For the first few minutes, nobody told me where we were going.
Stackhouse drove with one hand on the wheel, his seat leaned back farther than I thought was comfortable. Dre sat beside him messing with his phone. I was in the back seat wondering why I had agreed to come.
Not scared.
Not yet.
Mostly curious.
There was something about being around Dre that made you feel like something was always about to happen. Even when nothing was happening. A regular trip to the gas station could feel like you were going somewhere important because Dre always seemed to know something you didn’t.
Stackhouse was different.
He didn’t talk just to fill silence.
Every once in a while, I’d catch his eyes in the rearview mirror.
Not looking at me.
Checking me.
There was a difference.
“So where we going?” I finally asked.
Dre laughed without looking up from his phone.
“I knew you weren’t gonna make it five minutes.”
“I’m just asking.”
Stackhouse smiled.
“Let the man ask.”
Dre looked back at me. “We gotta make a couple stops.”
“What kind of stops?”
“There he go.”
Stackhouse laughed.
I looked out the window.
“Fuck both of y’all then.”
That made Stackhouse laugh harder.
“Aight,” he said. “I fuck with him.”
Dre turned around. “Told you.”
There it was again.
That feeling that they had talked about me when I wasn’t around.
“What’d you tell him?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
Dre put his phone away. “I told him you cool.”
“You told him my name too.”
Stackhouse glanced at me through the mirror.
“Everybody know everybody.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You will.”
The way he said it shut me up.
We drove another ten minutes before Stackhouse pulled into a convenience store. He parked along the side of the building instead of in front.
Dre opened his door.
“Come on.”
I looked at Stackhouse.
He stayed behind the wheel.
“Me?”
Dre stared at me. “Nah, the other motherfucker sitting behind me.”
I got out.
The cold hit me immediately.
Dre walked toward the store, and I followed.
“You need something?”
“No.”
“Then why am I coming in?”
“Jesus Christ, Jay.”
He pulled the door open.
“Come buy a soda or some shit.”
I followed him inside.
Dre walked past the counter without looking at the cashier and went toward the coolers in the back. I grabbed a Coke. He grabbed nothing.
Then we stood there.
“What are we doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For?”
Dre gave me a look.
I stopped asking.
Maybe two minutes later, a guy walked into the store wearing a Titans jacket. He couldn’t have been much older than me. He saw Dre, nodded once, and walked toward us.
They shook hands.
Not a normal handshake.
Something passed between them.
I saw it.
I didn’t know what it was.
The guy put his hand in his jacket pocket.
Dre put his hand in his.
Then they separated.
The entire thing took maybe five seconds.
The guy walked toward the register.
Dre looked at me.
“You getting that Coke?”
I realized I was still holding it.
“Yeah.”
“Then pay for it.”
Outside, I waited until we were halfway back to the car.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“You know what.”
Dre smiled.
“You wanted to come.”
“No, you asked me to come.”
“And you came.”
Stackhouse was watching us through the windshield.
Dre opened the passenger door.
I climbed into the back.
Nobody explained anything.
We drove away.
That should’ve been enough.
I wasn’t stupid. Naive maybe. Greedy definitely. But not stupid.
I’d seen enough movies. Heard enough stories. Been around enough people to understand what I’d just watched.
I just didn’t know exactly what had changed hands.
And somehow that distinction mattered to me.
If I didn’t see drugs, I couldn’t say they were drugs.
If I didn’t see money, I couldn’t say it was money.
If nobody told me anything, then technically I didn’t know anything.
That word—technically—would become one of my favorite ways to lie to myself.
Technically, I wasn’t selling drugs.
Technically, I wasn’t carrying anything.
Technically, I wasn’t in a gang.
Technically, I was just riding in a car.
Stackhouse made another stop.
This time Dre stayed inside.
A guy came out of a house and walked up to the passenger window. Dre rolled it down halfway.
They talked quietly.
I couldn’t hear everything.
I heard numbers.
I heard a name.
Then I heard Stackhouse say, “Tell him Friday.”
The guy nodded.
He looked into the back seat at me.
“Who this?”
Nobody answered immediately.
That bothered me.
Then Dre said, “Jay.”
The guy kept looking at me.
“He good?”
Stackhouse answered.
“He with us.”
Three words.
That was it.
He with us.
I remember sitting there and feeling something I probably shouldn’t admit.
I liked it.
Nobody had asked me if I wanted to be with anybody. Nobody had explained what us meant. But hearing Stackhouse say it made me feel important.
Included.
That was the hook.
People think young men get pulled into that world because they’re violent, stupid, or desperate.
Sometimes it’s simpler than that.
Sometimes somebody just makes you feel like you belong somewhere.
The guy outside the car nodded at me differently after Stackhouse said it.
Before, I was some random guy in the back seat.
Now I was somebody.
At least that’s how it felt.
We pulled away.
I leaned forward between the seats.
“What does that mean?”
Dre sighed. “What now?”
“He said I was with y’all.”
“You are with us.”
“Doing what?”
“Riding in the fucking car.”
Stackhouse laughed.
I sat back.
“I’m serious.”
Stackhouse looked at me in the mirror.
“You worried?”
“No.”
“Then don’t be.”
That answer should’ve worried me more than it did.
We made two more stops.
I stayed in the car for both.
At one, Dre disappeared inside a house for nearly twenty minutes and came back carrying nothing.
At the other, a man leaned through Stackhouse’s window and handed him a folded piece of paper.
Stackhouse read it, tore it in half, and put both pieces in his pocket.
Nobody explained that either.
By the time we headed back toward my house, it was dark.
I had been with them for a few hours and still couldn’t tell you exactly what we’d done.
That was probably intentional.
Stackhouse stopped at a red light.
Dre had fallen quiet.
I looked out at the cars beside us. People going home from work. Somebody with groceries in their back seat. A woman talking on a cell phone. Normal shit.
Then Stackhouse spoke.
“You make good money?”
I looked at him.
“At what?”
“Whatever you do.”
I laughed. “Not really.”
“How much you make letting Dre use that Pontiac?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“How long he keeps it.”
Stackhouse smiled.
“Smart.”
“Why?”
“You don’t let nobody tell you what your shit worth.”
I liked that too.
Dre looked over at him.
“I told you.”
Stackhouse nodded.
“You did.”
Again.
That fucking sentence.
“What did he tell you?”
Stackhouse looked at me through the mirror.
“That you hungry.”
I didn’t answer.
“Nothing wrong with being hungry,” he continued. “Everybody hungry for something.”
The light turned green.
He drove.
“What are you hungry for?”
I don’t know why I answered honestly.
“Money.”
Dre laughed.
Stackhouse didn’t.
“Why?”
“What you mean why?”
“Everybody say they want money. Most people don’t want money. They want what money does.”
I thought about it.
“I don’t wanna worry about shit.”
Stackhouse nodded.
“There you go.”
That conversation stayed with me.
Not because it was profound. Looking back, it probably wasn’t.
But nobody had ever asked me that before.
I had grown up without much. Crystal came from a world where there had always been a safety net somewhere underneath her. Her father worked overseas and made good money. Her family had stability.
Mine didn’t.
I’d grown up watching money disappear before it ever had a chance to sit still.
So when Stackhouse asked what I wanted money for, the answer wasn’t jewelry. It wasn’t cars. It wasn’t some mansion I’d seen on television.
I wanted the feeling of opening my wallet without being afraid of what wasn’t inside.
Stackhouse seemed to understand that.
“You smoke?” he asked.
“Weed?”
“What the fuck else?”
“Yeah.”
He reached toward Dre.
Dre pulled a bag from his pocket and handed it over.
Stackhouse tossed it into the back seat.
I caught it.
It was more than Dre had been giving me.
A lot more.
I looked at it.
“What’s this for?”
Stackhouse shrugged.
“For riding.”
I laughed.
“You paying me to sit in a car?”
“Apparently.”
Dre turned around.
“Don’t question free shit.”
I put the bag in my coat pocket.
Easy money.
Free weed.
People who seemed to like having me around.
I didn’t understand yet that nothing they gave me was free.
Every dollar mattered.
Every bag mattered.
Every favor mattered.
Because every time I accepted something, saying no the next time became a little harder.
Stackhouse pulled onto my street.
My Grand Prix was sitting in the driveway exactly where I’d left it.
Seeing it made me feel relieved for reasons I couldn’t explain.
He stopped in front of the house.
I reached for the door.
“Jay.”
I looked toward the front.
Stackhouse was turned halfway around in his seat.
“What?”
“You got room in there?”
I looked at the house.
“For what?”
He smiled.
“People.”
I laughed because I thought he was joking.
“How many people?”
Dre laughed.
Stackhouse didn’t.
“Couple.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe a night.”
I looked at Dre.
He was watching me.
“For what?”
Stackhouse smiled.
“There go them questions again.”
I should’ve said no.
Crystal would’ve said no before Stackhouse finished the sentence.
But Crystal wasn’t standing there.
I was.
And Stackhouse had just spent the last few hours making me feel like I wasn’t some broke twenty-three-year-old renting out his Pontiac for weed and cash.
He made me feel useful.
Important.
Like maybe I had something people needed.
That feeling was familiar.
It was the same feeling I’d had when Dre first looked at the Grand Prix.
I opened the door.
“Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”
Stackhouse nodded.
“Good.”
I stepped onto the street.
Dre rolled down his window.
“I’ll hit you later.”
“For the car?”
“For everything.”
I didn’t know what that meant.
The sedan pulled away.
I stood there watching the taillights disappear.
Then I went inside.
Crystal was at the kitchen table with her books spread around her.
She looked up.
“Where were you?”
“Riding around.”
“With Dre?”
“Yeah.”
“And that other guy?”
I took off my coat.
“Stackhouse.”
“Little Rex?”
I smiled.
“Yeah.”
She closed her book.
That should’ve warned me.
Crystal only closed the book when she knew the conversation wasn’t going to be short.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“For hours?”
“Pretty much.”
She looked at me.
I looked away.
“Jay.”
“What?”
“What did you do?”
“I told you. Nothing.”
That wasn’t technically a lie.
I hadn’t handed anybody drugs.
I hadn’t collected money.
I hadn’t threatened anybody.
I hadn’t even driven.
I had bought a Coke.
That was it.
At least that was the version I wanted to believe.
Crystal opened her book again.
“You’re changing.”
That pissed me off.
“I’ve known Dre for like five minutes.”
“Exactly.”
I stared at her.
She looked back down at the page.
I wanted to argue.
Instead, I walked toward the hallway.
Then she said something that stopped me.
“People don’t give you money for nothing, Jay.”
I turned around.
She didn’t look up.
“And they don’t give you weed for nothing either.”
My hand went instinctively toward the bag in my coat pocket.
Crystal noticed.
Of course she did.
She always noticed.
“What did they give you?”
“Nothing.”
She looked at my pocket.
Then at me.
I walked away.
Later that night, my phone rang.
Dre.
“What?”
“You talk to Crystal?”
“About what?”
“The people.”
I sat up in bed.
Crystal was asleep beside me.
“What people?”
Dre laughed quietly.
“Stack told you.”
“He asked if I had room.”
“Yeah.”
“For who?”
“Couple of us.”
“Us who?”
There was silence.
Then Dre said something that should’ve made me hang up.
Instead, it made me curious.
“You really wanna know this time?”
I looked over at Crystal.
Then toward the bedroom door.
Beyond it was the rest of the house.
Our house.
The place we were trying to make ours.
I thought about Stackhouse saying he with us.
I thought about the way that guy had looked at me differently afterward.
I thought about the money.
The weed.
The Grand Prix.
For the first time since meeting Dre, I didn’t choose ignorance.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“I wanna know.”