Product

By Jay Mathews

Product is about a drug dealer. Not just any drug dealer but a really good one. And he’s not a bad guy. He just does some terrible things. He loves his mum. He’s good to his girlfriend, a loyal friend to his mates he just happens to sell a shit load of drugs.
Set somewhere in Australia Product is the book I wrote after hanging out with too many drug dealers, listening to hip hop and for some reason a lot of Bob Dylan. Enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Mathews
• Release date: Apr 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310122248

Jay Mathews

Lives In Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

Book preview

Contents

The phone call

Part one: All you need to know

Some early memories

I remember…

A hundred miles and running

Andy

Crazy Rick

See, what happened was…

Growing Pains

31 McLeod Avenue.

And then what happened?

Killing me softly

Cold steel

C.R.E.A.M

Drugs

Words of wisdom from Crazy Rick

Everyone wants a piece of the money tree

Part two

Day in the life

Hanging out with Rick

Hardware

Blood is thicker than water but you can use water to wash out blood so…

The politics of drug dealing Part 1

The politics of drug dealing Part 2

The politics of drug dealing Part 3

Running through Paul the Yugo’s

Trainspotting

Laura

Cost time resources

The Judicial system

Jakes place

Nightclub

A Crack Rock Haze

Drugs, drugs, drugs.

Jail is…

Coming down in prison

Cellmate

Time

Solitary

Prison tatts

Part three

Coming home

Stasis

The watcher

Meditations

Trust exercise

Touching God

Another day

Military precision

T.C.B

Nesting

Machiavelli

The conversion of Aaron

Occupational hazards

Bust a Move

A hostile takeover type situation

Inter-fucking-mission

Regulate

Part four

Sister girl

Baby please

Phone call

The daily grind

Still

The Villains

Investment

Business associates

Lend me your ear

Picture me rolling

G

Dear Mama

Investment opportunity

Release and vent

Shorty

Diversify your bonds nigga

Jake

Part five

Can’t stop, won’t stop

Players Ball

And Repeat

Church

They should have never given you niggas money!

Chasing dragons

The weight

A mellow vibe

Consolidate

Internal promotion

Ready to die

Thursday

Nesting

Juicy

At the gun range

Tequila sun rise

Work

A rainy day

Killer bees

The future

Consignment

Return of the Mac

That’s what friends are for

Chink in the supply chain

Risk Management

Crack rules everything around me

Incidental expenses

Sample

Forever young

B.O.B

Monday

Private number

The Laura situation

A hook up

Family Ties

What you talking bout Willis?

Dog house

Flotsam

Bennie

The chronic

Brazen

Protect ya neck

Part six

Yarn

Disappointment is…

Ups and downs

The Blizzard of Two Thousand and Something Whenever

Charlie

Everything must go

Kryptonite

Nightlife

Lockdown

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

Last call

For the love of money

Knocking on Heavens Door

Eddy’s dead

Thug mansion

Informant

It was a good day

No diggity

Missed Call from Paula

Adelaide

Smoke weed everyday

O.P.P

Bad boys for life

Encore

Weed song

Hey bro

I don’t need em

Shook ones

Heaven & Hell

I got to go babe

Gold watch

Horror show

Game

Spy vs. Spy

Tuesday

Today

Notorious Thugs

Hammer time

The phone call

And it’s the fucking phone. It is loud. Like really loud, and Tracy is looking up at me frowning from where she lays in my robe. Plush carpet all around her.

Loud.

Hello?

Hey.

Hey.

We got him.

Where are you?

Old mate’s.

Long pause as I process this information.

Has he said anything?

No, we just got here.

Alright I’m coming over.

Fine.

And I put the phone down next to me on the couch. The phone is black, hard against the white of the plush white leather. Tracy has turned the sound softly down but she is staring at the big TV. It’s something black and white, old and it’s set in the twenties, American gangsters.

I gotta go I say.

And Tracy is nodding her head, still looking straight ahead, all open robe and fluffy carpet.

And on TV a guy in a hat says it is what it is.

My big fuck off house, and I’m upstairs now, in the bedroom. I’m dressed, tracksuit pants, T-shirt. I look good man. Real good. My hair is short and neat, I look good, healthy. And I’m staring at my face, thinking like I could use some sun, and I look into my eyes,

And I am beaming.

It’s a slight surprise.

My pupils are fucking dilated as.

And it’s a warm feeling as I realize I fully just had some of that acid before. Before, back then.

Back when.

And now I’m sitting on my bed looking at my trainers, trying to figure out how I feel.

Floating, and finally I choose my green pair of Nikes, and all of a sudden I’m putting on my shoes. Socks first. Warm. Brand new.

I feel good.

One shoe, two shoe, and I’m up, patting my pants, mobile phone, car keys, wallet, gun in the back.

I have another look at myself in the mirror.

Beaming.

Fluffy carpet and tall ceilings and I’m down the stairs and I walk on past the living room, Jay Z is now on the stereo.

I shout out I’m going and I set the alarm on the security system and walk through a doorway, downstairs and into my garage.

I get in my car and I press the button for the roller door, turn the key, and beats come on the stereo loud.

I start my car.

Off we go.

The streets are empty, all dark in the night, all parked cars under dim streetlights. Everyone is sleeping, everything is shut.

Two in the morning.

Really?

And I’m at the intersection, the lights are red.

So I stop.

Tick tick tick goes the car in the space between songs, that moment lasts forever because…

A dog slowly crosses the street.

Like I’m in the car, everything’s quiet, there is no other traffic around, no cars, nothing, just this dog, scruffy looking, crossing the road. In the space between the music and then I swear, the dog stops, and looks over at me.

And then the music starts, and the lights change but I’m sitting there, alone in the street.

Tripping balls.

And off we go.

Slowly slowly, carefully.

Here’s where it gets tricky, dark single lane streets. Concentrate. I am tripping fucking balls. Everything looks fucking amazing. Controlling the car is the most important thing I have ever done with my life. And the music, the beats…

OMG.

Should not have done that acid.

I realize, in this epic moment, hunched over the steering wheel, steering through these dark residential and quiet streets, everybody asleep.

Should not have done that acid.

I got to go kill a guy.

On acid no less.

And its heavy man. It’s full on, and the music seems to mock me.

Drive carefully now.

Beats.

Part one

All you need to know

Some early memories

My dad kicking the shit out of Uncle Keith, in the backyard, barbeque cooking, kids and dogs. There must have been music but I don’t remember that. I remember looking up because dad had yelled you’re a fucking dog cunt, and then Uncle Keith is on the floor all of a sudden, curled up in a ball, and dad is just kicking the shit out of him like, and a couple of guys pull him off and Uncle Keith is crying, drunk, blood pouring from out his nose, and dad looks furious and says to him you can fuck off too. Then people were laughing and some women led Uncle Keith away, stumbling and dad went back to the barbeque and everyone went back to talking and then it was kids and dogs again, running round.

Kids and dogs. It was a mad house. Five kids, three boys.

Kids and dogs.

But it was good.

We ran around a lot, us and the kids from the street.

Tear a ways.

Always lots of kids, even at the end of a night. I remember always being in a bed with other kids, my brothers and sisters or my cousins or the neighbor kids, all of us, in a bed, put to sleep.

I remember trying to go to sleep, listening to the music and quiet laughing through the walls. The adults staying up late.

And sometimes there would be loud sounds, throughout the night.

Bangs in the night. I remember screaming once. That was full on. Waking up to a woman screaming, then your dad coming in, banging the door open shouting go back to sleep. Go to fucking sleep.

Bang. Door shut.

Silence, us terrified.

I remember that.

But mostly I remember a lot of kids, and dogs, and people around. Drinking.

I remember wandering the streets, all of us, a bunch of kids, street lights, empty street wandering far away from home. Home was crazy, people yelling, people getting hit, crying, drama. But out on the street, it was just us, running around crazy little kids, running amuck. Push bikes, council housing, littered streets, burnt out cars. Dogs wandering around, cracked pavements, overgrown grass.

Let’s see, I remember fighting my brother a lot.

Fist fights. To get him to stop. Stop fucking picking on me. Him and Carl. And their friends. I remember being tied up, beaten, beaten with sticks and pipes, crying, alone, scared, pissing myself, and being repeatedly told to hold it in, and to harden up and not say a word…

I remember fear, primal fear, like tied up and unable to breathe properly, and my brother’s friends standing around all laughing.

Pain. I remember pain was passed down, pain and clothes.

I remember my brother Andy killing a dog, a gang of us watching. Smashed its head with a rock. Sunday afternoon, nothing else to do.

Violence…

Dad doled it out first and foremost, straight and hard too, the belt, the fist, britches when we were younger, slaps as we got bigger. To everybody, mum included.

I remember watching my brothers fight, and then my older brother try to fight my dad, and then one day I was fighting with my brother. And we fought hard too, see I had grown bigger. But my brother has a really fucked up temper. Well both of them but especially Andy.

So there would be fighting.

We all got older… the girls went off and did their own thing and my brothers would leave us, the little kids in the street and they’d be gone and I would be happy.

We terrorized the neighborhood. Me and those little kids. We were all terrible, all the boys from the neighborhood. And sometimes the girls too. We were terrible. We broke into places, we broke shit, we stole everything, then we broke it, or kept it and sometimes we sold it. We threw rocks at cars, at windows, at cats and birds and at stray dogs. We broke things, trashed things and then we started tagging everything.

I remember.

Anything we found.

This I definitely do remember well, I must have been what ten, maybe? Playground. Not at school. At the basketball courts by the park. And I don’t know how it started. I was playing basketball, all of us were and my older brother, Andy, the really mental one, was watching us with a bunch of his mates, some of which were on bikes, or just standing around. And I was playing, and then the next thing I know I’m on the ground.

Bang.

And so like I sit there for a bit then I get up to my feet, my elbow is sore, some skin is gone and I’m looking at that and then my brother is coming up at me saying fuck him up! And he looked mad too, like, cold rage, his eyes all black and sharp, his face set in like, rage, like he’s gonna hit me or something and so I look around, at the kid who had pushed me or tripped me or whatever, and his eyes were big, all round, shocked, like my brother scared him too, and looking back now, with hindsight, I can say with great accuracy, that it was probably, an accident.

Maybe not. Like maybe he meant it but… well Andy was like fucking hit him, emphasis. So I hit the kid in the mouth hard. Bang. Dropped him. I did it without even thinking about it and I remember looking at Andy looking back at me nodding his face hard and unreadable, but like I could tell he was happy, or like at least a little less furious.

He was serious, Andy. And angry.

Lot of rage there.

And the kid, the kid went home. He must have. And we probably went back to playing basketball.

Why was Andy so angry? I don’t know. Him and dad fought a lot. And dad whooped him, as much as he whooped me and my other older brother. Usually with a belt, sometime with his hand or his fists and so you knew, to be careful round dad. Not say anything stupid. It was best just to like, just not be there.

Or when you were there, be very quiet.

I remember…

Watching TV. Eating breakfast lunch and tea in front of that TV.

Cartoons in the morning.

Cold cereal in a bowl. Morning time, watching Technicolor dreams, the fucking cartoons.

I remember not once, not twice, but lots, watching cartoons sat on the floor while the couch was occupied by a sleeping snoring big person. A grown up. Sometimes they smelled too. Sometimes they snored. Sometimes they woke up and watched the cartoons with us too.

Good times.

I remember school… All the girls were at school. And my brothers briefly too. They’d come down and torment us, the smaller kids against the bigger kids.

Childhood games…

I remember we were throwing rocks at these kids once, like everyone was throwing rocks. Like some of us were piled up against a mound of sand, and we were all throwing rocks at the kids across the way and I remember rocks flying and then all of a sudden my head hurt.

And I remember the sudden blood, warm dripping.

But mostly I remember being real pissed off. Angry. I got really angry. I would have been this angry little kid and I took myself to the boy’s toilet, calm and rational but now crying because I would not stop bleeding. I remember a girl coming in and asking me if I was alright. But by now there was heaps of blood, blood everywhere, me holding bloody paper towels not knowing what to do and I remember the girl reaching out and taking my hand, and being taken to the principal’s office. I thought I was in trouble.

A bloody towel wrapped around my head and I remember my father arriving, face enraged. Rage.

And then hospital and stitches I guess.

I always remember dad wearing the same jeans, but that can’t be right. The same jeans and blue flannel shirt. He’s always had a goatee. And long hair and tatts, all the men in my family have tattoos. Lot of tatts.

I remember dad’s mates. Hard men. Some hard but softly spoken.

Did my father work? Yeah but not all the time.

Not that I remember.

I guess he worked. In between the thieving and the hold ups. The scams. And the drug dealing.

My dad knew some shifty dudes. Still does. He was always helping out a mate.

Mum would be smashed, doing the ironing, black eye and we’d let whoever in, the three of us barely able to open the door staring at some guy.

DAD!

Mum would be doing the ironing. Cigarette in hand nodding, watching the TV stoned.

It’d be my dad and some serious men in the kitchen, softly talking. And looking back, everyone was always stoned… I remember.

A hundred miles and running

So dad would have left, I guess when I was eleven. Because Carl would have been like sixteen. And Andy was a couple years older than me, my older sister Kelly would have been fifteen and Chloe was just six.

Then like Carl went, soon after that. Because of the chaos, really. Mum was drinking and the neighbors would be over, everyone’s crying. We ate real basic I remember.

And so dad was gone and suddenly Mum met Kevin. And Kevin was a dick. But he got mum to cut back on the booze. I remember I fought with Andy a lot, see we shared a room. Andy was fucking crazy. He’d accuse me of touching his stuff. But he was gone a lot of the time too, climbing in and out of the window sometimes in the night. Or just out with friends. Or sleeping.

I remember him sleeping a lot, back then.

School.

School was… well, it was fun back then. I loved school. I really did. All your mates. I loved being at school. Learning. Like I didn’t pay any attention if I wasn’t interested but if you got me, bang I shined. I had my little friends. And that girl, that girl that asked me if I was Ok, when my head was all bleeding back when I was just a little kid, well that girl was Laura. She was beautiful. She was my first girlfriend till she moved…

Primary school.

Then…

Then high school I guess.

It was Carl that first got me stoned. Like it would have been after year six had ended. Somewhere in that summer break there in between or before high school. I remember he got me to follow him out to the back of the garage and he had this like little Orchy bong and he was like do you know what this is? And I go yeah, and he goes have you ever had one? Nope. Well you’re gonna have one. Your first cone.

Are you ready?

Stoned.

He was living with mates then but he used to pop around sometimes, but then him and Kevin didn’t really get along.

So it was awkward.

And then Kevin got a job. And we moved. And Andy and me got separate rooms. He got the sunroom at the front of the house and the girls shared another so I finally had my own room. And we hadn’t really moved all that far. We could still walk or bike to school. Catch the bus.

You could ride your bike anywhere.

Really.

High school was harder I remember. You had to pay more attention to what was going on, there were girls, and fights and drama.

I knew that Andy was mental, like everybody knew, it wasn’t just me that thought that. And everybody knew who Andy was and he would hang out with the older bad dudes too. My crazy brother. And he would fight dudes all the time. Then I had to fight dudes because of my brother. But see I would just flip out too, like really flip out so they sort of left me alone after a while.

I was the psycho kid. The psycho kid with the psycho brother.

Looking back I think Jake liked me at first because I was staunch and I liked him back because he was a bad little cunt. Bad as. And he was always in trouble, talking back to the teachers, I remember he nearly got into a fight with Mr. Macgregor the math’s teacher, that was pretty funny. They were both ready to go. All of us kids holding the both of them back, our uniforms on. I think he was suspended for that. I saw him one time take on a year eleven kid, we were just walking through a hall and he said watch this and went up to the bigger older kid and just started wailing on him, the guy didn’t know what to do. I had to eventually pull him off, he was just laughing, punch drunk.

Yeah Jake did not give a fuck. And he had weed too.

Weeed…

School was school and sometimes I was there but then again we used to jig a lot by then, like just bail. There was little kid gang stuff, drug stuff, local stuff, turf stuff, revenge, drama, you name it. Your bro did this to my sister’s kid’s cousin. And there was a lot of children having children, and kids stabbing each other I remember. Everyone was unemployed and on the dole. See I paid attention to what was going on around me and…

Not good.

So I understood the value of going to school. So I tried to go. For as long as I could. I maintained like a good, I guess average, like I was always on top of stuff, good at maths. Science was alright.

School.

Hanging out.

Smoking out.

Getting high.

See I loved being high. I did, I just loved it. Smoked out. All the time. Carrying empty bongs and chopping bowls and scissors around in school bags. I fucking loved weed.

See Jake knew this dude upstairs in his building, who sold pot. And sometimes Jake would swap him stuff, for it. You know, stuff.

Stuff.

Lock your cars and your doors. Firmly. Install car alarms and security lights because they are the worst. Nothing like a light going off in the dark to put you off your game. Watch over your possessions and remain vigilant. There are thieves out in the night, who notice stuff.

And stuff goes missing.

Bad little kids.

Andy

Me and my brother really did not get along by now. He was a moody cunt and he was hooked up with the older neighborhood kids who sold gear and pills as well as weed.

The last fight we had, like proper fight, was over weed. He told me I had to stop selling weed. I told him to go get fucked. Like I was angry, but I was a bit bigger now, tall too and Andy was shorter than me, stocky though. But fuck him. And he swung at me but I ducked and just sort of crashed tackled him, just swinging furiously at his head, bang, bang, bang but then he got me a lucky punch in the head, like just above the eye and as I rolled he kicked at me, and I got up, we were both squaring off. Fuck he was mad, but like he could see that I was ready to go too, like I was furious, fuck that, no one tells me how to run my business. And it was business. He didn’t want us to sell anymore so he and his mates could have our share of the market.

Our customers.

Fuck that.

And that’s what it was like, and we both stood our ground and it was like tense, but he could see I was serious, and I guess I am his brother…

So he walked away, called me a cunt and walked away but what he also did was, was to tell Carl to not sell any more weed to me. I had been getting good weed off of Carl and we had smashed it, sold it just like that, all gone and then Carl all of a sudden told me he couldn’t sell me weed anymore. We were sitting in his car and he said that he had sold to Andy first, and now it was fucking up the family so, sorry bro, I can’t sell to you anymore. You shouldn’t be fucking selling anyway. You should be fucking studying.

He was always saying shit like that. Read books bro.

I was mad, but I understood too.

And besides we could still get weed off the guy upstairs from Jake.

And then what happened was that guy introduced us to his dude.

Because we were going through a lot of pot he mentioned us in passing.

Sparked some interest.

So we met his dude.

We met Crazy Rick.

In passing.

Crazy Rick

We sold weed, and we were still smoking a lot of it, but we could sell it too. Lots of it. In large amounts. Like we knew everybody around. Everybody. So one day we go to a house in an industrial part of town. A shady looking house, very temporary feel to it, which looking back, that’s what it was. Temporary.

And we were hustled in by a little Asian dude who wasn’t Rick but he took us down a hall and into a living room where this guy sat, goatee, twitching.

Crazy Rick.

You the boys looking for weed?

Yep.

You boys from around here?

Yep.

Crazy fucking Rick. He sat us down and he proceeded to pack cone after cone and kept passing the bong around alternately grilling us or telling us stories, about his life, his weekends, his cars, parties, girls, cash, drugs…

So we wanted to buy drugs?

Rick had drugs. Rick had heaps of drugs.

And Rick likes us. Because he was crazy. And crazy can recognize crazy. He liked that we were young too. We were what fourteen? But little hard cunts. Like we were just bad. And we egged each other on and we backed each other up. And Jake was crazy and I just did not care.

I liked the money.

And we both didn’t take shit. Had decided we weren’t prepared to put up with it.

Firm.

Resolute.

I think that’s what Crazy Rick liked.

Two serious young men. And fuck yeah he had drugs.

He had heaps of drugs.

Crazy Rick was a constantly moving salesman, with a parlor full of tricks. A magic show. Crazy fucking drugs. See Rick knew a lot of people too, people that knew people, people that liked all sorts of things, so he sold all sorts of things. And Rick was good at it, no nonsense.

And he was crazy too.

See that was his superpower. Rick was crazy and paranoid. So he never got caught. Crazy Rick reminded me of a cat, the whiskers I guess and the twitching. But Rick knew stuff. He knew dudes. And he sold large amounts. And he could sort us out.

So all of a sudden we had a very ready access to drugs.

Sorted.

See, what happened was…

They drank. Mum and Kevin. Kevin worked in a factory, it was a good job I guess but he was a really unhappy guy. I think just generally. So when he was home he dominated the living room, drinking cans of beer and watching TV. A lot of sport. Sullen like. Gloomy and irritable. Being a dick. So mum drank. Then they avoided each other. And then they fought. Like loud too. Andy bailed most of the time, crashing at his friends’ houses, or wherever he could I guess. Gone. He and Kevin fought a lot. And mum would take Kevin’s side. They would fight about everything and Kevin would pick on him getting him worked up. So he bailed.

Mum fought with the girls. Kelly bailed a lot of the time too. Or she was like pissed off around the house. Moody.

Sometimes it was good though. I’m sure there were phases of it being ok but I started bailing too. Just hanging out in the street, in the parks, in other people’s houses.

What did we do?

We smoked a lot of pot. I had a skateboard for a while. We all had push bikes. We hung out. We played video games, first person shooters, looking back all of it just training. Shoot to kill. Missions to accomplish.

We drank and had parties. And we did heaps of drugs. Drugs drugs drugs. And we stole a lot. Walked into shops came out carrying TV sometimes. Which we would hock and then blow the money on whatever. We moved from place to place, we crashed out on couches and on the floor, all in a bed or we didn’t sleep but moved around. See some kid’s parents were ok, or not there, or way fucked up on drugs or drink to care. There were a lot of missing parents, like I remember people’s grandparents being around a lot.

So we hung out.

We listened to music.

We spray painted tags and took acid and ecstasy and went to dance parties and tripped on the light shows, it blew our minds. And the girls made out with the guys and the guys tried to get laid. We partied, long, throughout the night, and on into the day.

Always moving around.

I remember running a lot, back then. From the police, from angry home owners, from other bigger kids, other gangs of kids, from drunks, crack heads, security guards, the angry public.

Almost getting hurt, caught, and not caring. You’d fight if you had to so it didn’t matter.

I remember once running, a bunch of us through an industrial site, everything half finished, past the bare walls and empty rooms running across concrete from another bunch of kids chasing us furiously, willing to stab kick beat, to fucking death, any one of us they could catch.

And lord knows why.

I can’t remember now.

But I do remember bunches of kids walking the city streets, out for drama and revenge, out for a good time, mayhem and craziness because there is power in a pack, especially when you become self-aware, and you know how fucking dangerous you really are, recipes for mayhem, potential for violence, maiming, hurt and death.

Just little kids.

Being bad little cunts.

Beating each other hard.

On some kind of mission, constantly moving around.

Why? I don’t know.

Growing Pains

All of a sudden dad came back in the picture. He had disappeared and then come back, from like the dead. Gone, disappeared then back, resurrected and now a recovering addict.

He was clean.

He wanted to have his family in his life. He wanted mum back.

He wanted to save us.

So there was drama when I was home. Mum and Kevin fighting.

Mum crying. Dad coming round. Dad wanting to fight Kevin, the cops coming around.

Too much drama.

Fuck that. And everywhere else I looked it was struggling, petty crime, housing commission, people getting pregnant, partying too much, breaking and entering, kids on heroin, no jobs centerlink drug addiction fighting fucking and benders and drugs, drugs, drugs…

See so me and Jake figured out early we could deal, it was easy and we were good at it.

And we were sick of being fucked around, everyone was, by lazy drugs dealers. Dealers that were unreliable, terrible at keeping track of time

Fuck that.

We had talked about it, and we had talked about it and we had figured it all out.

We had done the math, and I had always been good at math. And I liked collecting things, organizing. I’m good with that… We were both getting youth allowance from the government at that stage. If we both chucked that in… with some extra cash… and maybe got serious…

See what we needed was some startup.

Startup capital.

So…

31 McLeod Avenue.

9pm

Thursday. Had to be a Thursday, Wednesday was dole day. We had thought about it. Thought about it a lot. And you just know things, things around your own hood. And Sunnyvale was far away from both our houses that we didn’t go there much, round there.

But we knew the shop, knew it well, from back in the day, from hanging around.

It’s all council housing near there.

That and the cemetery. But it’s just off a main street.

A lot of traffic too, throughout the day.

See had thought about it a lot.

See Jake had the fake gun and it looked real too. Felt real. He had got it from some dude. Authentic looking. I had the knife, the big fuck off knife that used to be Carl’s, I think he forgot all about it but now I had it. This evil looking fuck off Rambo knife.

Gun and Knife.

See we weren’t going to use either too.

Like I was prepared to, to stab a dude if I had to, but fuck, I would prefer not to.

Balaclavas on.

Are you ready?

Alright.

And we walked briskly round the corner, no one around, no one about. No one in the shop.

Except for a young Indian kid. Who looks surprised as Jake rushed straight toward him with the gun pointed. The guy’s hands go up and Jake reaches across the counter and smashes the handle into the guy’s head.

Crack.

And he drops.

I look around the small shop. No one else. I watch the door. Jake is around the counter now so I can’t see him kicking the kid but I can hear it. Then he yells open the fucking register. The kid does and Jake takes all the money, checks under dash and must be disappointed because he hits the kid again with the butt of the fake gun, the authentic looking one, the heavy fake gun and he says give me everything in your pockets. Hurry up.

Now he looks up at me and nods.

And we go.

Out the door, down the road, down the alley, jump the fence. Run like motherfuckers across the cemetery, dark in the cloudy night. Perfect. We are quick but I still nearly stumble a few times but Jake leads and he seems to know the route through the cemetery well.

Council housing.

Get rid of the balaclava and black sweaters we bought at Kmart. 9.95. On special.

Bin behind the flats across the road from Curtis’s place. No one about. I got the knife in its leather case in my pocket stashed, Jakes got the money and the gun. Track suit pants with zippers, are the go. We are breathing heavy.

Walk through the flats and knock Curtis’s mum’s laundry room door.

The door opens.

Curtis looks at us red eyed and blinking. It’s smoky in the little room. Dr. Dre on the little stereo. Naomi and some other little chick who must be fourteen too, sit on the little couch. The stereo sits on top of the washing machine, next to a bowl, and a dirty Orchy bong. There’s a couple of milk crates and a chair nicked from a school.

Curtis smiles and motions us in.

Cone?

So we come into the tiny room and sit down and make ourselves comfortable. Curtis packs us bongs quickly and he should because he gets his weed from Jake, usually. Beats and music and talking shit with these two cute girls, I’m talking to Naomi a mad little pothead, tank top and tracksuit pants, fit and gorgeous her eyes lazy and stoned, smirking.

What have you been up to?

Nothing, just thought we’d stop by. Get high.

Cool.

Cool.

And I think Curtis has the shits, a little bit, because of the girls see, but he knew before that we were coming. See we had rung and organized it before.

We knew he was in the laundry and he knew we were coming.

We just don’t mention the armed robbery.

Best not too.

I feel so fucking high from the adrenalin. It takes ages for my heart rate to go down, and I just flirt with Naomi and smoke bongs and talk about local drama and drugs and parties and music. I tell her I sell weed.

Do you?

Yeah.

Do you have any?

Nah. Not on me now…

Ok.

She is smiling at me and I’m like whatever.

And then I’m sneaking into the house late, maybe two in the morning. Kevin is snoring on the couch.

I’m tired so I sleep well.

Have no plans to get up till later.

And no one bothers if I go to school or not. Not even the school.

Things to do

buy drugs.

Set up a drug cartel.

I’m what, sixteen?

With places to be.

And then what happened?

Life. Well life happens, even when you’re living it. It happens all the time, all around you, especially when you’re not looking, when you’re too busy to be paying attention. Things on your mind.

Dad had come back, clean and serene except sort of not really. He was different, thinner, older tired but really trying. Broken. He had come back broken. And he kept telling us the craziest shit, me and Kelly would talk about it… see we knew there were drugs around the house when we were growing up, we knew that mum and dad, and dad especially liked to live a little wild… but this…

My father had been using heroin