Me and Jerry both looked at Joe at the same time for a few seconds. Then we gave each other a look. The darkness that had covered Joe’s face was now complimented with a frown and a sadness.
Me and Jerry both twisted our faces as we stared at Joe.
“You good bro?” Jerry said to Joe in a low tone of voice. Jerry was asking him if he was okay.
Joe didn’t respond. His face was shrouded with a look of deep fear and sadness, it looked as if he had seen a ghost, Joe was in deep thought. I wondered what he was thinking about?
Me and Jerry both looked at each other, then Jerry shrugged his shoulders, he took three puffs of the blunt and then he passed it to me. I took the tip of the blunt and reclined back on the wall. Joe had shocked me from his outburst. I decided to dismiss it. I took two hits of the blunt, and then I took a sip of the water bottle that was in my hands. The water was still cold. It filled up my lungs with bitter coolness and replaced the extreme heat that was put there because of the smoke from the blunt and completely drenched my insides with cool spring water. I took another swig and let it fill my insides slowly as I took another hit from the blunt.
Joe blinked a couple times, and then he finally said “don’t you got practice today though? What you just gon go over there afterwards?”
I had totally forgotten about practice. There was no way that I was going to be able to go to practice, get my haircut, and then go over to Christy’s house to smoke and eat. I finally made a decision that maybe I won’t be able to go to football practice today. I’ll have to go to Darwin’s office today at school and inform him that I will not be able to attend football practice today. He should be okay with it. This is like the second time that I missed practice during the entire season. The first time that I missed it was a few weeks ago, I couldn’t come because the oldhead asked me to stay at home with my little sister because my mom was going to be at work and nobody would be at home with her. Idk why he asked me though, it’s not like my little sister was a little girl or something, she’s ten years old, she can take care of herself. Sometimes I think that my parents baby her and treat her like a child too many times. I started thinking back about two years ago when she was admitted in the hospital. The way that my father was crying, and even though my mother wasn’t crying as hard as him she was still sobbing heavily. I was the only one in the family who wasn’t crying. My father was in tears because his daughter was in pain, my mother was in tears because her daughter was in pain, and her husband was a complete wreck, my little sister was in tears because she was in pain, everybody was just a wreck. I was the only one who managed to keep sanity.
“Bruh, remind me to talk to Darius today, I gotta tell him that I ain’t gon be able to go to practice today.” I looked at Jerry and said to him.
He nodded his head in agreement. I took another hit of the blunt. At this point it was a roach now. That’s when the blunt is very little, it’s called a roach because it sort of looks like a cockroach because of it’s small size.
“You want me to kill this jawn?” I looked at Jerry and asked him. I asked him if whether or not he wanted me to just finish smoking the rest of the blunt, because there was no need in passing it when it’s almost done now.
“Kill that jawn bruh!” Joe said to me as he grabbed his lighter from his pocket and lit the other blunt that he had rolled up.
Jerry looked at me and said “Yo bruh, can I tell him?”
At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. I stared at him in confusion, then it finally came to me.
“Go ahead.” I said to Jerry, giving him the permission to tell Joe. I didn’t really care. It wasn’t like something I was shy about. I didn’t care if the whole world knew, in fact, I wanted everybody to know!
Jerry pointed at me with his thumb and looked at Joe and said to him “this guy gon ask Christy to marry him.” Jerry said to Joe.
Joe didn’t say anything for a while, he just had the blunt in his hand while he stared at Jerry.
“He forreal?” Joe said as he looked at me with a straight face. He wanted me to affirm the validity of what Jerry was saying.
“Yeah, I’ma ask her today when I go over there.” I said to Joe, to confirm that what Jerry was saying was true.
Joe looked at me with an expressionless face. He took two more hits from the blunt that he was holding and then he passed it to Jerry.
He turned his face sideways and blew the smoke through his mouth in the direction of the wall. He then turned to face me again, and then he said, “How you gon marry her and you didn’t even have sex with her yet?”
“That’s what I said, and he didn’t even eat her butt yet!” Jerry said as he shook his head and took a hit from the blunt.
Me and Joe both burst out in laughter. We continued laughing for about a minute or two. I found it hard for me to stop laughing or control it. I was definitely starting to feel the effects of the high in me. The mildly lit room began to become darker as I was laughing. I started to notice… a face. But I couldn’t picture who’s face it was though, it was hovering above Joe’s head. I nudged Jerry to alert him and then I pointed towards the face.
“Bro I know you see that!” I said to my friend as I pointed above Joe’s head towards the direction of the face.
Joe jumped up a little bit and he started to look up, and then he faced me and Jerry with a frown.
“See what?? Bro ain’t nothing there!” Joe said to me with a frown on his face.
Jerry gave a short laugh and shook his head and smiled. “Bruh, he just high, don’t mind him.” Jerry said to Joe.
He wasn’t lying. I was all the way up there. I now knew what the smell was, coming from the bathroom. In the summer time when somebody mowing they lawn and the smell that emanates from the cut up grass, that’s what the bathroom and the room smelled like.
I turned my head to look at Jerry. There was now a feather hovering above his head. I looked at him in the face and began to laugh.
“Bruh, you look like Toby Macguire in the face.” I said to Jerry.
“Yeah, you said that to me yesterday bro.” Jerry said to me without laughing. He then took one last hit from the blunt and passed it to me.
I looked at the funny object in between my fingers. I looked up at Jerry. “What’s this?” I asked him.
Jerry shook his head and didn’t answer the question, he just took my water bottle and took a swig of water down without putting his lips on it. He then offered it to Joe, but he declined, he said that he already had his own.
Jerry began to talk to Joe, and he began to tell him something, but I couldn’t quite make out the words that was coming out of his mouth. I didn’t really care about what they were talking about, only one thing was on my mind… Christy, her voice, I had to call her. For some reason I really missed her, she was all I could think about.
I pulled out my Samsung Galaxy Note III from my pocket and went to my recent calls, then I saw Christy’s name and tapped it and called her. The phone began to ring. It rang once… twice…On the third ring is when she picked up.
“Hello?” Her soft voice came on the other line.
“Christy??” I said to her. I wanted to make sure that it was really Christy who had picked up, though I already knew it was due to the sound of her voice.
“Yes Jason?” She said. She sounded as if she was still in bed.
“I love you, I miss you, and I wanna marry you.” I said to her.