Wesley
On Saturday Keysha and I rode the Pace Bus to the Lincoln Mall in Matteson, Illinois. During the ride she began asking questions about incidents that had occurred during the time I was addicted to alcohol. She didn’t sugarcoat any of her questions, she flat-out asked some very serious questions. I felt as if I were being interrogated.
“Wesley, have you ever gotten a girl drunk and taken advantage of her?”
“Wow, where did that question come from?” I asked, feeling uneasy about telling her the truth.
“You said it yourself, you’re no choirboy.”
The tone in her voice made me uneasy. I was at a crossroads. I wanted say no, but that wouldn’t have been completely accurate. Or I could tell the truth and be as open and as honest as I could and hope that she’d understand that I’d made a big mistake. I took a deep breath and then exhaled.
“What had happened was—” I paused. “No, the truth of the matter is, an incident happened at this house party about a year ago. It happened one day when there was no school. That particular day I was hanging out with my friend Ed Daley. We were sitting in his front yard drinking some booze that his twenty-one-year-old brother, who happened to be a bartender, had gotten for us. Some schoolmates rode by on their bikes and said that there was a major house party going on three blocks over. Ed and I were bored out of our minds so we were all for crashing a party. We gathered up our six-pack, got on our bikes and went to check out the party. As it turned out it was the party of the century. It seemed as if every student from our district’s high schools were there. Ed and I got in because we had alcohol and decided to get more of it by calling his brother back. Ed and I took up a collection and came up with two hundred dollars to spend. Ed’s brother showed up with a few of his buddies and they made a liquor run. They came back with all types of alcohol and Ed’s brother began mixing up really strong drinks for everyone. Everyone thought we were so cool for scoring some alcohol and a bartender. Then Ed called up Liz Lloyd and told her where the party was and to bring some Ecstasy. Liz and a few members of her crew showed up about thirty minutes later, and for those who wanted to take their experience to the next level, she supplied them with the pill, at a good price, mind you. She made a lot of money that day.
“Before long a number of people were either buzzed, bombed out or well on their way to being smashed. The music was good too. Everyone was dancing close to each other, grinding on each other with wild, horny energy. Then Liz hooked up with this young girl who was completely wasted but wanted to have sex.”
“Wait a minute. Some girl was walking around asking for it?” Keysha needed clarification.
“Yeah.”
“Who was she?” Keysha asked.
“You don’t know her. She doesn’t go to our school. But her name was Felicia Wilson. Anyway, Liz took Felicia by the hand and began dancing wildly with her in the middle of the living room where people could see them. Liz was all over Felicia but she didn’t seem to mind. One thing led to another and Liz did her.”
“What do you mean?” Keysha wanted me to spell it all out for her.
“She did her. Right there on the living room floor in front of everyone.”
“You mean to tell me that people watched?”
“Everyone wanted to watch, especially the guys.”
“Where were you when all of this was happening?”
“I was on the sofa, watching. Felicia was looking directly into my eyes as the whole thing went down. She kept mumbling something but I was too smashed to understand what she was saying. I just drank my liquor and watched the entire thing go down.”
“So Felicia basically got raped by Liz.”
“It’s sounds so horrible when you put it like that,” I said.
“I say it like that because Liz tried to do the same thing to me. She wanted to cover up the crime by calling it a good time,” Keysha said with disgust. “She tried to dope me up so that she could take full advantage of me.” Keysha huffed, “Liz just makes my skin crawl.”
I agreed with her. “She makes the skin of a lot of people crawl.”
“So, what happened next?” Keysha asked.
“I got so smashed that I passed out on the sofa. Ed woke me up by slapping my face a few times. Ed said that we had to get out of the house because the home owners would be back soon and they were not going to be happy with their son for throwing such a wild and crazy party. You should have seen the place. It had gotten completely trashed.”
“So, what happened to Felicia?” Keysha asked.
“I don’t know. When I woke up, she wasn’t there anymore.”
“So how did the rumor about you taking advantage of Felicia even get started?”
“I have no idea but that’s why they call them rumors, I suppose.” I lied. I knew who started the rumor.
“I don’t understand. You didn’t try to put the truth out there. You let the rumor grow into something that it shouldn’t have.”
“Keysha, if there is one thing that I’ve learned it’s that people are going to believe whatever they want to. I tried to detach my name from the rumor but I couldn’t.”
“Do you even know who started the rumor?” she asked.
I chuckled. “Liz Lloyd started it. She spread the word around that I’d gotten the girl drunk so that she could be taken advantage of.”
“But that’s not true,” Keysha pointed out.
“Well, I didn’t pour the alcohol down her throat. But had Ed, his brother and I not showed up with the alcohol that may not have happened.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for that. Felicia had a choice and she chose to drink,” Keysha said, and then was silent for a long moment.
“So, do you hate me now?” I asked.
“No,” she said as she threaded her fingers between mine. “Thank you for being honest.”
“I’ll always be honest with you, Keysha,” I assured her.
“I like knowing that,” she answered, and then kissed me on the cheek.
* * *
Keysha and I spent the entire afternoon at the mall. I really enjoyed being with her and spending time with her. I enjoyed sharing my food with her and watching her try on clothes and watching her help me determine what looked good on me and what didn’t. During our bus ride back home she shared with me her love of reading and suggested that I read a book called, Makes Me Wanna Holla, by journalist Nathan McCall.
“It’s a really good book about this guy who hung around the wrong crowd and eventually ended up in jail. Then when he got out he turned his life around and now actually writes for the Washington Post newspaper.”
“Are you serious?” I asked because it sounded like a book I’d like to read.
“Yes, I’m serious. Go online and Google his name for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m not much of a reader, Keysha,” I confessed.
“Well, if you’re going to hang with me, you’ve got to read. That’s not an option.”
“Why do we have to read? What’s that all about?”
“We have to read so that we’ll have different subjects to talk about. I mean, you can’t just sit around telling me how good I look all of the time. That would get boring. I need conversation. I need to know how you think. I need to know what kind of brain you have. Don’t you know that a guy who can communicate well is a big turn-on to girls?”
“No, but now I do. I guess reading a book or two for pleasure won’t hurt me. I mean, I do dabble in a little poetry from time to time but nothing serious.”
“See, reading may help you with your poetry. That’s all the more reason you should read. Besides, you don’t want to be the guy who is too cool to read or who thinks reading is only something girls do. Guys like that are so lame.” Keysha was passionate about her feelings toward reading.
“Okay, I get your point but I’m a slow reader,” I said as I slung my arm around her.
“A slow reader is only an indication of a person who isn’t reading enough. I know because I used to be a very slow reader. In fact, I used to hate reading because it put me to sleep. But my eighth-grade teacher, Ms. Shaheen, was a writer and she let me read her manuscript for a young-adult book she was working on. It was about this nerdy high school girl who wanted to hang out with the popular girls. In order to prove that she was cool enough to hang out with them, they dared her to take a fake gun into a convenience store and rob it. She did it and got away with a few hundred dollars. Anyway, what she thought was just a onetime initiation thing turned into something else. The girls decided that it would be cool to go around robbing places so that they could get money for clothes and stuff. Well, then it got real messy because one of the girls got shot by an off-duty police officer who was in the store.”
“Man, that sounds as if it could be a movie. Did she ever get the book published?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been keeping an eye out for it, but so far I haven’t found anything. After reading her manuscript, I developed a love of reading and I haven’t been able to stop.”
“So now you want to turn me into a book junkie, as well.”
“Hey, there are worse habits to have.” Keysha chuckled as she reached down into the shopping bag that was between her legs and pulled out the Phat Farm shirt she’d picked out for me. She held it up close to my body to make sure she still liked the way the shirt looked.
“You are going to look so hot in this,” she said.
I smiled at her as I leaned back in my seat. For the first time in ages I felt really good and I knew Keysha was a big part of why I felt the way I did. She didn’t judge me or preach at me and I liked that.
“There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said.
“What’s that?” Keysha asked.
“Well, it’s like this.” I stopped to think about how to phrase what I needed to say. I began to wring my hands because I was edgy. “I mean, will you be my girl?” I asked.
Keysha put the shirt back in the bag and locked her gaze upon me.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, wondering why she thought I was joking.
“Well, it’s about time you asked. You had a sister waiting and wondering what the real deal was. I mean, honestly after our first kiss you should have come back the next—”
I cut her off by kissing her passionately. When I pulled away, her eyes were still closed and she was enjoying the euphoric moment.
“So, are you going to be my girl or what?”
Keysha opened her eyes and said, “Yes.”