“Damn it Leif , that's vile!” Daniel said in a disgusted manner. Thankfully we were standing behind a giant sign in a hallway so no one but me, Ellis, Dan, and a now angry janitor saw. “My bad guys, I don’t know what came over me.” I expected Ellis to somehow get himself out of this situation, but to my surprise he calmly said, “Let’s get you to the health office, we’ll talk after that.” Ellis really didn’t dismiss anything or try to walk away, I’m both relieved and puzzled.
At the health office the nurse let me rinse out my mouth and gave me all the vomit-halting goods. She also told me to keep my anxiety on the low, something easier said than done with the ongoing situation, but Ellis still standing by is giving me a thread of reassurance. I walked back to Ellis and Dan and the 3 of us decided to sit down at a cafe and talk. I’m guessing this won’t be like a criminal interview, but the strong odor of coffee somehow managed to make me uncomfortable in its own way so I guess I’m not winning today by any means. I have an overall feeling this won’t be good though.
“Alright boys, clear the air once and for all” Dan said while putting his feet up on the 4th chair.
There was a short pause and then I decided to start with, “Look Ellis, it's no secret you’ve been avoiding me for a little while. Gianna too. Whenever I asked what was up y’all didn’t give me an answer but continued to act off, I’m pretty sure I made it clear multiple times that I didn’t understand what was going on too. Sometimes people won’t understand on their own and you’re looking at a clear example of that. I’m assuming the reason has to do with what Dan was telling me earlier so if I’m correct about that can you explain what happened along with anything else.”
Damn. That felt crazy to say. Especially since Ellis let me speak the whole time without interrupting and also that I didn’t badly mess up what I was going to say.
Ellis took an obvious deep breath and said back, “Bro I didn’t know how to say it, Gianna too. We were afraid you’d treat us differently if we brought it up with you or your recent posse would intervene in some way.”
I just had to cut him off there because even I was questioning myself, “Wait my bad, but what do you mean by posse? Who’s my recent posse?” I felt dumb asking that for some reason, and I had a feeling that I was about to find out why.
“Gosh Leif you really are getting dense bro, I’m talking about Mya Robles and the rest of those rich white kids who fawn over you every other day” Ellis coldly replied. I was absolutely struck, in a mad way but also a confused way. “What the hell? They literally corner me and I use you as cover sometimes because it can get beyond suffocating, and don’t even get me started on Mya; if you really think I enjoy her presence YOU are the dense one to not see that I want her gone the second she appears” I fumed back at him. “Yo Leif, chill man. And Ellis quit with that cryptic passive aggressive crap. Both of y’all gotta chill with this” Dan said in an attempt to break up the tension.
“Wait, what. Is that why they push me away when they crowd over you?” Ellis questioned.
“Holy crap bro you really are the dense one. Of course that’s why, and that’s why I can’t even find my way back to you because they’ve got me pinned and you’re walking away.”
“Who are you calling dense bro?”
“You called me that first.”
“Would both of you shut up, none of you are dense now get with the important stuff for the love of god” Dan nearly screamed, he was the one not having it. Ellis took a pause then surprisingly said, “My bad, tying back to what I was saying before, I guess I was caught up in thinking you’d treat me differently so I started turning it into reality.”
“Why would I treat you or Gianna differently? How could you even think that?”
“Look Leif, remember when you hit that old looking woman with your bike. Well the police officer handling it was some racist piece of crap who had been bothering a certain truck driver who’d drop off boxes at the moving company store down the block around there. He let you go so he could blame the incident on that truck driver just to once again harass the man. And that man was actually a good friend of mine since elementary school who would drive the moving truck every weekend to make enough money to take care of his sick grandma. The officer knew the accident wasn’t your fault either and was the lady’s fault, he was just despicable enough to do that to my buddy because he’s any other low income teenager working a job and a cop like that in New York’s just gotta be a racist jerk. The cop told my buddy that you refused to speak on the situation and you rode off, unfortunately that made it so that my boy was fined, taken to court, and still sentenced to 90 days. His grandma’s medical bills weren’t able to be fulfilled because he wasn’t bringing any income for the days this was going on and unfortunately she passed away a few weeks ago, just as my boy was released.”
I was beyond shocked, “Wait Ellis, the cop never asked me to speak about the situation? He just blamed the driver and said I needed to drive off with no statements.”
“Leif what? How is that possible? Also this is why Gianna’s been like this too, her and I are both Sudanese as you know so we’ve seen this stuff happen to people we know before. This was by far the worst though.”
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To be continued...
