Day VIII

Alibi

     We were each others alibi, we were never up on the roof, not even in the hood, and they couldn't prove it. Nobody else had seen us, and that was our story.

     “By tamarrah she won’t even na it was you!” James said.

     “Don’t worry boudit, man!” he  added.

     “Yea bwa…foigidit man!”

     It was the last time we went up on the roof together. After that every time she saw him, she just knew it was him. Her lips quivered, she looked like she wanted to smack him, scratch his eyes out, do or say something.

But she never did. Time went on, she mellowed out, forgot it, and avoided him like dog shit.

     That cigar cost us plenty, it broke us up. We felt that since she had seen Joe, and we were always together, that peeps would eventually figure out we were the guys up on the roof. Little by little we stopped hanging out. As the days went by Joe became really miffed with James. He lost the one girl he thought he was in love with, he just rightly blamed it on him, and stopped hanging with us.

     But before that happened, one day we tried snuff. We were sitting on
that same park bench, when Joe took a little red tin out of his pocket.

     “It peppahrmint, bwa!” he smiled at us.

     He twisted the lid open, and tapped a little mound of brown dust into the palm of his hand. He did it as if he knew what he was doing. James and I just looked at one another, smiled, and let him do his thing.