FIRMER GROUND

I had a crush on him, since as long as I can remember. I was in junior high school and he was in high school. His brown eyes were a perfect match for his sandy blonde hair, skin pale. I was very much drawn to his smile – when I could bring it out of him.

He was my friend tina’s brother, and for some reason I believed he was a bit religious. Maybe because I knew to some extent that tina would be cross if she would come to know that I was seeing her brother, or maybe I knew that the age gap of three years would not do well with my parents. Or maybe , more than anything that he would reject me. So I had to keep my feelings as quite as a cat hiding for a pack of dogs. Every time I saw him at Tina’s house my heart beats grew rapidly and I could barely breathe.

He was an artist and a really good one. The day he gave me a sketch  of a seagull, was indeed my best day in my life. Ofcourse , it was more likely that he felt sorry for such a gangly kid like me, it didn’t matter to me  ; I cherished his piece of art and believed that one day he would be a successful artist.

As years went by, we grew up. Mike somehow lost his ground and didn’t know where to put his feet any more. His family life was a disaster- a mentally ill mother, a father with a second wife and a young baby that took all the attention away from the other three kids.

Whenever I walked past his house I saw a man-in a car parked across the street from Mike’s house. It happened so often that I began to wonder what was going on. I soon learned that my sweet, reserved Mike was a drug dealer in high school. My friends told me that he was in trouble and that someone was closing in one him- the police or the people who got him involved in these things in the first place.

I knew that a lot of kids in high school did drugs- mostly marijuana. But no one’ absolutely no one took the risk of dealing. I often wondered what led Mike there- Did he hate his parents? Did he want to take revenge for his dad leaving his mom? No one knew what went on his brain. I wished he had talked to me because I cared. But, the problem was that he didn’t .

The other day I heard a knock on the door . I looked out the window of my house and saw one of my neighbours standing there . ” I thought that you and your family should know that I found Mike in the canyon this morning. My sons and I had went for a walk and I saw Mike bowing as if he was praying. But, I thought something wasn’t right”, he said with a rather dull voice.

Our neighbour had held his boys back as he investigated. Mike was dead. He hung himself and died in a kneeling position, with his head bent forward. This news made my head pound as if I was struck on the face with a brick. I thought I was about to pass out , but instead I stood still sobbing

Within an hour’s time, I rushed to Tina’s place to check on her. She was on her bed ,staring at an empty space , expressionless. I later learned that she was in shock. In a dull voice she explained to me that she and her older brother Andrew, knew that Mike was dealing drugs. After Mike’s body was found, Andrew went into Mike’s room and cleaned his drawers before the police came to investigate . There ,tucked underneath a few shirts , he found every drug imaginable: cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamine and some colourful pills. My parents tried to explain to me why he died, but they couldn’t. they didn’t even know that he was a dealer.

  Till this day, I always wonder if he really killed himself or did the other drug dealers help him with it. It was odd that he hung himself from a thin tree limb and was kneeling, his body weight supported by the earth.

 I kept the sketch he gave me for years, looking at it with admiration wishing I could sketch that way. I knew that Mike had lost his ground but he gave me strength.

 Me and my family moved to the East Coast of the country at the start of the first year of high school. My new friends had just began to experiment drugs and I surely had a lot of peer pressure along the way.

By now, I felt used to when it came to drugs. Been there, done that , seen what it can do. I decided I wanted a chance to know what I was going to be like in the future. For that, Mike had given me  firmer ground  to stand on.

                                                                                                                    -Amisha Nakhwa