Friday, October 19, 2001
Oakland, CA | 8:30’ish in the PM
“Dude! Stop complainin’! We’re just gonna stop by and chill for a little bit.”
“What’s a little bit?” Dario questioned, defiantly. He wasn’t excited at all about hanging out in Oakland. He hated Oakland with a passion and just wanted to get back to his own side of town. He despised unfamiliar territory, and not that Oakland was unfamiliar to anybody from the Bay Area, but it sure as fuck wasn’t the neighborhood he wanted to be hanging out in after dark.
They’d just played against Bishop O’Dowd High School in football and won with twenty-two points between their score, and Bishop O’Dowd’s trailing one. After their game the boys should’ve been on the bus back to Danville, headed home with the rest of the team. But Dario’s cousin, Lucas, had insisted on driving to the game instead, and now Dario knew why.
“No longer than an hour,” Lucas promised. “Okay? It won’t be longer than an hour.”
“That’s bullshit, Lucas, and you know it! Man, I wish I’d fuckin’ rode the bus back with the team. No wonder you wanted to drive out here.”
“Stop pouting. You sound like a chick, dude!” Lucas spat.
Dario shot a look over at his cousin in the driver’s seat. “You’re lucky you’re driving, Luke, because I’d already be beating your fucking ass for saying that shit! You know I like to go home and at least take a shower first, after a game. You could’ve waited until tomorrow to see this chick, you desperate-ass pussy hound.”
“Fuck you, Dario,” Lucas spat, keeping his focus on the street they’d just turned onto. “There were showers in the locker room! Nobody forced you to leave out with sweaty balls.”
“You guys ought’a chill,” their friend, Jonathan, cosigned from the backseat. He added a bit more to soothe the tension in the car. “She’s a cool girl, Dario. And she’s got friends too.”
Dario turned around to look in the backseat at Jonathan. “Like I give a fuck,” he shot.
It was dark out on 35th Avenue, causing Lucas to slow-roll the car as he looked for the address that he was given.
“Well, you should give a fuck, because every one of her friends—”
“Here, Jonathan,” Lucas interjected, passing his phone to the backseat. “Scroll to Alexandra’s number and tell her to come outside; that we just pulled up.”
Jonathan did as he was told, while Lucas pulled into a parking space in front of a duplex apartment surrounded by a short wired fence. Dario still sat quietly. His square shoulders tensed, and his temples throbbed. He was visibly agitated. He would’ve suggested taking the car and going home to change and coming back for the guys, but even as mad as he was, Dario didn’t want to leave his cousin behind. Not there.
“S’up, Dario, you afraid of the dark?” Lucas kidded, when he noticed that Dario hadn’t spoken any words in a while.
“Not the right time, dude. Not the right time,” Dario warned. “Just hurry the fuck up and say whatever sweet shit you have to say to this girl and let’s go.”
“I’m guessin’ you’re not getting out of the car, huh?” Jonathan queried.
“You guessed right. And now you can shut the fuck up, and don’t ask me shit else.”
“Damn, bro,” Jonathan sulked. “That attitude is—”
But he cut his statement in half when Dario whipped around and shot him a threatening look.
Seconds later, both Jonathan and Lucas exited the vehicle. While Lucas leaned against the car dragging on a cigarette that he knew he wasn’t supposed to be smoking, Jonathan stood on the sidewalk cracking jokes. Dario, on the other hand, reclined his seat slightly, turned the music up to a comfortable volume and laid his head back against the headrest.
Several minutes later, Dario watched as three girls approached the car. One of them walked directly up to Lucas, grabbed his face and aggressively pulled it to hers for a tongue-kiss. When the remaining duo began progressing toward the car, Dario shook his head and blew out a puff of air. He already saw Lucas and Jonathan’s tactic playing out. They were hoping that he saw the pretty brown girl with the braids pulled high into a ponytail, with the firm breasts pressing against a tight-fitting graphic t-shirt, and that he would decide that he wanted to stay after all.
They couldn’t be more wrong, Dario thought to himself.
Jonathan got into the backseat with one of the girls in tow, while the other girl hopped into the driver’s seat, immediately setting her sights on Dario.
“You must be Dario,” the girl flirted. “You cute as fuck,” she complimented, as she chewed a little too loudly and too sloppily on a piece of gum. He couldn’t lie. When he watched her lips move, he couldn’t help but wonder what it’d feel like if she slobbed up and down his knob. “Hellla muthafuckin’ fine,” she added.
“Thanks,” Dario responded, dryly.
“Shit, you ain’t gotta thank me. Thank yo’ parents! Girl, you see this fine-ass dude?” she asked, turning to address her friend in the backseat with Jonathan.
“Yeah, I see his pretty ass.”
Pretty? Dario thought. Who the fuck calls a guy pretty? But he just shrugged it off and figured he’d just take the compliment and ride it out. It wasn’t that he was antisocial, or that he didn’t find the girls attractive. He simply had no interest in being there at this time of night. Normally, he would’ve engaged in conversation and maybe even fucked the girl by the end of the night, but tonight, he just wanted out.
Suddenly the front door opened, and Lucas leaned in with his girl close by his side. “Hey . . .” she said, reaching past her friend to stick her hand into the car. “I’m Alexandra. And you’re Dario. It’s nice to meet you.” She offered a friendly smile as they shook hands. “Y’all played a good game tonight.”
“Thanks. Your team did too. Probably one of the best opponents we have. It’s always a good game.”
“Well, Lucas told me that y’all have to go. I wish my baby could stay longer, but I wanna respect ya shower time and all that stuff,” she chuckled.
Dario released a short laugh, appreciating the humor. “Yeah . . .”
“Shit, I wish I could get in the shower wit’ his ass,” the girl in the front seat mumbled, as she slid off of the leather and outside the car, past Lucas and Alexandra. “But I don’t think I’m his type,” she acknowledged. “Maybe I need blonde hair and funny-colored-ass eyes, or some shit like that. This too much chocolate for that ass. Yo’ loss, cutie,” she remarked, addressing Dario. “Alex, Girl, I’ll see y’all back in the house.”
Lucas was back in the driver seat after hugging his friend, Alexandra, once again. Jonathan was delayed with saying goodbye to the girl he was in the backseat kissing and hugging on.
“Dude . . .” Dario said, interrupting the last of their moment. “It’s time to go.”
“Yeah, come on Jon, we should go,” Lucas instructed.
Jonathan’s friend exited the vehicle and as she did so, Alexandra leaned into the front window to kiss Lucas once more. As she pulled back from the kiss, bright headlights appeared through the rear window of Lucas’ car.
“Pull off, Lucas,” Alexandra instructed. Her tone had urgency in it. “Call me later,” she said with a nervous quiver in her voice.
Instinctively, Dario turned toward the back of the car, and then back to face Alexandra when he detected the panic in her voice. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Who’s that back there?”
“Just pull off!” she urged, practically begging. “Go, Lucas!”
Thinking that maybe it was her parents, or another authoritative figure, and not wanting to get her into any trouble, Lucas did as Alexandra suggested and started up the car. Dario continued to look back. His curiosity was heightened more than ever.
“Who the fuck is this?!” a deep voice probed from the side of Alexandra, as he got closer to where she was standing at the side of the vehicle.
Before anybody knew it, Lucas had jumped back out the car to confront the commotion that was clearly as a result of his presence. Without a second thought, Dario did the same, just in case his cousin needed him for backup.
“Oh!” the guy exclaimed at the sight of Lucas. “So this what the fuck you doin’ now?! This what the fuck you doin’, bitch! You fuckin’ around with crackers, and shit?!”
“Bitch?! Hold on, dude. What the fuck is the problem?” Lucas asked, stepping to intercept the guy’s hold on Alexandra’s arm. Dario was now standing by his side—two against one.
“Just please leave, Clarence!” Alexandra pleaded, pushing against the other guy’s chest. “It’s not that serious! I don’t even fuck wit’chu no more! Lucas, drive away, please!” she begged. Tears had begun to pour from her eyes.
But there was too much testosterone present. The anger had been heightened with everyone involved. Before long, Clarence charged past Alexandra and swung at Lucas. It took mere seconds for the two to enter full battle mode. Lucas’s 5’10” athletic frame against a person of approximately the same stature, by all accounts, seemed to be a fair fight. Dario was nearby, confident that his cousin could handle his own, but on standby just in case.
Amongst Alexandra and her friends, the scene was far from calm as they all screamed to the top of their lungs for the fighting to stop. A distraught Alexandra tried running toward the melee, but her girlfriends held her back. Jonathan, as far as anyone knew, was still in the backseat of the car.
When another automobile drove up and came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, a guy jumped out. Dario turned around to face him, only to find that he was headed toward the altercation in progress. That was when Dario sprang into action and got involved. Dario pulled the second guy back by the shoulder before he could jump into the fight. When that person turned around, more mayhem unleashed. Before long, porch lights began illuminating up and down the block, and a threat that police were on the way came from someone in the vicinity.
Dario and his opponent were blow for blow until Dario’s fist connected with his left jaw. The guy lost his footing and tumbled against Lucas’s car, giving Dario the chance to drag him to the ground where he unleashed on him relentlessly. Seconds turned to minutes before there was a loud pop that hit the air.
When the second popping noise echoed into the darkness, Dario stopped mid-strike and turned in the direction of Lucas. The moment Dario’s eyes landed on his cousin was the exact moment that he witnessed Lucas falling backwards onto the pavement, a blood stain quickly spreading across the chest area of his Hanes t-shirt.
“Luuuuuke!” Dario yelled out. “Luuuuke!” Lucas’s body jerked uncontrollably as he fought against the pain of what was obviously a gunshot. “N-n-n-Nooo!” Dario screamed out. Everything turned to slow motion as Dario leapt from on top of the guy he was pummeling, and frantically scrambled to his feet. As he fled toward Lucas, everybody else began to scatter. Dario already knew by the amount of blood pouring from his cousin and the look of desperation in Lucas’s eyes that nothing good would come of the situation. “Call 911!” he yelled as loud as he could while cradling his cousin in his arms and bawling to him, “Luke! Bro, please! Please stay woke, Luke! Don’t close your eyes, man! Somebody please, call 911!” he yelled again in desperation.
As the whole night flashed before Dario’s eyes, a flood of tears came forth for the guy who was more of a brother than a cousin. The football victory where they’d talked a lot of shit because they’d beat the other team by so many points, the arguing on the way to the girl’s house, the plans they had to get cleaned up and go see their girlfriends, and now this! Now this!
The last thing between he and his cousin was an argument and it hit Dario like a ton of bricks. And as the sirens came blaring up the street, the only thing Dario could do was pray that just because his cousin’s eyes had closed, it didn’t mean that he’d never see him alive again . . .