Ma’s always let me have freedom, as long as my grades were in check and I didn’t get into trouble at school. But ever since her friend Maurice’s Nathaniel got shot by that officer back in June, she’s been looking at me weird, like she wants to take that freedom away to shield me from what’s out there.
She lets me go, and I step back into the rain, now unaffected by its wrath as I rush toward Dre’s apartment.
The guy at the door hesitates before going inside, coming back moments later with permission to let me in. My heart goes wild as I realize that I’m about to see Dre again for the first time in over a week. I know it’s not important, but I wonder if I look okay.
I close my umbrella and slowly climb the steps, trying to gainsome nerve before entering Dre’s apartment. When I get to the top step, I breathe out.
Dre knows it’s me coming. If he didn’t want me to, he wouldn’t have let me in.
I open the door. His living room is dim as I slowly walk across it, worried I’ll trip and bump into something, fingers vibrating against my sides. His bedroom door creaks loudly as I push it, stepping through.
Dre’s at his desk, head tilted up, eyes closed like he’s dreaming. He’s wearing a green durag. His dark skin is bright despite the dullness of the lights, and his beard has grown out a little. He’s trying to look like he’s older than eighteen again, wants to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, I’m scared of what growing up means.
I think sometimes we—boys from here—are dealt such a shitty hand that we forget we are minors, kids, in the eyes of the law. I guess technically, eighteen is adult enough, but not when most of your childhood has been robbed, like Dre’s was.
“Hey, Dre,” I say. He doesn’t move.
“What do you want?” he asks, his deep voice rattling my heart. I’ve missed that voice.
“To talk,” I say. His eyes open and his head drops forward. His stare locks on me and I feel like uncooked meat hanging in the butcher shop, surveyed and judged.
He pushes himself out of the chair, slowly walking over to me, though he’s avoiding my gaze now.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he says. The pounding in my chest only gets faster.
“If that were true, you’d have told that boy to not let me in. You wouldn’t even respond.”
“We were friends. I wasn’t gonna turn you around, make you look like a fool,” Dre says with a forced laugh.
We were friends.
“Just friends?” I ask. He looks at me now, his eyes glassy. I feel a pang in my chest. “Do you kiss all your friends, Dre?”
He sniffs and shifts uncomfortably.
“Sleep with them too?” I continue, vision blurring. “Tell them you love them?”
I wipe my eyes. I need to focus. He’s quiet, staring at me now, unwavering.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Don’t lose focus.
“We have different paths,” he starts, looking away from me again. “I’m a high school dropout, I have no family, I live to survive. Your path is school, then a job, and looking after your ma. You don’t know how much I think about you, Von. I want to call you but I can’t, because this thing we have has an expiration date, whether it’s when you go to some fancy college or when you realize that you’re too different from me.”
I want to say that isn’t true, but I have a feeling I can’t be certain about that.
“You say you love me, yetyour boysbeat me—”
“’Cause you weren’t gonna deal for me anymore. Everyone gets an exit beating!” he says with his voice raised. This conversation is riling him up. Dre’s usually a lot calmer, but everything about him seems on edge today.
I don’t care for his excuses and I don’t want to hear his gang’s political bullshit.
“You could have stopped them, Dre, but you didn’t. You knew what was gonna happen to me.”
“I wanted to stop it, but then they’d ask questions—”
“Think they don’t know what we do when I come here? Think they’re senseless?”
