Chapter 19: Drummer Boys Meet Their Destiny

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Well, it's a chapter we've all been waiting for

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Well, it's a chapter we've all been waiting for. There's laughter, there's feels...and then there something unexpected at the end. At least, I think it was unexpected. I've been trying not to give it away...

The song. Apologize. One Republic. Timbaland.

 Watch the video and pay attention to the image at 33 seconds. See the drummer holding his sticks still, in the upmost restraint. That's Bodie. Holding the knowledge that he's Darius' father. And also...he'll be holding the revelation he comes by at the end of the chapter. Because Bodie knows...at thirteen, Darius is just not ready for that kind of truth...

Bodie

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," I mumble to Preston. "That's TJ's place?"

TJ used to stay down the street from me. But right now I'm staring at this brand new overgrown spec house that's been erected right beside the little subsidized public housing project house my mom was lucky to get and struggled to keep my whole life.

The place I used to live is in the worst shape I've ever seen it. Peeling paint, rotting porch, overgrown bushes in the yard.

TJ's three story home barely fits the lot. It's planked in wood siding and painted in Wexford Blue, complete with stone accents, newly planted saplings, and a sod yard. The yard is currently yellow in the winter, like many of the lawns I used to mow as a teen in North Atlanta. Bermuda grass. Expensive grass.

I snort. I bet that place has even got a sprinkler system. Seems like a good idea to keep that sod nice, but it's not.

When those sprinklers go off, every kid in this neighborhood is gonna be running around in that scrap of greenspace. That yard is gonna be as muddy as our high school football field at the end of a long rainy season.

But I guess his sod will just get replaced, Just like the house that was torn down to make way for TJ's McMansion.

"Yeah. It's...nice. Real nice. TJ is a good dude. Uhhhhm...you gotta beef with him or something?" Preston says nervously, picking up on my irritated vibe.

Poor kid is suddenly worried he's on the wrong side of a situation, and he's just been seen with me at the trap—Sixmob's latest stash house.

I clap him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Prez. This ain't no drive-by. TJ's my boy from the way back. We got beat in the same summer. He was one of the few lucky Sixers that didn't go to jail that summer."

"Ohhhhh, you mean the Great Raid," Preston gives me the chin tip. "Yeah Dawg, I know about all that. We had to learn it all for the initiation conference. After half the gang went to jail, TJ kept er'body together during the dark times after. Sixmob wouldn't-a survived if it weren't for him. But then he saw a bigger vision, and he turned Six over to Big Mike, so he forge a better future for us. That's why he went straight, so he could pull us all up. Now, Dae's back and we finally gonna get there. Get...that," he gestures at TJ's new house. "Er'body in Sixmob is gonna be ballin."

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