H. Alazhar

The high is what you crave, what you would kill for... and believe me, you will lie to yourself until it's to late to stop.

I also knew Dell was a good boy with bad friends. I was one of them, and I worried about leading him astray. But in those early years he made me feel cleaner, somehow; like all the shit we__ gone through wasn__ so bad. Like I could deal with it, so long as he was by my side. It had always been the way _ but still, I was sure Dell would disappear one day. I had nightmares about what I would do if they released him before me on good behaviour, if he should leave me behind in this fucked up limbo of our youth. Nightmares where if I didn__ hold on to him, those long legs would take him away somewhere better...

Many years later after the sell-outs, betrayals, and hatred which would tear us apart, when our brotherhood had been destroyed, I__ always look back and remember that night. That fucking wild night at the KeyClub, when the smoke stung my eyes but my world was full of nothing but blind hope. When life was not a mockery, but a very real fire which flamed through my veins like the most incredible drug... the night when Kelly-Lee Obann, drunk, high and barely 20 the time, looked out through his hair with a terrible nakedness and said to me; __e__e not gonna make it out of this alive. You know that, right?

So... Dell had been a good boy with bad friends. I knew this _ I used to be one of them. I__ always known Dell would disappear one day; he was too decent, too golden. This place never tainted that, and I don__ know why. He made me feel dirty. Dark and corrupt. It hadn__ always that way, and I don__ know when it changed... but I felt it now. I only knew I couldn__ hold onto him tight enough to stop those long legs carrying him away somewhere better. A day__l come when everybody__ had you and nobody wants you anymore... As Dell drove Erin away in their rent-a-car from the Holiday Inn into the early evening traffic, I felt the walls closing in, the world swelling around me, and I knew that day had finally come. Tomorrow, I leave Paradise. It__ true. Shanise was right.I turned away as the car disappeared up the slushy street. That was the last time I saw them alive.