I almost died because I was stupid. Maybe that’s what saved me. I didn’t even react in the right way. I just wanted to smoke.
I had spent the morning taking my GED and while I was waiting at the bus station a guy limped over to me: baggy jeans, a black jacket with crosses studded over it, and gold grills covered his teeth. He sat next to me on the bench. It was ninety degrees outside, not sure why he wore that jacket. He wore the scent of sweat and tobacco like cologne. His neck was thick like somebody inflated it.
I got erythang you need, he said, like somebody selling beer at a baseball game. Pills, yay, molly, anything. You want percs? Fent free. Tested.
I asked him if he had weed.
Best in Orange County. Bubba kush, hindu kush, OG, purp, hash, erythang. Dabs, pens, grass. All fire. Good prices. Ten dollas a g.
I’ll cop a g, I said.
Thing is I don’t have it on me. The kush. I have a perc. Want a perc? Take my number.
I put his number in my phone and saved it as Busstop Weed Dude.
He pulled out a little white pill and handed it to me.
You sure this is clean?
Positive. You think I’m sellin boof? I just taked one.
How much for it?
Free sample. I take care of my custos.
You sure it’s not gonna kill me?
Watch, he said. He pulled another little white pill from a baggy in his jacket, split half of it with his fingers and put one half in his mouth.
See, he said. He put the white pill between the gold grills and chewed it down. He swallowed and then opened his mouth, showing the leathery tongue, to show it was empty.
Alright, bro, he said. He stood up and dapped me up. Hit me up. Who you bank with?
I didn’t understand him, so he asked again.
I don’t, I said.
Come on erybody do.
Nah. I’m too broke, I said.
His bus arrived. Alright bro, he said again. He got on it with a guy that I hadn’t seen but was apparently standing next to him the whole time we were talking.
#
I hit up Chang, my only friend. I met him on Twitter. We sent each other memes. I’d go over his house, and we’d play video games, watch shows and make music we were convinced would make us famous. Really, we just smoked until the paranoia almost felt like peace, until the white walls of his bedroom turned into rain.
The first time I met him in person, he didn’t say hello. He told me he was autistic and never went to regular school. Got disability checks. One of his cheeks looked swollen, and one eye was much lower than the other. Often, he would stare and zone out and sometimes wouldn’t hear anyone around him no matter how many times you called his name. I was convinced he had a speech problem until one day we were walking to my apartment, and he said, very clearly, This is exactly what they want for humanity. Smushed on top of each other. Scared to leave the house. Distrustful of their neighbors. Dumb, broke, and lazy. Cats and dogs. Living in squalor. They’re rounded up right here. A farm. In this neighborhood. Feeding us drugs and poisoned food. Working to be slaughtered. The overlords always watching, always making sure that the lot is complacent in their misery.
Damn, I said. I should move.
Even when Chang was zoning out and gazing into the aether there was something in him that seemed more present than most people I’d met. More authentic. He was good at the keys.
He was twenty-five years old and lived with his rich parents. I needed those disability checks more than he did, if you ask me. Usually he had weed, but his dealer got shot. So, we made a mission to find a new guy. I never knew if he found out that I had been stealing weed from him.
We were playing PlayStation when I texted Busstop Weed Dude. He said he had weed and sent me the pin of where to meet him. It was a 45-minute bus ride.
At 7pm, I crushed the Percocet and snorted it, and then we got on the bus. There was light out when we started, night when we got there. The bus was empty for most of the ride. Passengers got on and off in waves. A group would get on at the same stop and then get off at the same stop like one organism.
I felt nervous. Not sure why. Maybe it was all the billboards about Disney World and Busch Gardens outside of the rundown motels, the prostitutes wearing Minnie Mouse ears in front of Dairy Queen. An old man on the bus asked me, Where you going young man?
None of your business, I said.
I’m askin because you don’t look from here.
Right about that, I said. I deepened my voice in these situations to sound tougher than I actually was.
Chang just told him out right. Arrow Park.
Arrow Park? the old man said. You sure? You know what that is?
What? I said.
Bad neighborhood. Especially at night. What you goin there for? Y’all look too respectable for that.
I didn’t respond. I shook my head at Chang to say shut the fuck up, but he’d already tuned out of the conversation and was staring at a nursing home ad by the window.
The old man waited for a response that he never got. Can’t be for anything good, he said. God Bless. Then he walked off the bus.
I was falling asleep from the pill and almost missed the stop. We got off and right across was an old, rundown apartment building with the sign Arrow Park Apartments hanging off of it. Next to that there was a McDonald’s, a Dollar Tree, a Ross, and a Bank of America.
The courtyard of the building looked like it had just been bombed by a drone. Concrete rubble, plastic bags, and trash spread everywhere. Older people dressed young, younger people dressed old, groups dressed in basketball shorts, black tank tops, black Airforce 1s. Bright red eyes glowed from the tips of cigarettes and blunts. We kept going. Needed weed.
I called Busstop Weed Dude. He didn’t answer. A minute later he appeared at the glass doors of the building with two other guys. One guy had dreads as thick as a tree trunk and the other was short and stout like a pitbull and was covered head-to-toe in tats – the same guy who had been next to him at the bus station.
Chang was zoning out again and studying all the graffiti on the walls of the building. Distorted faces, tags like Carne, SPAM, and RIP GREEN FACE. He pulled out a paint marker and was about to draw something on the wall, but Busstop Weed Dude called out to us.
Ay bruh, Busstop Weed Dude said. Don’t do that. Gotchu inside. Come on. I grabbed Chang and we followed him into the building. Eyes peered out of the apartments as we walked through the linoleum hallway. I’d look back and someone would poke their head out from a door to watch us. Most of the doors were open like they weren’t rooms, but tents or huts. It looked like everyone knew The Outsiders had arrived.
We went up two flights of stairs and walked into an apartment lit by dull yellow lamps that didn’t have shades over their bulbs. There were no sheets on the mattress, and the one window in the room was smashed. I stepped on blunt wraps and piles of clothes before I got to a chair. Clear plastic cups half of yellow tobacco water from Black & Milds, cigarettes, and blunts were scattered on the floor and bedstands like some lab. The room smelled like mold and tobacco. The bathroom door was open and the toilet looked stained yellow and sticky. I felt nauseous.
How much weed y’all buyin? Busstop Weed Dude said.
Three grams, I said.
That’s it? Y’all came over here for three grams. How much cash y’all got on you?
The two other guys were whispering things to each other by the door.
They cool, Busstop Weed Dude reassured me when I looked over. So how much bread you bring?
Thirty dollars. But I think I’m good.
I know you got more than that.
I showed him. Thirty dollars.
So, you came over for three grams of kush and brung him? He nodded at Chang with a look of disgust. You goofy, bruh. You know where you at right now? He sounded angry.
You said you sold weed.
How about your bank account? How much you got in there?
Zero dollars, I said.
What about him? He dumb or something?
I didn’t answer. I didn’t care. I sat dumb in a congested room. A breeze came through the broken window. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
Fuck it, Busstop Weed Dude said. I’ll get you three.
I handed him the bills.
Aight. Lemme go get it.
He was gone for a while, but the two other guys waited at the door like guards. After twenty minutes of waiting, I thought he wasn’t coming back. I started getting up to leave and the guys told me to sit back down. Chang was pacing now and no matter how many times they told him to sit down he didn’t hear them. They eventually left him alone. He looked at me like his eyes were going to explode out of his head.
After thirty minutes, Busstop Weed Man came back in. But he didn’t bring the weed. He brought a gun. Chang started screaming from his slender neck like he had just gotten shot. The gun was pointed at me. I looked down the barrel, I saw the nasty room around me, the dumb look of the Busstop Dude behind it, and Chang on the floor now, holding his head, screaming even louder.
Who you bank with? Busstop dude said. Let’s go to the bank right now. Gimme your wallet.
Then I broke. I couldn’t stop laughing.
I might’ve laughed louder than Chang could scream. It hurt my stomach. The whole situation was stupid. Is this how I die, I asked myself. A dumb 17-year-old in some idiot’s subsidized housing? Busstop Dude put his finger on the trigger.
I’ll blast you right now, he yelled.
There was a time when I actually cared. But not now.
I laughed and Busstop Dude took a step back. He didn’t hold the gun with strength but with weakness. He was used to silence. Or begging. Me laughing confused him. Chang’s shrieks bothered him.
I’m bein for real, he said. Shut yo asses up. His voice lost intensity, went up an octave, and I imagined him as a child. Confused, soft, small, the world happening to him. I laughed harder.
He relaxed his hand and put the gun down for a second and as soon as he did, Chang ripped the lamp from the wall and smashed his head in with its heavy base. Warm spurts of blood ejected onto the bed. The two guys rushed over but Chang quickly grabbed the gun that slipped from his hand and pointed it at them.
I started laughing even harder. I was in tears. Chang stood there defiantly like some demigod protecting us. The two thugs put their hands up. Busstop Dude was still on the floor cradling a Yeezy slide like a stuffed animal.
Yo chill, one of them said. He’s stupid. He’d shoot.
Chang motioned the gun at them and told them to back up. They backed up into the hallway and stood away about 50 yards. We ran down the stairs and out onto the street, jumped a fence, and booked it to the stores. We didn’t look back.
We ran as fast as we could and with the gun under his shirt we went into the McDonalds bathroom. It was empty. We locked the door. I told Chang to give me the gun. A revolver. Big, heavy and clunky. I checked the cartridge and it was empty. The gun didn’t have any bullets in it. I started laughing again, I laughed so hard I went to the urinal to piss. I laughed as I pissed.
Chang, I said between laughs. Chang, you’re the smartest guy I’ve ever met. I want you to hate me, I want you to never speak to me again.
Chang was quiet for a while. He wrapped the gun in toilet paper and threw it in the trash. He started peeing in the urinal next to me and started laughing too.