours of girls going up to Sal and asking them to date him, which was considered very bold in the city at that time. Girls almost never admitted having crushes on guys. But I guess that's how it was with us. That's just the way we rolled.

Mary on the other hand, was something other girls could only dream of being. While I and Sal were enjoying our temporary status as 'one of the most handsome guys', she was easily the prettiest girl in the entire area. I mean there was no competition between her and anybody else. She was your classical example of a 'beauty with brains' which was something that was quite rare back then. And I still think it is quite rare now, which is why I'm glad I met Mary.

I know what you're thinking right now. Did I like her? Did I have a little crush on her? I'm gonna be honest with you. I had no clue. I'd known this girl since we were kids, and so it was a little difficult for me to decide if or not I liked her. I mean she'd hold my hand and everything when we'd go to the movies, and she'd even kiss me on the cheeks sometimes. And yes she'd cried a lot in my arms, but that's something that I don't like to mention again and again. It just has some pretty bad memories to it. All in all, I hope you get the point. We were best friends, that was for sure. But neither of us knew whether we could ever be anything more than that. And I liked it that way. A little ambiguity is always nice.

Now if there was a girl who looked as beautiful as her, there were bound to be some troubles. She wasn't the least interested in talking to any other guys besides me and Sal, and that was only because we'd known each other for so long. I and she had kinda become the same person, as a matter of fact. We were so used to liking the same things, having the same hobbies, cracking the same jokes that it got annoying at times. But her being with me meant that every single guy around the block was jealous of me. And that shit brought trouble home sometimes.

Now I need to warn you about my use of language here. A lot of people curse in this story, so you better get used to it. And if you're one of those 'cursing is bad' kind of people, then you better not read. You can't hope to listen to a story like mine without some swearing in it okay? Point is, deal with it.

So I was hanging around with Sal one day after lunch and he happened to say something that intrigued me a lot.

"You know Martin?" asked he.

Now everybody knew Martin. He was a very controversial kid.

"Yeah." I replied, "What about him?"

"He's got something going on in this place man."

"What do you mean?"

Sal leaned in.

"You know how the teachers say somebody's trying to bring drugs to school all the time?"

"Yeah." I nodded. It was a widely known fact that somebody had a hold of heroin and cocaine in the locality and was distributing it at school. Well not those drugs, but small scale ones. Weed and shit. Now there wasn't a lot of proof of that happening, but everybody knew what went on. The only problem is, no guy involved in the business was ever caught red handed. In fact, there was an entire committee that was set up just to see if they could get hold of any one of those kids.