Angelo’s Story…
Ten year old Angelo ignored his rapid heart rate, focusing exclusively on the six guys belligerently standing in front of him. He’d only been in the neighborhood for twenty-four hours and he’d been expecting this confrontation, but not so many of them at one time. After his parents’ death six months ago, he’d learned the hard way how to be “street savvy”. Number one rule of the street – find out who controlled the neighborhood and stay away from them. Either that, or rule the streets yourself. Only the fittest and smartest survived on the cruel streets of New York City. They were tough and often brutal. The last time he’d been confronted, he’d been caught off guard. This time, he was ready. He’d known this moment was coming.
Angelo automatically squared his shoulders and faced the teens head on, refusing to show fear. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice abnormally deep for one so young. Angelo suspected that the boys confronting him were about fifteen or sixteen but since he was so big, they probably perceived him as a threat. He was only ten years old, but he was almost as tall as they were.
Oh well. He’d either be beaten up today and they’d leave him alone, or he’d take them down and he’d be left alone. Either way, the confrontation was happening now and he had to deal with it.
The teens mocked him. The one in the middle, the skinnier one, seemed to be their leader. “We want to know what you’re doing here. We didn’t invite you to the neighborhood. And since we’re in charge here, you should have asked politely.” Angelo ignored the snickers from the five others behind the leader, focusing only on the teen’s eyes. “So are you going to ask politely?”
Angelo squared off, refusing to back down. He wasn’t asking permission, politely or otherwise. “Just get out of my way,” he growled, knowing that showing fear for any reason would be tantamount to defeat. Even mental fear wasn’t allowed inside his head.
He heard the noise behind him and almost groaned with resentment of his upcoming beating. With six in front of him and more coming from behind, there was no way he could withstand whatever was coming his way. Life really had a way of getting worse and worse, he thought.
When someone touched his shoulder, his eyes were momentarily distracted. He looked to his flank and was startled to see the two boys from school, Dominic Carson on his right and Zayn Sakir, the other new kid in school, on his left. They were glaring at the older boys with confident defiance. Both of them were standing up for him? But Dominic had just spurned a friendship with Angelo on the school playground earlier today. Why was he standing up against these goons with him? That didn’t make any sense.
Zayn, on the other hand, was a good guy. They’d been in the shadows of the playground together, hungrily watching Dominic reading the book. Both of them had been wondering aloud what the book might contain, fascinated by the temptation of knowledge but not sure how to obtain it. At the time, both he and Zayn had held back, knowing how to bide their time.
“What are you doing?” Angelo asked. Dominic was snarling with an evilness that Angelo had already suspected was inside the other boy. Zayn was pressing forward, as if he desperately wanted to fight the six teens personally.
Astoundingly, the six boys backed off after Dominic’s show of anger. How was that possible? Had Dominic already dealt with these guys before? Regardless, Angelo owed his classmate.
There was no way around it. He turned and faced the two boys who had supported him and helped Angelo avoid what might have been a painful episode in his life. He stuck out his hand. “Thanks,” he said grudgingly. He wanted to get away from these guys but he didn’t think that would be polite. Although why he was suddenly assuming manners was a mystery even to him. He’d didn’t have anyone to care whether he said hello or thank you any longer, so what’s with the new attitude?
“Come on,” Zayn said and led the three boys down the street. All of them were flexing their shoulders and other muscles in an attempt to release the tension and adrenalize caused by the possible fight.
As soon as they walked into the tiny apartment, Angelo stared in awe at the woman making meatloaf. She had blond hair and blue eyes and looked nothing like her son. Zayn had darker skin, almost black eyes and dark brown hair that curled at the ends because he needed a haircut.
“Where have you boys been?” the beautiful woman asked as she poured a glass of water for the three boys and handed each of them two cookies.
Angelo ate the cookie slowly, absorbing the incredible flavor of a freshly baked, warm cookie. He’d had cookies before, both before his parents had died as well as at the orphanage, but never homemade cookies. And the idea of a warm cookie just about knocked his socks off. Thinking of that, he hid his left toe behind his right leg, not wanting this beautiful woman to see the hole in the top of his shoe. It wasn’t that Zayn’s mother was wealthy. Both mother and son looked to be just slightly above Angelo’s foster parents in the economic pits in which he lived. It was more that she was kind and lovely, reminding him of the soft hands of his mother who had died and he didn’t like the ache in his belly caused by the memories.
He sat at the chipped kitchen table, listening to Zayn talk to his mom, describing his day, discussing the teacher and the different subjects. It felt good to simply sit here in this clean but tiny kitchen, listening to the three of them make small talk. Angelo remembered coming home from school before his parents had died. He’d sat in the kitchen, talking with his own mother while she prepared dinner for the three of them.
Angelo pushed that memory, and so many others, out of his mind. It hurt to remember moments like that. They were gone, killed by a guy who had drank too many beers during lunch, then gotten into a car only to crash into Angelo’s parents on his way home from some business meeting. Angelo had been in school that day. He vividly remembered the police officer trying to explain that his parents had passed away. At the time, it hadn’t made much sense to him, but as the night approached and his mother never arrived to pick him up from the place they’d taken him after school, he started to grasp the meaning of death.
Then Zayn’s mother cleared her throat. “Okay boys, get out your homework and start getting it done,” she said firmly. She fluffed Zayn’s hair and cleared away the cookie paraphernalia.
Angelo glanced at the other two and saw the identical, sheepish look. “Finished it, already,” he said, thinking that being the first to say it would make him the bravest.
The other two both nodded their heads.
Zayn’s mother smiled and rolled her eyes. “Okay, why don’t you go down to the library and get some books to read?”
Angelo saw the resistance on the other two boys’ faces and cleared his throat. “What’s a library?” he asked, feeling like an idiot and bracing himself to be teased.
Amazingly, that didn’t happen. “It’s a place down the street where you can check out books.” It was the first time since his parents had died that he’d received an explanation without someone thinking he was mentally challenged.
Angelo shook his head. “No money,” he replied, embarrassed to have to admit something so desperate. That was always the case these days. But someday, some way he would find a way out of ever using that phrase. He looked up, prepared to see pity in the other two boys’ faces. But there was only understanding.
The beautiful woman was smiling gently towards them all. “The library is free. As long as you bring the books back on time, you don’t pay anything.”
This was a completely new concept to Angelo. Was there really something out there that was free? Did he have to fight for the books? He had no idea, but he didn’t want to ask anything else. He didn’t want to reveal his ignorance with these two new boys that he desperately hoped would become his friends.
Angelo saw Dominic’s face and knew that something monumental was about to occur. There was just something about the boy’s eyes that told him his life was about to change.
“I have a geometry book,” Dominic whispered and picked up his book bag from the floor. He hesitated, but eventually revealed the precious book to the other two.
The three boys hovered over the book, reading the words, teaching each other the amazing new math concepts. It took them three months of conspiring after school and secret meetings on the edge of the playground, but they went through the whole book, absorbing the knowledge about angles and shapes, logic and theorems. Dominic brought it back to Ms. Novak and she gave them more math books, but even better, Angelo discovered the library. Not only was it a wonderfully cool and comfortable place to relax during the hot summer, but it was also heated in the winter. The three of them spent hours in the library after school and on the weekends, plowing through all the books, absorbing knowledge like sponges. When one of them found something interesting, he’d share it with the others.
And even better, Angelo discovered science. He thought that chemistry and biology had to be the most fascinating subjects in the world. He couldn’t believe all the things that could happen in nature or how to manipulate what was found in nature to make all new compounds and materials.
Eight Years Later…
Angelo took in gulping breaths of air as he sprinted around the corner. When he saw Dominic, both men headed towards each other. “Anything?” he asked.
Dominic shook his head. “Nothing,” he replied back. Both boys were bent over with their hands braced on their knees as they struggled to catch their breath. This is pretty unusual, since both of them were capable of running for hours to get exercise. On a normal morning, Angelo could easily do a ten mile run before work.
“I have someone standing outside his apartment, watching for him,” Angelo said.
“It’s like he just disappeared,” Dominic shook his head, astounded that they couldn’t come up with any leads to find Zayn. “No one just disappears like this!” he growled.
Officer Moran ran up to where they were trying to catch their breaths and both teens looked up hopefully. “Nothing!” Pete Moran stated with disgust and frustration. “I have all my contacts asking questions. The entire neighborhood knows what you three guys do for all of them and they are all out looking. But no one saw or heard anything. There aren’t any rumors and no one showed up in any of the hospitals or police stations fitting his description. He’s just gone,” Pete said gruffly.
The officer looked at them and shook his head. “You boys need to get some rest and eat something. Zayn is going to show up sometime.” He saw the dark circles under Angelo’s eyes and Dominic’s skin looked pale. He suspected that neither of the young men had eaten or slept in the past three days. “I’m going to run through all the check points again,” he said, referring to the places where there might be information about Zayn’s disappearance.
Angelo pushed his hands through his hair, fury over his impotence streaming through his veins like lava. “We’ve got to find him,” he said to Dominic. The police officer nodded and walked away, doing all that he could to find their friend. Even the police knew what Angelo, Dominic and Zayn did for the neighborhood. Bags of food showed up mysteriously at someone’s door when someone in the family lost their job or when it was rumored to have been a slow week at work. Diapers were delivered, gallons of milk, medicine, even a lawn mower and a power drill had arrived in the middle of the night, with no one knowing exactly who had delivered them. But everyone suspected that it was these three boys.
Pete Moran knew better than others who was behind the good deeds, not to mention the peace in the neighborhood. The police commissioner might have recognized all the police officers on this beat for the dramatic reduction in crime, but those same officers knew that it was mostly due to these three boys. With one of them missing, it was a moral imperative to find Zayn and ensure he was safe. Not to mention that Angelo and Dominic were going to kill themselves trying to find their friend if something didn’t break.
Thirteen hours later, Angelo sat in the park, his body aching from the brutal pace he’d put it through recently. But every time he started to slow down, he thought about Zayn and all the ways his friend had helped him over the years. Angelo had to keep going. He’d lost his parents, there was no way in hell he was going to lose his friend.
Dominic fell onto the seat next to him. “Still nothing!”
Angelo was just about to call his contacts again when his cell phone vibrated. He lifted it and stared at the unknown phone number. Before he pressed the “accept” button, he nudged Dominic with his elbow, then put the caller on speaker phone.
“Hello?” he spoke, his voice angry and determined, thinking this might be a person calling about Zayn. If they wanted ransom money, he had just over a million dollars in assets he could pull together. He suspected Dominic had about the same, so somehow they would get their friend back, even if he had to empty his bank account to do it.
“Angelo?” Zayn’s voice came back to them.
Angelo glanced at Dominic, wondering if he was hearing things. “Zayn? Is that you?” he asked, his whole body tensing, afraid this was some sort of cruel joke.
“Yeah. It’s me. I’m guessing Dominic is right beside you, isn’t he?”
Angelo closed his eyes in relief. If the caller with the familiar voice knew that Dominic would be with him, this was definitely their friend. The three of them knew each other so well. “Yeah, Dominic’s here,” Angelo replied.
Dominic laughed, thrilled with the voice. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, leaning towards the phone as if he could somehow get closer to their missing “brother”.
“You’re not going to believe it,” Zayn replied. And for the next ten minutes, Angelo and Dominic listened, asked questions and sorted through the mystery of Zayn’s disappearance. “So you’re a sheik?” Angelo asked, amusement in his voice. “What’s that like?”
Zayn growled, his frustration apparent. “I’m coming back there. I just have to figure out how.”
Dominic and Angelo both shook their heads. “Sound like you have a responsibility.” Both young men laughed heartily, both relieved that their friend was safe but more than ready to tease him about his new position in the world.
That night, Angelo laid in bed, exhausted from days of frantically searching for Zayn but his brain still unable to shut down. He stared at the ceiling of his new apartment, feeling once again satisfied that his world was right. He thought about Debbie, the woman he’d been seeing before Zayn had disappeared. But the thought of seeking her out didn’t stir him as much as it should. She’d only been dating him as a status symbol. She was now considered a brave woman. Not only did she approach Angelo, she tempted him into her bed.
He sighed and rolled over, punching his pillow in frustration. With Zayn’s whereabouts confirmed, why was he so restless? He was poised to top two million dollars this year and had plans already in place for more growth of his relatively tiny company, his friends were whole and hardy, he had women throwing themselves at him…why was he so….impatient?
