Nichole was in some type of trouble; there was no denying that much to be true. What would happen if I showed up and saw her, all coked out, half-naked and being roughed up by the police? I started fearing for the worst. I considered breaking my cardinal rule: no hot boxing the Escape. I considered, for a brief moment, not showing up at all. If I didn’t level out even more, totally kill the high and instantly become perfectly coherent before I got there, I figured that I’d be useless. I was close to achieving that Zen, but in my mind, I started having a breakdown. A few deep breaths later and things started to come into focus clearly. I had a very specific purpose at this very moment. I brought my foot down hard on the unforgiving pedal and knew I was more than equipped to handle this crisis. I’d been handling it all my life.

The entrance to Lifted Loft was marked by a sudden change in driving surface. The road went from choppy, bumpy and broken up, to suddenly smooth. Tires went from straining to stay aligned and in-tune with the road to gliding with relative ease. The next thing anyone starts to notice about the Loft is the size of the front lawns. The bordering houses, before the road changes, all have modest lawns, littered with trees and poorly kept shrubs and curbs. Some houses have small flower gardens or decorative planters. Once you cross over, the lawns become vast and exceptionally maintained. There are perfectly kept hedges, cut into neat rectangles. The grass is all one exact length, with well-trimmed trees and the occasional row of flowers. The front gardens are gorgeous. There are no children’s toys left out, no handmade tree houses or tipped-over bikes, just brick walkways with artistically lit paths and expansive driveways leading up to two or three brand new garage doors. The street lamps are different once you get into the Loft. They are more ornate and cleaned…they just seem to give off more light. The main street that leads into the heart of Lifted Loft is called Skyway Terrace and, as I drove along, I slowed down to admire the dark, set-back houses. I imagined Christmas spent in houses like this, with a classy tree, perfectly assembled and in three very fake pieces…decorated with gold garland and glass ornaments instead of shedding tinsel and popsicle reindeer made of red pipe cleaners. I imagined catered food and family members in suits and dresses and thick wrapping paper...the good kind…from the department store. I thought about all the extra bedrooms for in-laws, cousins and friends to come stay in. At this hour of the night, there was no celebrating; just armed alarm systems set to scream out should any intruders break their way into that serene paradise.

When I made the turn onto Crescent, knowing that there was only a matter of three short blocks before Ozone intersected, I knew something was wrong…I just got this feeling…started in my back and worked its way to my shoulders. It felt like erosion; like I was about to walk into something way beyond me. As I slowed the Escape down to 15 miles-per-hour, I started to see them. They started out as crossing shadows darting across the street… some in hoodies and jeans, some in skirts and sweaters, others in leather jackets. They revealed themselves as drunk party stragglers only when they stumbled into the streetlight’s glow. Some of them were still holding Solo cups and beer cans as they tried to walk on curbs and straighten themselves up on the sidewalks. My headlights, weak as they were, still managed to trap some of those wanderers like deer. I knew I was getting close to the epicenter. As I rolled forward, there were many pairs of curious eyes peering into my driver’s side window to assess exactly who I was. The drunks started raising their cups and cans in the air, and yelling at me to pull over. Some flicked cigarette butts at my car while others narrowly missed the windows with half-full bottles. Glass shattered on the ground, creating the alarming background audio for a riot. This was absolutely violent. I remained nothing close to remotely confident that I’d make it out of there. I just kept driving forward. I had to get to the Ozone intersection. I could see the green and white sign reflect against my headlights. I began turning the wheel.

That’s when Nichole came into view. Well, I should say, came into the range of my sensitive ears. See, when I made the turn onto Ozone, there were even more kids walking down the street. The whole block was lit blue and red by the five or six police cruisers parked in front of the Rannie house. A few yards away from the police, there were only two people visibly not walking away from the scene. It was a girl and a guy, standing off to the side of the street, just off the curb. As people slowed to watch them, I began to hear the girl screaming. The scream sounded all-too-familiar…deep-pitched (for a girl)…and absolutely littered with profanity. It was Nichole. She was waving her hands in front of her, gesticulating like she was having a spasm. The guy, about a foot taller than her, had his arms crossed over his chest. He seemed to be taking the (mostly) incoherent insults in stride. Nichole moved closer to him and, as I stopped the car on the side of the street, I could see just how angry she was. Nichole got nose to nose with the guy.

She had on one of those micro black dresses. The kind that are stitched with just enough spandex, buttons and zippers to cover a girl’s ass, provided she didn’t make any extraordinary movements or mistakenly attempt to sit down. Over this dress was a short faux-leather jacket with gold accents over the pockets and zipper. Her hair, at least from what I could see from the car, was dyed a deep shade of red - blown out and sprayed. I watched from maybe ten feet away. Nichole was in such a zone that she didn’t notice my car or my face as I rolled the window down. She couldn’t hear me call her name over her own yelling, spitting and foot stomping. That was when the situation reached a crisis level. Police were close, but preoccupied assumingly rounding up various minors and confiscating vast quantities of high-octane drugs or 1000-proof bottles of liquor. The spotlights from their cruisers spilled light into the sky like the grand opening of the long arm, used car-dealership of the law. A small group of fearless kids, no longer worried about getting rounded up, had begun to form a circle around Nichole and this monstrous guy she was yelling at. He looked like a wild animal wearing a pre-frayed hoodie.

When Nichole moved closer, I thought the boy would just stand there and take some more verbal abuse. Logic told me that any sensible male, when getting yelling at by a bite-sized girl, should just nod and try to walk away. Instead, he took a step forward as well. They were even closer - now directly nose to nose, like two heavyweights at a weigh-in. To her credit, she never backed down, although severely undersized. When he pushed her to the ground, it took me a minute to register exactly what was happening. I wasn’t quite stoned, but in a daylight-savings-time-adjustment sort-of-way, I was confused by all of it. Things were going on, presumably in real-time, but it took some processing to figure out how to react. When Nichole hit the ground, hard on her tailbone, the guy immediately knew what he did. He took a few steps back and looked around, as if to double-check if anyone saw his action…the answer was that at least 25 people had seen my cousin get shoved down on the street. There was no going back now, at least for him. Surprisingly, perhaps out of shock or fear, the circle of people barely jumped in to put a stop to anything. They served no purpose…they howled into the night, shoved one another and appeared preoccupied. I played back the imaginary way I saw the next moments going down: She was on the ground, and he kept kicking her. Nichole would end up futilely shouting out for help as the circle of shadowy youths did absolutely nothing about it. When the man-beast was done kicking her bloody, he would simply walk away. He would get behind the wheel of a BMW and speed off, never to be heard from again. On the way to his car, he would pass me…as I stared out of the open window helplessly. He would look at me. I, in turn, would look down at my steering wheel, too scared to face him.

I’d be damned if I was going to let my terrible imagination materialize into reality. As that scenario played out in my head, obviously faster than the events that were actually unfolding, I decided it was time to actually man up and do something. My spinal cord took over. Acting on straight reflexes, I opened the door to the Escape. For the first time in what seemed like all night, I actually felt the cool air…I had known it was there, but this time I actually felt it. In fact, I was feeling everything. I felt my feet inside of my Pumas as they touched the ground, the sleeves of my sweatshirt itching my forearms. I realized just how underdressed I actually was for the changing weather. There was no question about it, I should have worn my fall jacket or a blazer over the hoodie, or a beanie, or something. These thoughts were animated like a Christmas special, awkwardly climbing and trying to communicate to one another inside my head. I snapped back to the present when I felt the cheap car door handle in my hand, then heard it click closed behind me.

Things were clear. The air was clear, as was the sky and the lights and the debris blowing down the street. The red and blue swept over the ground again and again. I knew exactly what I was doing...or, had hoped that I knew. Nichole was still on the ground, clutching the shoulder she landed on and performing a combination sniffling/holding back tears in between her continuing rant. The boy in question, as I got closer, was standing a cool six-foot-one. His hair was cropped close in one of those trendy, shaped fades. It was not blown back but there was product in it. His jeans and jacket, without a doubt, were designer. His white V-neck t-shirt, although it was probably expensive, still looked rather plain. I was covering ground quickly as photographed the whole scene using the camera built into my head, right behind my eyes. I was standing right in front of the guy who had violently tossed my female cousin to the ground without thinking twice. He smelled like cologne and liquor, even outside.

From the ground, Nichole said, “Anton, what are you doing? Help me up. Can we go please? Anton, what the fuck?!”

I didn’t turn to look at her. There was something tight in my right hand, my strong hand. It felt like a good-sized rock, or a baseball or an unripe piece of fruit. While I looked up at the broken out skin caked on this animal’s face, I knew what the sensation in my hand was: the tightest, most numbing fist I had ever formed.

From beyond what appeared to be glossed lips, came the words, “Bro, is this what you…”

His sentence never resolved itself. I reached back and, using everything I’d ever learned from every action movie I’d ever watched; I threw a punch. Looking back, there was probably less behind that punch than I had originally thought. When I first threw it, I felt every ounce of power I had in it. It grazed off his cheek, achieving far less than maximum impact. Immediately, I was taken back to Little League, when I’d hit the ball off the bottom part of the aluminum bat…you know, the part a few inches below the sweet spot, right before the handle of the bat starts. The vibration and sense that the whole side of my body was comprised of one giant funny bone came immediately back to me. The sensation started in my fingers and went through my hand, then back up through my arm and down the right side of my body. I winced and clutched my fist. The crowd was silent. For a minute I could actually hear the moisture in the air. I felt and understood everything. The world had come into absolute and vivid focus, and my life had switched over to electronics-store-demo high-definition. That’s when I noticed the closed hand coming directly at my face.