It’s a Monday morning and Seth Marsh is already thirteen minutes late for his block one psychology class. He enjoys this class a lot; because his teacher Mrs. Carmichael shares personal stories, about her life, which take up about half of class time. She’s the kind of teacher who doesn’t seem arrogant or better than her students. He felt bad about being late to a class he actually likes, but he has no one waking him up on time. He rolled out of bed and threw on some wrinkly, musty smelling clothes. He’s a senior, and lives with his alcoholic mother. They live in an apartment in downtown Detroit. He started to walk towards Woodbury high school, where he will spend the next six and a half hours sitting and thinking. Not about the subjects, but rather about what he wants to do with his life. On his way there a group of black kids, that were standing outside of an abandoned building, shout at him.
“Aye bitch, get yo ass over here!” shouted one of the kids.
Seth acted like he didn’t hear them.
“Are you deaf white boy? Or are you just stupid?” the kid persisted.
At this point Seth started to walk faster, watching the group of kids out of the
corner of his eye, and grabbed his flip phone out of his pocket. He opened his phone, and began to text one of his friends. As Seth texted, the group of hoodlums exploded towards him. One of them ran towards him and shoved him to the snowy ground.
“You wanna die today boy?” said the ringleader, as he pulled out his handgun and pressed it to Seth’s temple.
“What do you want?” Seth murmured.
“Faggots like you need to pay to walk down my street, run your pockets,” exclaimed the angry young man.
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Seth immediately shoved his hands in his pockets and turned them inside out. A tiny baggy, an old syringe, a bus pass, and his wallet fell onto the snow covered asphalt.
“Ayo cuz, check this out. Homeboy’s a junkie,” the kid said to the rest of the group. The stranger reached for Seth’s wallet. Opened it up and saw Seth’s learners permit. He then looked opened the long slit, in hopes of finding some cash. Unfortunately, he reaches in and pulls out three measly dollars.
“You only got three dollars? You really are a junkie aren’t you? Next time you walk down Smith St. you better have more than this for the Westside Crips,” said the gang leader.
As the gangster finished saying this, he cocked back his fist and slammed it into Seth’s forehead. Seth took the blow and watched the gang slowly walk away from him as if nothing happened. He then got up brushed himself off and continued his walk to school. He walked about half a mile, and then realized that he forgot to pick up his miniscule amount of cocaine and his syringe. Immediately he turned around and began running back to the spot where he fell down. But then he stopped.
I can’t go back there. If I do those same dudes are gunna jump me again. But if I don’t go back I can’t get faded. God damn it. I guess I’m not getting high today.
Seth reluctantly turned around again, and restarted his walk to school. He took a right onto Ferguson Street, looking at all of the run-down houses and apartment complexes.
As he was looking at these houses, he wondered what it would be like to live in a decent town. A place that wasn’t a ghetto. To him, a suburban dreamland. Where unemployment and poverty were non-existent. Where gang activity didn’t consume the streets. And a nice home to come home to. A house that was filled with a loving family. One that included his sober mother and his loving father. But to Seth this was just a
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dream. An unattainable dream, because there was no possibility that his mother would stop drinking, and his father would come back. Seth’s father left one day when he was six. Seth doesn’t remember why, but his mom tells him it was because he no longer loved her.
Seth finally arrived at school. Approximately forty-nine minutes late for his favorite class. Mrs. Carmichael joyously welcomed him to class when he walked in quietly.
“Good morning Seth, it’s nice of you to grace the class with your presence!” Mrs. Carmichael teased.
“Hello,” Seth simply replies.
“Do you have your homework?” she questioned. “Um...Yeah I have it”
“Okay, well when you find it just put it on my desk.”
Seth didn’t have his homework completed. He knew he had it halfway finished crumpled up in his green Jansport backpack. He felt bad about lying to the teacher, but he felt worse about not having his assignment completed. He thought he could just complete it during class, when everyone was taking notes.
“Today we are going to talk about Freud, and his ideals on psycho-analysis.” Mrs. Carmichael began to walk towards the door, to shut of the lights. She had a power point presentation prepared, like always, and continued to speak about Freud’s theories.
When she shut the lights off Seth slowly reached into his backpack and grabbed a stack of papers. He began to sift through the papers and spotted the worksheet that was due. He diligently worked on the paper while the lesson was going on.
Suddenly he heard someone whisper to him.
“Hey Seth, you can copy my homework.”
He turns to see whose soft delicate voice it was. To his surprise, it was his crush
Samantha Bernstein. Seth had a crush on Sam since the sixth grade. She has pale blue eyes, to go with here ghostly white skin. Her dark brown hair and slender figure were
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features that were always attractive to Seth. To Seth, she was gorgeous He figured she didn’t ever notice him, because he felt insecure about himself. Seth was short, very skinny, pale, and had some acne. He smelled like body odor most of the time and only had a few friends.
“Thanks Samantha,” Seth replied, in awe of her acknowledging his existence.
He grabbed the paper from Sam, and began to copy her work. He couldn’t help but admire her perfect cursive penmanship. He thought it was so cool that she wrote in cursive, because no one writes like that anymore. When he finished copying her work, he gave the paper back to her and thanked her again.
“Do you wanna hangout sometime,” Sam asked Seth.
He couldn’t believe this; the girl he always wanted had just asked him to hangout. This was a complete shock to him and he didn’t respond for a few seconds. He was just staring, almost like a barbarian. He finally snapped out of it and answered.
“Yes....Of course, when.. today?” he stammered.
“Sure you can come over after school if you’d like. I live at thirty-seven South Street,” She said as the bell for second period goes off.
“Alright, that sounds dope.” Seth smoothly replies.
With that Seth’s entire life was made. In that instance he was as happy as he had ever been since his mom and dad were together when he was a little kid. He’s walking down the halls and is spotted by one of his friends. It was Cameron Trumble. The bad seed of a child who got Seth into doing drugs.
“Yo Seth, you tryna skip this block?” Johnny asked.
“Nah, I don’t have shit. I got jumped this morning and I lost the last of my white.” “Damn playa, that’s weak. But dude I got you. I got some real reeeaaal good shit.
It’s called Panda, and it’s straight from Nam. My boy’s uncle just came back with it,” Johnny pleaded.
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“Really man, you’d shoot me up?” Seth asked.
“Yeah dude, I gotchu.” Cameron replied.
They walked down red hall past all of the science classrooms. There were a bunch
of other kids leaving the school too. Most of them, were hoodlums that were going out to smoke in between class time. Some of them were students who had free periods, and they were likely coming back to school. But Cameron and Seth knew they would not return. Their usual spot to shoot up at was this abandoned building that was only a couple blocks away from the school.
They left the school and walked through the slushy teacher parking. They made it to their spot and Cam broke out a Zip-lock bag filled halfway with china white heroin.
“Holy shit Cam, that’s a lot.” Seth stated.
“Yeah man, I got fronted four ounces. You need something for later?” Cameron asked.
“Nah dude, I’m broke right now,” Seth mumbled.
“I’ll front you a g, if you could pay me by Friday that would be straight.” Cameron offered.
“Yeah bro good looks,” Seth said.
Cameron reached into his backpack and pulled out a smaller bag for Seth’s gram. Cameron didn’t have his scale so he just eyed it out, and dumped it into the plastic bag. He then gave it to Seth and he immediately put it into his backpack. Cameron took a very small pinch of junk out of his bag and put it in an old bent metal spoon. He then started to cook the stuff up. As he did this, Seth heard two car doors slam shut.
“Yo did you hear that?” Seth asked.
“Hear what?” Cameron replied.
Seth got up from the cement floor and walked out the back door of the building.
He got outside, walked around the corner, and spotted a police car with two officers walking towards him. Seth started to get tense and nervous. He just kept walking towards them.
“What are you doing here?” the first officer asked. “Nothing, just had to take a leak officers,” Seth murmurs.
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“Are you here alone?” the first officer asked as his partner started walking towards the back of the abandoned building. Seth knew that his friend Cameron was probably going to get arrested but it wasn’t too late for him. Seth did want to try to help his friend though. Seth yelled, “Cops!” as loud as he could as he pushed the first police officer out of his way. Seth was fast runner and long distance was his specialty. He used to run cross country in middle school. So he was prepared to outrun the authorities.
Seth sprinted forward onto the street, he then darted left. The first officer was trying to stay with him, but Seth was too quick. Seth ran for ten blocks before looking back to see that there was no one even close to him. He was only a couple streets away from his home so he decided to go there. He arrived to his home, and was greeted with a half-full bottle of Budweiser being hurled at him by his mother.
“Why the hell are you here? You’re dumbass should be in school!” She exclaimed.
Seth just started walking up the stairs to his room ignoring her.
“Well!” she persisted.
“I don’t feel good,” he mumbled as he fell onto his springing mattress, drenched
in sweat.
****
Seth woke up three hours later, and it was two o’clock in the afternoon. He rolled
out of bed, and grabbed a musty smelling black hoodie off the floor. He threw it on, and doused himself in AXE body spray. He left his house excited to hang out with Samantha. Seth wanted nothing more than for Samantha to be his girlfriend.
He walked about five blocks and made it to thirty-seven South Street. He walked past houses that were all very similar, but Samantha’s pastel yellow house stood out. It was smaller than the rest of them, but looked pleasant from the outside. There was a chain linked fence separating her front yard from her neighbors’.
Oh shit, I hope she doesn’t have a dog. Dogs bite. Her parents better not be home. I am not tryna act fake in front of them.
“Hey Seth!” Samantha shouted from her large front porch. “Hello pretty lady,” Seth said with a smile on his face. “C’mon inside, my parents aren’t home,” she insisted.
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Sweet. Parents are a bummer anyways.
Seth walked into the house, and was shocked with the appearance. He thought it would be very cozy and warm. But instead it was dull and sort of cold. There were no pictures on the walls or anything.
Seth and Samantha sat down on her couch and began to watch South Park. This is Seth’s favorite show, and Samantha has fifteen seasons on DVD. They were sitting very close to each other when Seth turned to her and said, “Do you wanna be my girlfriend?”
She responded immediately, “Yes, of course I do Seth. I think you’re adorable!”
Holy hell yes! I can’t believe she said yes!
He leaned in to kiss her, but as he did this a loaded needle fell out of his sweatshirt pocket.
“Uh.. I can explain,” Seth stammered.
“That’s okay, I wanna try it Seth.” Samantha replied.
“You don’t wanna do junk Sam, it’s bad,” he assured.
“I just really want to try it Seth!” she persisted.
“Okay fine, but you only do it with me,” he explained.
“Alright,” she replied.
Seth went first, drawing back on the plunger to make sure he hit a vein. He used
more than half of what was in there, and put the needle in her. He pushed down on the plunger and she fell backwards on the couch. Temporary euphoria washed over them for about four hours. When they were coming down Samantha knew she wanted more.
*****
Over the next several months, Seth and Samantha continued getting high.
Samantha’s grades dropped significantly and her parents were getting worried. Mrs. Carmichael even approached Seth and asked if he was making the right choices with Samantha, because she realized that something had been going on.
Seth went to Samantha’s house after school, and saw Samantha on the floor. There were piles of throw up all around her and her eyes were rolled back in her head. He lifted her up, but her heart wasn’t beating. She died on her green carpet of a heroin overdose.
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