Prologue

Winter Storm

Thanksgiving Day had never been remarkable prior to this one. Turkey, baked macaroni and cheese, candied yams, collard greens and cornbread stuffing are all one could normally think of when speaking of the festivities surrounding this day of giving thanks for all of one’s blessings, but on this particular day, November 25, 2007, blessings were the last thing on Brooklyn’s mind. In fact, she couldn’t fathom one thing to be thankful for. Not even her life felt like a blessing. Hell, for her, the energy it took just to stay alive at this point wasn’t worth the misery and embarrassment.

“Hey, Brooklyn, you got a late start today, I see,” one of her fellow addicts called out as she headed toward the shooting gallery upstairs.

“Yeah. Had a lot of shit on my mind, that’s all. But you know me. Nothing can hold me down.” She forced a laugh, though she felt like the walls were caving in on her, that she would have to fight extremely hard to pull through.

Brooklyn stood peering aimlessly out of the window as the setting sun gently displayed patches of shade onto one side of the street. A mixture of ice and snow continued to fall from the sky, turning the streets into what resembled an ice skating rink. The crackhouse, which she frequented daily to get high, was clouded with smoke, and reeked of urine and feces from the various hidden crevices where the fiends had released themselves. She felt like she wanted to puke.

She rested the right side of her thin frame up against the old wooden windowsill, her feet relaxed on the badly frayed rippled linoleum flooring. Her face full of dismay, she wasn’t thinking about getting high or having jumped over the missing steps at the entrance of the building, all the while praying not to land on her ass in the basement. Nor the hole in the wall of the adjacent house that she had to climb through to get into the room where she now stood. Nor the numerous mice crawling, weaving in and out of holes in the walls, or the drug dealers in the other room selling their product to the fiends.

For the moment, all Brooklyn could think about was being just three short blocks away from her mother’s home and too embarrassed to go spend the holidays with her family. She had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer and hadn’t yet been able to reveal this to them. After years of unprotected sex and several untreated sexually transmitted diseases, her reckless behavior had finally run up and kicked her in the ass.

Brooklyn couldn’t have cared less that she was losing her hair, or breaking out with bumps all over her face, and rashes that covered fifty percent of her body, all the result of the multiple illegal drugs she shot into her system daily. Though she’d always been the bad seed of the family, having an illness like cancer would make them feel sorry for her, and she wasn’t interested in sympathy, not wanting to appear weak.

Fiends filled each room all at different levels of their high. The house was cold, only having heat in one room, which was obtained by running extension cords from the house next door. From the outside, one would assume the house was empty. With a huge orange sticker on the front of it labeling it unsafe, and the front door and most of the windows boarded up, normal people, like those not under the influence of drugs, wouldn’t even be caught dead on that side of the street.

Brooklyn’s mind was all over the place. She thought about her modeling career, about how’d she’d allowed herself to lose everything she’d worked for, her many failed attempts at relationships, and of course her children, one of whom she hadn’t seen since he was six months old. But regardless of which path her mind would follow, the road would always end at the same destination, Dover Street.

Dover Street was in the northern part of Philadelphia. All of the houses, which were pretty small, had once been full of life and excitement but were mostly empty now. No matter how hard she tried, she could never stay away from the block very long.

This morning she woke up, quickly got dressed, and hurried to the house to try and beat the rush. Today felt different, even down to the dogs barking on the corner and the wind that blew ice in her face as she struggled to see through it. She’d arrived a few minutes later than normal and found all of her buddies already floating on cloud nine. They’d created a “snowball,” a mixture of heroin and cocaine which they would place inside of a glass pipe, put fire to, and smoke. Instead of joining in, she was drawn to the window where her feet had been planted for the past twenty minutes.

Joey, one of the dealers who ran the house, yelled from the doorway, “Yo, Brooklyn, are you going to cop or what? You know you can’t stay here if you’re not. This ain’t no goddamn recreation center!”

The vibration of Joey’s voice startled everyone in the room, especially JC, who’d just wrapped his brown leather belt around his upper arm, preparing to shoot his heated concoction into his bulging vein.

Brooklyn snapped out of her daydream. She turned to face him before taking a step away from the window. “Yeah, Joey. I’m sorry. I have some shit on my mind.”

Joey’s look of disgust changed to anger. “Well, you know the rules,” he yelled. “So what’s on your mind is some personal shit that you can take outside, if you ain’t getting high.” He motioned his hands toward the door.

“I said I’m gonna cop, Joey. Damn! I come here every day, and I always cop, so you don’t have to try to play me. Just give me a minute, OK.” Brooklyn hated that her moment of deep thought had been ruined.

“Yeah, a minute is all you’re gonna get too!” he roared. “I’ll be back in here to check, and you better either have some money in your hand, or the handle of the front door on your way out!” He turned around and walked through the halls, checking in on some of the other patrons of the house, the thumping noises from his large feet fading as he moved away from the room.

Brooklyn wanted to get high. In fact, her body was yearning for drugs, but her troubles had a grip on her thoughts and she was having trouble releasing them as she resumed her position, staring out into the ice storm. So far, the time had gone by without incident, but it was still early. There was rarely a dull moment in the house, also known as “The Tower,” where mayhem could erupt at the drop of a dime. Either someone was getting thrown out for nonpayment or being carried out when they overdosed.

She quickly turned around when she heard footsteps nearing the door. Joey was back as promised. She dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the folded twenty-dollar bill she had inside. The same twenty dollars she’d earned from giving oral sex to one of the sloppiest men she’d ever seen was a few moments away from being gone with the wind. One thing about Brooklyn, she always managed to get enough money to support her habit, even if it meant stealing from her own relatives and friends.

Joey motioned with his hands for her to follow him, and she walked behind him toward the room with the drug supplies. She stopped just outside of the door, as she normally did, and waited patiently to be served like a child in the lunch line.

Joey knocked on the door, which was bolted shut, and called out the items he needed. A bodyguard stood next to Joey, his hands in his pocket, firmly gripping his handgun, in case one of the crackheads got out of hand and had to be taken care of. Through a makeshift mail slot in the center of the brown wooden door, a bag filled with vials of crack cocaine inside of a sandwich bag was passed into his hand. He turned around, took the money from Brooklyn’s extended hand, and replaced it with the bag of drugs.

She then walked away, returning to the room where she was prior to walking down the long hallway with him. She grabbed a seat off to the far right side of the room and sat down, trying to get comfortable.

Brooklyn took a quick surveillance and noticed Stacey shooting a mixture that she’d just heated into her veins. Stacey’s eyes rolled into the back of her head within seconds as her body relaxed and her arm rested at her side. Brooklyn stared at her, anxious to get the same feeling, but her mind was still fixated on the test results her doctor had read to her earlier in the week.

Over and over in her head, she repeated, Cancer? How the hell did I get cancer? Out of all the ailments I could get, why cancer?

After a few more minutes of sulking in her misery, she opened up the bag of drugs and began the steps that would land her in the relaxing state she needed to be. Ten minutes later she was in a fantasy world, still sitting in the chair, her head resting on the back of it. The room was quiet, and the smell in the air made it that much more tranquil.

She had almost fallen asleep when a loud thump stunned her. Stacey had fallen down on the floor and began convulsing. Everyone in the room was now focusing their attention on her as her body continued to jerk and foam ran out of her mouth and down the sides of her face. “Somebody call nine-one-one!” Brooklyn yelled as she got down on her knees next to her.

“Nobody move! Mack, carry her ass out and put her in the lot down the street!” Joey yelled, his tone cold and steady as ice.

Brooklyn looked at him, filled with anger. She knew from past experiences that he was heartless. Any other time she’d get into a corner and watch the drama unfold, but Stacey was one of her friends, and she wasn’t ready to lose her just yet.

“Call nine-one-one now,” she yelled. “Don’t put her out in the street like a piece of garbage.” She tried to push Mack’s hands away from Stacey’s body.

“Back off, Brooklyn, before I put your ass out there with her. Mack, hurry up before this bitch dies on the floor,” Joey yelled back. He hated when fiends got sick in the house. He knew it was always a possibility and was seriously thinking about moving his business to another part of the neighborhood separate from where they got high.

“She’ll die out there, Joey. Please don’t put her out there.” Brooklyn’s eyes began to well up with tears. She was practically in a tug-of-war with Mack, trying to keep him from putting Stacey out.

“I don’t give a fuck about that!” Joey yelled. “She’s not going to die up in here and have the cops come raid my shit. Hell, naw! Mack, put that bitch out now!” He pushed Brooklyn out of the way.

Mack picked Stacey’s limp body up from the floor and put her over his shoulder. Brooklyn thought for sure she was already gone. She stared back at Joey. As the two watched each other, Brooklyn briefly reminisced on the good times they’d spent together when they dated during her modeling days. The man she once cared for stared right through her, almost as if she had translucent skin. Joey gave her a look of seriousness that ended all hope she had of changing his mind. Either way, she didn’t plan on leaving Stacey out there for dead alone in the storm.

Brooklyn ran out behind Mack, who was looking left and right as he hurried down the street. Tears streamed down her face as she watched the life drain out of her friend’s body. Stacey looked like a rag doll as she hung over Mack’s shoulder.

Mack walked into the lot and dropped Stacey down on the ground. She hit the ice-covered lot like a ton of bricks. He walked out of the lot and headed toward the house without even looking back.

Brooklyn called Mack’s name as he neared the sidewalk, almost gone from her eyesight.

“What?” Mack shouted, not even turning around to face her.

“Please call nine-one-one. Please, I’m begging you,” Brooklyn cried, trying to save her dying friend.

As Mack walked away, Brooklyn let out a sigh of helplessness. She took off her coat, wrapped it around Stacey’s cold body, and picked her head up from the ground. Stacey’s eyes were closed, and her body was quickly dropping in temperature. She was still breathing, but that didn’t mean she’d make it.

Brooklyn rubbed her hand across her forehead, looking around, hoping someone would arrive to help. She kept praying that Stacey would be OK, though her mind was telling her otherwise. Her knees were becoming stiff, but she refused to move. Stacey would have done the same for her. At least she forced herself to believe that.

“Help me, please. Somebody help me!” Brooklyn screamed as she grabbed hold of Stacey’s shoulders and shook her as hard as she could. “Don’t die on me, Stacey, please.” Stacey’s lips were slowly turning blue, and as loud as Brooklyn screamed her name, she got no response. She could feel the life draining out of Stacey’s body with each passing second.

How had things come to this? How had things gone so wrong? As Stacey’s almost lifeless body lay in front of Brooklyn, so many thoughts ran through her mind, including the decisions that landed her where she was that day. After all, Stacey was the one who got her hooked in the first place. Was this the lesson she needed to finally quit?

Brooklyn could remember as clear as day her first hit over eighteen years ago. She could also remember the special times they’d had, regardless of how screwed up things would get. She missed her friend already, just facing the idea of losing her. She wondered what she’d do without her right hand. In her eyes, she had nothing to live for with Stacey gone. Brooklyn’s family despised her, and she’d done her children so wrong, they wouldn’t even speak to her, even if she entered a room in which they were seated.

Brooklyn looked down at Stacey’s face and saw her own. She saw her beautiful high cheekbones, long eyelashes, almond-shaped eyes, caramel complexion, and her perfectly full lips. Actually, Brooklyn saw the way she used to look, instead of her thin facial structure and the red blotches that covered her sunken cheeks. She didn’t see her tired eyes and the dark circles underneath them. Neither did she see her dry, cracked lips, nor her hair that was as coarse as a Brillo pad.

The beautiful woman that she used to be had disappeared. Even if she quit shooting and inhaling all of the poison she did daily, that woman could never return. So what could she do? At that moment she wished she was the one dying instead of Stacey, but then her life would most likely have been spared. Death was something she’d stared in the eye on many occasions, but for some reason, God had always left her here to see another day.

What is He trying to tell me? Is there something else that I’m supposed to be doing?

Brooklyn got up from the ground. She thought she could run and get help for Stacey if she could just pull her out of the lot and into one of the houses. She grabbed her by the arms and tried dragging her, but weighing no more than 110 pounds soaking wet, she couldn’t move her more than a few inches. She got back in position beside her, deciding she’d wait there with her until someone arrived to aid them. Her own body was stiffening to the point where she could no longer feel her limbs, or even her fingers that rested on Stacey’s forehead. Was she finally going to get her wish? At least that’s what she hoped.

In the distance Brooklyn could hear sirens, but she couldn’t move to meet them at the street. If anyone was looking for them, it would be almost impossible for the duo to be found, as the sun was going down and the alley was darkening. Her voice wasn’t as loud as it was previously. In fact, she could barely catch her breath as she felt herself getting weaker by the second. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the way her life was supposed to end—in a dark alley, like a piece of trash.

Suddenly the sirens became inaudible, and her body fell to the ground next to Stacey’s. Her head rested on Stacey’s arm. Her eyes slowly closed, her body mirroring the unresponsive figure next to her.