Here's a little short story I wrote:
Fiona and Sara
were beaming as they excitedly hopped into Sara’s new Jeep Cherokee her
parents just bought her for her sixteenth birthday. Clad in two hundred
dollar jeans, along with a vintage tee shirt, boots and a hooded jacket, Sara
drove with purpose into the center of Philadelphia. It was cold for October,
but the night was clear. They passed the art museum where Rocky Balboa famously
graced its steps, then through the array of international flags leading into
Center City. Town Hall was next, its massive clock radiating a fluorescent
yellow in the darkness, and then to China Town where they had spent many
weekends going to concerts at the Trocadero or the TLA. Past all of the stores they had shopped in
with their parents on their days off and the art schools where they had both
received scholarships for summer classes, they cruised—detached.
Then the brightly lit streets
devolved into dark, narrow alleyways—the ritzy shops and restaurants morphed
into the old Projects, a slew of dilapidated houses sloppily slumped together
like a crowded subway. Inside was even worse—nearly double the building’s human
capacity lived too closely together, never able to savor a private moment.
Tall, overly muscular black men in
dark clothing prowled the littered sidewalks, daring any passerby to merely
glance in their direction. They walked like they owned the streets—probably not
too far of a stretch. Every now and then the girls heard noises they couldn’t
explain, or maybe just didn’t want to—a painful scream, thunderous shouting,
loud bangs.
Two tiny white
girls from a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia, they didn’t quite fit into the
scene of the northeast side. Still driving, they became very aware of how they
were perceived by the inhabitants of the “hood.” But they were young, ignorant
to the danger of traveling alone to their city’s ghetto on a weeknight, and
they paid no mind to the unwelcome stares and shouts that were ever present.
Pulling up to a
house on 15th Street and Girard Avenue, they questioned—briefly—if the man they
were coming to meet would actually show. Fiona pulled out her cell phone,
preparing to dial the strange man’s number just as a loud knock came to the driver’s
side window. Startled, Sara looked to her left where a man stood tall,
purposeful. She glanced at Fiona, who slapped her arm, gesturing for her to
roll down the window. Mechanically, she did it and looked wide-eyed at the man
before her.
“Hey,” Sara said as coolly as she could muster. “So, you got what I
need?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, mumbling,
“Pull up over here and turn your lights off. I’ll be out.”
He flashed Fiona a
smile, big white teeth against a dark canvas. He disappeared into the night
like a panther, only after looking around cautiously and signaling Sara to park
her car up the street at another house—not his.
It
felt like hours as they sat idly in the car—lights off, keys out of the
ignition, only the sound of anxious breathing and occasional sniffling—a result
of their new affinity for nasally inhaled drugs. Then from the unlit town house
their man emerged, heading towards the car. He climbed into the back seat
without warning, handing Fiona the purchase.
“80 bucks, right?” she asks.
“Yep.”
“Holla fo’ 80 dolla!” Fiona
squeals, an inside joke stemmed from the rarity of scoring an eight ball of
cocaine for only eighty dollars. The dealer laughed, said he’d probably see
them again, and went on his way; it was systematic, every day business.
“Why is it yellow?” Sara asked Fiona
while examining the purchase, still new to the life of a cocaine addict.
“It’s just like that sometimes.
They have to cut it with something,” she said, pulling a rolled up dollar bill
out of her purse—sampling the product. “Feels good to me,” Fiona laughed easily
after a long inhale. Sara smiled, comforted by her confidence, yet silently
vowing never to drive here again.
Like many promises she made to herself that year, it was a lie.
~*~
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