“I thought you knew! I’m like Curry with the shot, boy!” She winked while imitating shooting a ball.
I glanced around the café. “Come on,” I told her.
She looked at me with wide eyes. “Are you fucking for real?”
“As real as those freckles on your face.”
I stood from the table and led her toward the restroom. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to check, and it was text from my brother Jalen, waiting for me to send him my work. I stared at the text, debating whether to continue to go along or face the factthat I needed to do the shit myself. How was I to explain that my baby brother had been helping me get through college? Was I capable of doing it myself? Yes. Did I take the easy way out? Yes. Now that sports were put on pause, what was my excuse? I felt like shit. I replied to him, telling him I had it, but did I?
PHOEBE
I twirled my pencil in my hand as the professor rambled. I was just now coming off my euphoric feeling that Xavier had given me during my break between classes. Now it was back to reality. My phone lit up with a message from my team calling an impromptu practice. I knew we had a match coming up, but a part of me hoped that my parents would go along with my request not to play this year. However, their expectations were higher than before. A part of me missed Kyle being alive; at least then, I would’ve probably been able to do what I wanted. All the pressure of being this trophy-like child took a toll on me, and the more I thought about it, the more my anxiety started to rise.
It wasn’t just the pressure of my family but the weight I carried from Kyle’s death. I tried to put it out of my mind, but that day never stopped playing in my head.
When Kyle came home for the summer from Hillsdale, it was different. He seemed off, and it was as if my parents didn’t notice, but I did. I didn’t know if it was the weight of the Ivy League or the weight of my parents’ high expectations. He stayed in his room most of the day unless he was leaving for whatever reason or to eat. The sounds of hisrap music slid beneath my door, pulling my focus away from what I was doing. Frustrated, I stormed out of my room, down the hall to his door. I banged on it because I knew he wouldn’t hear me if I called his name. Moments later, he swung it open.
“What!” he shouted at me.
“Turn that shit down. I can’t think!” I hissed.
His face looked flushed, his eyes were low, and a belt was secured tightly around his arm. When I saw the track marks, my eyes widened.
“Kyle,what the fuck are you doing?” I asked as I tried to barge into the room.
He was high as hell. “Something you wouldn’t understand. Now, leave me alone,” he said as he tried closing the door, but I brushed past him.
His room was filthy with trash, old food, and dirty clothes. See, that was the thing. As long as we were everything our parents wanted us to be, they didn’t bother to do mental checks on us. It was a free-for-all. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t come in here to see that Kyle was clearly going through something. His sluggish walk toward the bed told me that this was something he had been doing for a while. I loved my brother, and seeing him like this hurt me. I began picking up the trash to clean up his space.
“Kyle, what’s wrong? How did we get here?”
He laughed. “How do you think? Being sheltered is fun until you are let loose. It gives you space to explore, and once you get a taste of heaven, you will never turn back.”
I tossed what I had in my hand into a bag. “This isn’t a taste of heaven. This is self-destruction.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it is. You know what it feels like. I heard you’ve been to the other side. Messing with Syior. Tell me how heaven feels.”
My body stilled because I thought sneaking to the East End was a secret. “I-I—”
“You don’t have to explain. I get it. At least you can live how you want. Now get out,” he said as his body fell back on the bed.
I didn’t know what to say because, so far, I had been able to be a little free. College was starting soon, and the idea of choosing an HBCU over an Ivy League was a big deal, but my parents didn’t say anything.
I left Kyle’s room and went back into mine. I hadn’t been in my room for more than twenty minutes before I heard doors opening and closing. I knew it wasn’t my parents because they were off on a trip and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. I rushed to my window and saw Kyle backing out of the driveway. I knew he was higher than a giraffe’s ass, and the last thing I needed was for him to get hurt while my parents were away. I snatched my keys, hurried out of my room and down the steps. Once outside, I hopped in my car and took off out of the driveway. I was a few cars behind him as he drove toward the East End.
He swerved a little, braked randomly in the middle of the street, and even sped past a few red lights. When he pulled into a beat-down motel parking lot, I knew he was going to buy drugs. My fear now was that Syior was the one serving it to him.
I parked on the far end and watched as he got and staggered his way to a room. He knocked on the door and waited. When it opened, I couldn’t see who was on the other side as he walked in. Something in my gut told me something wasn’t right, so I got out of the car and headed toward the room. My first thought was to knock, but I knew if I did, Kyle would glance out the peephole and not let me in.
The sounds of grunts and moans caught my attention. “He’s having sex?”
I noticed there was a small view through the window’s curtain, and I stepped up to peek in. My stomach sank, my heart raced, and right then I knew why Kyle was doing what he did. I waited outside the door for another thirty minutes, and when I heard it open, I stood there as an older man came walking out. He looked at me curiously, thenwalked away as if I didn’t know what they were just in there doing. I pushed the door open to see Kyle sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I knew you were following me. You shouldn’t have come.”
I walked over to him. “Kyle, okay, so you like men. Who cares?” I tried laughing it off.
When he glanced up at me, his eyes were red, but the soul that used to be in them was gone. “I cannot be who I want to be. Pops would never accept me this way. I tried hiding what I felt, but I can’t. The drugs are how I cope, and still, it’s not enough. I can’t even love like I want to. I felt trapped. The man I love is just as afraid as I am. At least you can do that. You think I’m perfect? Well, this is what perfection looks like.”
