Life On The Streets
By Zechariah da Silva (Scarlett)

I awake to my alarm clock beeping at the time of 6:30 am, my mind knowing it’s time for me to get up. My body says otherwise that it is not the time to awake, I tell myself on and on that I need to get ready or I will miss the bus to get to school. I should be happy to go to school, i’m now a Sophomore not a Freshmen, since everyone all hated Freshmens for some odd reasons. Somehow I pull myself out of bed and go to the bathroom to take a shower which I really needed. Motionless, I walk into the shower with the cold water hitting me in the face waking me up and making me use my reflexes to change it to a nice warm feeling of water sliding off my body feeling refreshed and ready for the morning. I grab some random clothes from my closest and proceed to go into the kitchen to grab a quick meal before the bus comes in 15 minutes. I grab my favorite cereal, Cinnamon Toast Crunch while watching the news, as usual it’s talking about another gang shooting. I turn off the tv and walk out of my tiny house in the “ghetto” and proceed to walk up the street, four people pass inside a car and start shouting at me “what’s up blood” “BANG BANG” while they laugh right in my face. Typical day in the streets for me, as I keep walking up the street I can see about seven kids waiting  for the bus to arrive to go to school. About five minutes pass and the bus finally arrives, I walk onto the bus to see it packed with kids, people wearing all red to symbolize that they’re indeed apart of a gang known as Bloods, as we go pass street by street I hear shouting coming from the back of the bus and onto the road. the same for people are outside looking at the kids in the red yelling at them. forcing them to make a move on them, i can hear “You lucky I ain’t on that bus or you would’ve been shot up homie don’t be pushing me cuz” the kids in the bus reply “boy you ain’t no real crip come at me homie” Just when the kid in the red says that the driver of the car full of people skirt to the front of the bus to block it and get out and tell the bus driver to open the door or he won’t see tomorrow. The bus driver allows them on the bus and the 4 in blue run up on the kids in back and start screaming “Do something if you think you’s a real blood what you gonna do homie?” the boys in the red don’t say a word. the man who was driving the car tells one of the kids to take off all of the red he’s wearing and give it to him before he snatches it off him himself, the boy not even thinking gives everything he has red to the man and they all laugh at him “you ain’t no real banger, you’s just a wanna be” the rest of the way to school it was silent.

I walk off the bus looking around at the school, of course. Nothing new has changed it’s still the same old dirty school that shouldn’t be a school in the first place. the only colors on this school is a nice fake plastic looking gold and a very dirty white color from dust, and kids vandalizing the side of the school. As time passes I hear shouting from the right side of school, I see a crowd of kids shouting what I think is gangs. I never really tried to socialize with people that are into that stuff but i've been surrounded by it. My neighborhood is filled with people fighting and about five nights ago three kids were shot in my neighborhood due to gang related things. My mom wants to move out asap but she doesn’t have anything close to the money to get out of where we live. Sadly I don’t believe that’ll be happening any time soon, as I pass by the group shouting at each other I get pushed by one of the kids and he looks at me and smacks me straight out of the blue and makes me stumble dropping my two books I was holding for the class I was going to attend to.                                                                                                             I walk into my first period class which is Algebra 1, I hear kids laughing  at some joke a student made, I see some other kids looking like they own the class and I see two students sitting in the front reading a book. I didn’t know where I would fit in so I just sat in the back of the class where it seemed peaceful.. There is never peace in this school, or where I live. About twelve minutes pass and a man, looks to be in his fifties black with grey strands of whatever hair he had left on his head walks up to                                                                                                                                           the front of the class and introduces himself “Hello class my name is Mr. Dimen, not Mr Diamond. Mr Dimen without the d sound at the end of it” He asks from row up to introduce who we are. The kid in the back, big square glasses with a nice wavy hair gets picked on to tell a bit about himself. With a weird “gangsta” type slang he speaks out “My name T-do part of the “BGS” meaning Big Gun Shootahs anything else you wanna know, jus don’t get oh mah bad side and you’s won’t have nun problem” His two homies who seem like they bang are throwing up a sign that I feel like is  supposed to represent “BGS”  Mr Dimen, seeming like he’s dealt with this stuff before moves to the next person in mid talk someone grabs my shoulder and turns me around, it was T-do “Sup yous Jay from 178th huh, i’ve seen you walk around there. Maybe you should hit me up sometime though” Without me even responding he walks away from me to go to his seat. I think for a bit if I really wanna hang out with him, but knowing I don’t really know that many people at the school I might as well just do it. Lunch comes by and I see T-do, I go walk up to him and right when I open my mouth to say sup three big guys come up to me, the one in the front speaks up “Who do you think you ah to come up to this table? You don’t know-” “Aye Aye calm down dawg this Jay he a homie, he chill calm down” It was T-do he moves over to give me some space to sit, “Sorry fo that, but these my homies this who got all defensive is Big Daz, this over here is Tony or ny  for short kinda sounds like Knee but it aint. and this ova here is Yoza real name Zaylin but likes to be called Yoza we gots three mo homies but they out getting stuff for afta school” I respond saying “My names Jay, I go by Jay never really been called something else haha” I don’t really know that many people in this school to be honest but it’s whatever” “if you free you should dip to my crib afta school if you down” “Sure why not what we doing though?” T-do looks at Daz, Daz looks back and shrugs “Hm maybe the usual for us but that’s a secret until you see for yourself are you down to check what we do?” I respond “Sure why not i’m down, for whatever I don’t mind haha” “Ight, fosho hit me up at the basketball court and we’ll dip to my place” I finish my plate of food I got before I came to the table and he holds his hand out he slides his off my hand and fist bumps it telling me “Be Safe Cuddie”

School ends and I go to the basketball court to meetup with T-do and his homies. Since no one was there and all there was was a basketball and a hoop I just grabbed it and started dribbling down the court right when I’m about to shoot someone hand comes and smacks the ball out my hand and blocks me I turn to look at who it was and it was Tony blocking me “Boy you don’t even know how good at basketball I am, I would’ve broken yo ankles fam” “Well I don’t really play basketball so yeah most likely you would haha” We all shake up and T-do leads the way to his house. While we’re walking to his house we pass a corner and we he says that his house is on the left 3 houses up, but he wants me to wait here for a second. Not thinking about it and just trying not to start anything I wait while everyone dips to check on something which I guess is okay. A few minutes pass and I’m still waiting, I hear someone from behind me yell at me. I turn around and it’s the kid who smacked me and his two other homies coming across the street. He walks up on me asking if I hang with T-do and I replied with “Yeah I do, is that not a good idea?” He straight up laughs at me and says “Boi you can’t hang like them, you don’t even bang you might get shot up hanging around here get out here until I knock you down like your books hahaha” I reply “I’m staying here since T-do and his homies told me to” Just when I say that, He comes up to my face pushes me back and lands a fat hit onto the side of my head. My body feeling heavy and weak, I collapse to the floor. Everything goes dark for a minute I come back to reality to see a huge group of people punching and yelling, Someone drags me up and tells me to wake up. I look to see who it is, it’s Yoza bringing me to a bush and tells me to drink some water. What I see in front of me is Tony, T-do, and Daz hitting the other guys up and out of nowhere Yoza comes running over there with what I think is a bottle to the group of people and hits the guy who hit me with the bottle and it cracks over his head he falls to the ground hitting his head on a curve. a dark dense liquid comes rushing out of his head and just when that happens everyone starts running away. Daz picks me up and we all run to T-do’s house. “Woah bro is he dead?!?!” I ask “Man I think he out cold but I don’t think he dead homes but idk man if we hear sirens we all have to dip” Says Tony.  Just when he says that a huge pack of sirens start rushing into the neighborhood we here two big bangs and loud voices “This is the police open up now we or we will force it open” T-daz tells us to silently walk his way, we start to sneak out of the house we jump the fence to see a cop car turning the corner, the lights flash on and we start running as fast as we can we start taking wild turns around the neighborhood. Two cop cars are at the end of the street blocking our passage way, we take a left onto an alley  and climb up the fence, we run for another 20 minutes straight up a hill into the woods, there’s this abandon mansion in there, we all take shelter there. We hear faint noises of sirens and see a light from the sky checking dark places back in the neighborhood. “cuddie this some crazy ish right now, we might get cuffed up dawgs.” Says Daz. “naw naw chill all we gotta do is not make ourselves exposed we a gang man and Jay you pretty chill with us and ima accept you to be part of this little squad” I think for a while, “i’m already in deep ish so whatever man i’ll ride with ya’ll” I reply. Everyone shakes me up and says that this is my new family “You already did some real stuff with being apart of what had happened so you don’t need no jumping, He dead bro.. We killed that man you know that right, too much blood was coming out to fast, that was really paintin tha floor cuh” Says Yoza.  I sit there in silence. I already have seen people get run up by so it’s pretty normal to me, but knowing I was involved in this murder makes my stomach a little uneasy. But this is the life of the streets and you need to play that game in order to live. We all sit there in silence until a loud voice shouts out “handsup” T-do comes out of the blue, somehow he grabs the gun out of his hand and shoots him with it. leaving his body pale. We’re on the run again.

End.