It was summer in America the morning when we left. The type of day when even though you live in the city, breathing in gas and pollution, you could still taste a salt on your lips, like you've recently been on the beach.
I'd taken a vow of stony silence with my Mother, not because I was a child, more so it might scare her into leaving me at home, for fear I'd blow something up out of spite when she wasn't looking.
If she was nervous about me coming with her, she certainly wasn't showing it. On the contrary, as we piled into the train along with Steven McIntosh, a spindly guy with an alarming amount of chest and nose hair, and Fonzie Hughes, a fat social worker, she was humming under her breath, and not in a maniac kind of way.
It's funny, but the entire train journey to the Airport, I never once thought of where we were going. I was much too worried about what I was leaving behind, and even more so, what would be waiting for me when I returned.
I owed this guy some money. A lot of money, if I'm being honest. 'Babes Cop' was what he liked to be called, because his real name was a little less impressive, Spencer Cooper, to be precise. He'd been dealing on our street ever since he flunked the six grade, and, on account of his brother's going to jail and his father's next drink coming out of poor Spencer's pocket.
Poor Spencer, now there's a joke if I'd ever heard one. At the age of ten, he was the first one in our class to start shaving, and every girl had begun to fancy him soon after. Now aged sixteen, he was a brute of a fellow, with evil green eyes and a bicep as thick as a man's thigh. I wouldn’t be surprised if his house that him and his old Pop lived in now would appear on the next episode of ‘Cribs’ for Christ sake.
The thought of that bicep closing around my skinny neck carried me all the way to the polished floors of NY Airport.
It was only when I had boarded the plane, shoved past Fonzie for a window seat, did I realised what the hell I'd gotten myself into.
I'd gotten myself a ticket out of a death sentence.
It was summer in America the morning when we left. The type of day when even though you live in the city, breathing in gas and pollution, you could still taste a salt on your lips, like you've recently been on the beach.
I'd taken a vow of stony silence with my Mother, not because I was a child, more so it might scare her into leaving me at home, for fear I'd blow something up out of spite when she wasn't looking.
If she was nervous about me coming with her, she certainly wasn't showing it. On the contrary, as we piled into the train along with Steven McIntosh, a spindly guy with an alarming amount of chest and nose hair, and Fonzie Hughes, a fat social worker, she was humming under her breath, and not in a maniac kind of way.
It's funny, but the entire train journey to the Airport, I never once thought of where we were going. I was much too worried about what I was leaving behind, and even more so, what would be waiting for me when I returned.
I owed this guy some money. A lot of money, if I'm being honest. 'Babes Cop' was what he liked to be called, because his real name was a little less impressive, Spencer Cooper, to be precise. He'd been dealing on our street ever since he flunked the six grade, and, on account of his brother's going to jail and his father's next drink coming out of poor Spencer's pocket.
Poor Spencer, now there's a joke if I'd ever heard one. At the age of ten, he was the first one in our class to start shaving, and every girl had begun to fancy him soon after. Now aged sixteen, he was a brute of a fellow, with evil green eyes and a bicep as thick as a man's thigh. I wouldn’t be surprised if his house that him and his old Pop lived in now would appear on the next episode of ‘Cribs’ for Christ sake.
The thought of that bicep closing around my skinny neck carried me all the way to the polished floors of NY Airport.
It was only when I had boarded the plane, shoved past Fonzie for a window seat, did I realised what the hell I'd gotten myself into.
I'd gotten myself a ticket out of a death sentence.
