There was this girl at school—a senior, a goddess, the kind of beauty that made the air heavier when she walked by. Untouchable. Untamed. She moved like she knew it, carried herself like she had an invisible crown, oblivious to the longing stares and the way time slowed when she entered a room. She wasn’t for us. She was for someone better. Someone worthy.
I never spoke to her. Not really. I might have mumbled a half-drunk “hey” at a party once, but she was out of reach. We all knew it. The rest of us were just rats scurrying around in the gutter, staring up at her, hoping for some divine intervention that never came.
I bring her up because one night, her name came up at Rick’s house.
Rick was the biggest dealer we knew. His garage was the kind of place that reeked of stale beer, engine grease, and the sour, desperate sweat of kids waiting for a handout. We hovered around him like stray dogs, hoping for a freebie, a leftover bump of coke he might be generous enough to shake off his blade.
That night, the sound of a motorcycle split the air, a deep, guttural roar that vibrated through the cracked pavement of the driveway. We all turned.
Scott.
Scott wasn’t like us. He was older, tougher, the kind of guy who had already seen and done things we could only dream about. He had the kind of effortless confidence that made you hate him, made you want to be him. If we were rats, he was the wolf. Handsome in that rugged, lived-in way, with the kind of face that women wanted to ruin themselves for. He wasn’t from our world. He was what we wished we could grow up to be.
He parked the bike, slid off like he had been born on the damn thing, and pulled a thick wad of cash from his leather jacket. Tossed it onto Rick’s workbench.
It was over a grand.
Rick didn’t ask questions. He just nodded, disappeared inside, and came back with the biggest bag of cocaine any of us had ever seen.
Scott wasn’t subtle about it. He dumped half the bag onto a mirror, used the edge of his hand to carve it into a perfect, fat “S.” The room got quiet. This was something new. Something serious.
He rolled up a hundred-dollar bill like it was his birthright, bent down, and inhaled half the pile in one go.
His head shot up like he had been kissed by God Himself. He howled, this wild, guttural sound, his eyes rolled back for a second before snapping forward, gleaming with something raw and electric.
Then he slid the mirror toward me.
I didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate. Grabbed the bill, snorted the biggest line I’d ever done, and felt my soul rip from my body. A beautiful, soaring nothingness. I slid the rest to Louis, who was already shaking with anticipation, his hands twitching like a man about to meet his maker.
And then Scott started talking.
He was celebrating. His girl was pregnant. They were getting married. He was going to be a father. Life was opening up for him like a golden fucking highway, and he was ready. You could see it on his face—that rare, stupid kind of joy that only exists when a man truly believes he’s won.
And then he said her name.
Her name.
The goddess. The girl we all stared at like hungry animals in a cage, the one who was supposed to be untouchable.
She was his.
Scott was the kind of man gods make deals with. The kind who walk into a room and take what they want, no hesitation, no second-guessing. And now he had the girl. The money. The future.
He hopped back on his bike, revved the engine like a goddamn war cry, and roared off into the night.
The coke was still burning through me when I left, skating home through Palm Park, floating, invincible. The world was sharp, clean, electric. Every streetlight pulsed like it was alive. Every sound had a color.
Then my board hit a rock.
I was airborne before I even knew what had happened. My body twisted, weightless, time stretching like taffy, and then—
~
Face-first into the pavement.
The impact shattered through me, a lightning bolt of pain. My nose crunched, the taste of blood rushing down my throat. My front tooth chipped. I rolled onto my back, laughing like a lunatic, the high still drowning out the pain. The sky above me spun, stars smeared across the darkness like someone had knocked over a jar of paint.
I laid there for a while, smiling like an idiot. Because sometimes life just hands you poetry like that.
I found out about Scott later.
He had been flying down a road in his neighborhood, high, ecstatic, probably still feeling like the king of the goddamn world. A pickup truck pulled out in front of him. He hit it at full speed.
His body sailed through the air.
Dead on impact.
The wedding wouldn’t happen. The kid would grow up without him. The untouchable girl was now a widow before she had even been a bride.
Scott was gone.
And we never said it out loud, but every one of us knew—if Scott could fall, we were already doomed. We were just waiting our turn.
