Page 2 of Risking it All

My car refused to start after my ten-hour shift summer job of hanging drywall. I had to run to catch a bus to get here, and Ihad no idea how I was going to return home, as I’d used the last of my cash for the fare. Walking was an option, but I was exhausted, and five in the morning seemed to come earlier with each new day. So here I sat, covered in a thick layer of drywall dust, contemplating if it would be worth using the meager minutes on my phone to text friends who didn’t have reliable transportation themselves to bum a ride.

“Okay.” Zuri took her seat in our circle and gave that sincere smile. It was lost on me, but it was definitely sincere. “Who wants to share first? And I want everyone to participate. You can either share a feeling you had for the week or a challenge. I’m not going to push for explanations. I just want participation.”

As it had been for the past three weeks since this group formed, silence. Had to admit, I felt proud. Like we were a solid front, a Teamster Union flashing the middle finger to the establishment.

“Anyone?” Zuri pressed with forced gentleness, our silence slowly driving her toward uploading her resignation papers and opening a yoga studio that had goats. “Then I’ll have to draw names, and we’ll go from there.” She shook the jar that contained slips of papers and selected one.

No whammy, no whammy, no whammy, stop.

“Lev,” Zuri said with a defeated sigh and glanced up at cartoon-fish-boy. “What’s your feeling or challenge for the week?”

“I’m concerned yeti’s aren’t being paid for the use of their name for the cups. It feels rather unfair. Also, Google has blurred the Russian island, Jeannette. I think it’s because the yeti’s live there.”

“Yes, I can understand your concerns.” Zuri nodded she understood, agreed or at least empathized, but her blinking eyes told me she was in over her head. Her attention bounced to theguy on the other side of Lev. “Demarius? What is your feeling or challenge for the week?”

Demarius gave Lev a look like his challenge for the week was figuring out how the hell he’d ended up next to Lev. He then glanced at me, and I gave a shrug.

I feel you, brother. Deep down where it might hurt if I allowed myself to feel, I definitely feel you.

Did I know Demarius? I knew him as well as the four other people here. We all went to school together. Lev, I’d seen in the hallways before. He was either going to be a sophomore or junior with the possibility that he was on round two of either of those grades. Demarius was going to be a junior in the fall. I had seen him wearing a jersey on game day for football, and on those days, he also had on a gold armband to show he had made honor roll. Our athletic department was big into pushing the students to make good grades. I had no idea if he was the star player or rode the bench, as I gave two fucks about school spirit.

Demarius had ebony skin and ear-length hair that lay in tight twists. He rubbed the back of his neck as if stressed. His khakis and button-down shirt implied he, too, just broke out of work. In fact, his name tag for a store at the mall still hung on his shirt.

“Football conditioning starts next week,” Demarius said. “Work is giving me heat about taking time off.”

Zuri leaned forward with enthusiasm. “We can definitely discuss ways to problem solve dealing with bosses, teachers, and people in authority. That’ll be a beneficial conversation for everyone here.”

Demarius gave off the vibe he was here by choice. Wasn’t a damn thing I could think of that could land him here by force like me and Lev, but who knew? Regardless, group therapy was useless. Assumingly due to government regulation, Zuri couldn’t label us with the reasons we were here, and she never asked any real questions like, “Why did you steal the money out of thatcar?” Not that she’d get a real answer if she did. Instead, we gave surface answers to surface questions, and we spent the rest of the time listening to Zuri give us surface solutions to barely real-world problems—like how to properly ask for time off work.

“Melanie?” Zuri turned to the freshman of the group. Or, rather, soon-to-be sophomore. But Melanie wore “freshman” like no one had worn freshman before. While she’d stay silent like the rest of us at the start, the moment Zuri gave her an opening, she’d gush out all her dramatic thoughts like the Niagara River surging over the rocky cliff.

Everything was dramatic with Melanie: her over-hairsprayed blond hair that was hand-curled at the ends, her beige foundation that was a shade lighter than her neck, her purple eye make-up and bright red, please-kiss-me lipstick. Plus, she had a three-inch-thick cuff of friendship bracelets encircling her left wrist and three half-heart friendship necklaces round her neck. She had big pleading blue eyes, always clutched her hands together, and sat on the edge of her seat when talking as if she had so much inside her that, any second, she might break out into song.

If that were to happen, I’d already decided I was out and that the judge would have to be sympathetic to my plight.

Melanie, in my opinion, was here by choice.

“I think my best friend is mad at me,” Melanie confessed.

“What makes you think that?” Zuri asked.

“Well, she didn’t text me at all yesterday, and when I texted her, she didn’t text back. So, then I texted our other best friend asking if my best friend was mad at me and she texted our best friend and she said that my best friend is confused as to why I think she was mad, so now I bet she’s mad that I thought she was mad.”

Clear as a volcanic-ash plume on a smog-ridden day.

Zuri soaked this in as if replaying it in her brain, then eventually said, “It’ll be good for us to discuss expectations of others and how to minimize them.”

Oh, my expectations for others were already fucking low, but I was more than happy to listen to tips on how to continue to lower them.

“Macie, how about you?” Zuri asked, and my eyes immediately went to her.

Macie Hutchins. The only other senior-to-be besides me in our group. She sat across from me, and like she had since my freshman year, caught my attention just by existing. She had an unassuming beauty to her that I liked: long dark chestnut hair, curves I appreciated in those hip-hugging jeans, and a flat stomach that peeked out from the hem of a white tank top. She had on a cropped, crocheted, summer sweater that kept her from breaking the school’s insipid no-bare-shoulders policy. She had the face of an angel—high cheekbones, smooth skin with a summer tan, and freckles around the bridge of her nose as though the sun loved her so much it gave her a kiss.

She’d entranced me from the first time I saw her in Spanish I class our freshman year, but I never once approached her. We lived in two different worlds. While we inhabited that area of town where the line between rich and poor wavered and could change from one side of the street to the other, she stuck with her rich friends, and I stuck with the people I knew had my back on the streets. Life worked better that way.

Macie had the group’s attention, though I doubted her current popularity had anything to do with her beauty or her well-known straight-A brains.

Even if mystery shrouded the other group members’ reasons for being here, everyone knew why Macie was here. She’d been carjacked a few months back after leaving at the third quarter of a basketball game being held at our school. She took a bullet, andthe thief left her for dead, bleeding out on the street. The story was all over the news for weeks, and the gossip around school still hadn’t died down. If any of us needed therapy, it was Macie, and it sucked we were the ones she was stuck with.

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