The text came in during Rico's batting practice at the community center. I was working with a group of eight-year-olds on basic fundamentals when my phone buzzed.
Better Men
Dre: Need to talk. All of us. Tonight.
Marcus: Everything ok?
Dre: Not over text. Meet at the spot at 8
I looked at the message and felt my stomach drop. "The spot" meant the abandoned building where we used to hang out before everything went to shit. If Dre wanted to meet there, something was seriously wrong.
Rico: I'm there
Marcus: Same
Me: What about Jakari?
Dre: I'll call him after we talk
I finished up with the kids - teaching proper batting stance to little ones who could barely hold the bat - but my mind was elsewhere. Three weeks ago, everything had been going good. We were all making progress, staying clean, working toward our goals.
Now something had Dre spooked enough to call an emergency meeting.
By the time I got to the building at 7:50, Marcus was already there, pacing around the third floor like a caged animal. Even in the dim light from the streetlamps below, I could see the worry etched on his face.
Marcus had always been the pretty boy of our group - light brown skin that the girls loved, fresh waves that stayed perfect no matter what, lean build from all those years of soccer. At 6'1", his waves catching what little light filtered through the broken windows. Tonight though, he looked smaller somehow, like the stress was shrinking him.
"Yo, Rico," he said when I walked in. "You know what this is about?"
I shook my head, running my hand over my taper fro. At 6'1" and stocky from years of baseball, I'd always been the steady one in the group. Dark skin, hair cut in a clean taper that faded to almost nothing on the sides, thick arms and shoulders from swinging bats since I was six. My pops used to say I looked like a young Frank Thomas, and I'd carried that comparison with pride.
"Dre just said he needed to talk. But if he's calling us here..."
"Yeah, it ain't good, it'll be better if I let Dre just explains this shit."
Dre showed up a few minutes later, and I could immediately see why he'd been cryptic over text. His usually confident swagger was gone, replaced by the tense movements of someone who was looking over his shoulder.
At 6'2", Dre had always been the tallest of us along side Jakari, with long arms and legs that made him look even taller. His dark skin contrasted with the tight curls of his taper fro - hair that he kept neat on the sides but let grow wild on top. Even stressed out, he still carried himself like the basketball player he used to be, but tonight his brown eyes kept darting toward the stairs like he expected company.
"What's good, bro?" I asked as he sat down on one of the milk crates.
"Nothing good," Dre said, running his hands through his curls. "Y'all remember Malik Thompson and his crew?"
Marcus and I exchanged looks. Of course we remembered. Malik and the Black Disciples had been the ones who helped us handle the North Side boys after Tayshawn got killed. The same crew that had gotten us deeper into street shit than we'd ever planned to go.
"What about them?" Marcus asked, his hand unconsciously smoothing down his waves - a nervous habit he'd had since middle school.
"They showed up at the rec center yesterday. Made it real clear that they don't appreciate me trying to go straight."
"Fuck," I muttered. "What they want?"
"Loyalty. Respect. For me to remember that I owe them for what they did."
Marcus stood up and started pacing again, his waves catching the streetlight as he moved. "This is bad. This is really bad. I got that varsity soccer tryout on Friday. If they start fucking with me..."
"It's worse than that," Dre said. "They mentioned you by name, Marcus. Said just because you playing soccer now don't mean they forgot about you."
"And me?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
"They ain't said your name yet, but if they know about Marcus, they know about you too."
We sat there in silence for a minute, each of us processing what this meant. For three weeks, we'd been building new lives, working toward being better men like we'd promised. Now the past was coming back to collect.
"What we gonna do?" Marcus asked.
"I don't know," Dre admitted, his fingers working through his taper fro anxiously. "But I know I can't go back to that life. These past three weeks, working with those kids, staying clean, feeling like I'm actually contributing something positive... I can't give that up."
"But if we don't..." I started.
"If we don't, they gonna make an example out of us," Dre finished. "And not just us. They know about Jakari too. Know he's out in California making something of himself."
The mention of Jakari made it real. Our boy was three thousand miles away with his shoulder-length dreads that parted perfectly in the middle, finally getting the chance he deserved, and now street politics might reach out and drag him back into the mess.
"We gotta call him," Marcus said.
"And tell him what? That we might have fucked up his future because of some shit we did four months ago?"
"Better he knows than gets blindsided," I said.
Dre pulled out his phone and dialed. It rang four times before Jakari picked up.
"Yo, what's good?" Jakari's voice came through the speaker, sounding relaxed and happy. "Y'all miss me already?"
"Jakari, we got a problem," Dre said without preamble.
The change in Jakari's tone was immediate. "What kind of problem?"
Dre explained the situation - Malik showing up, the threats, the implication that all of us were still considered part of their crew whether we wanted to be or not.
When he finished, the phone was quiet for a long moment.
"How bad is this?" Jakari finally asked.
"Bad enough that I can't work with the kids anymore if it's gonna put them in danger," Dre said. "Bad enough that Marcus might have to skip his tryout."
"And bad enough that they might use you to get to us," Marcus added, running his hand over his waves again.
Another long pause.
"Alright, look," Jakari said, and I could hear him thinking through the situation. "First thing - don't do nothing stupid. Don't try to handle this by yourselves."
"What you mean?" I asked.
"I mean don't go looking for trouble, but also don't hide from it. If they want to talk, talk. But do it smart."
"How smart can we be when they the ones with all the power?" Marcus asked.
"They don't have all the power. They need y'all more than y'all need them, or they wouldn't be making threats. They'd just handle it."
That made sense. If Malik and his crew really wanted to hurt us, they wouldn't have sent a message first.
"So what we do?" Dre asked.
"You keep doing what you been doing. Don't change your routine, don't act scared, but be smart about it. And maybe... maybe it's time to get some adult help."
"Like who?"
"Coach Holloway knows the streets. Maybe he can help broker some kind of understanding."
I thought about that. Coach Holloway had been around the neighborhood forever. He'd seen kids get caught up in street shit and managed to keep most of them out of serious trouble.
"You think he'd do that?" I asked.
"Only one way to find out," Jakari said. "But Dre, you can't stop working with those kids. That's the best thing you got going right now."
"I can't put them in danger."
"You ain't putting them in danger by being there. You putting them in danger by not being there and letting the streets win."
We talked for another ten minutes, trying to figure out our next moves. By the time we hung up, I felt a little better about the situation, but not much.
"Y'all really think Coach Holloway can help?" Marcus asked, his waves perfectly lined despite all the stress.
"Worth a shot," Dre said, his taper fro slightly disheveled from running his hands through it. "What else we gonna do? Go back to slinging and banging like we seventeen-year-olds with no future?"
"We are seventeen-year-olds," I pointed out, rubbing my hand against my temples.
"But we don't have to be seventeen-year-olds with no future," Marcus said. "We supposed to be seniors next year. Supposed to be figuring out college, careers, life after high school."
"Exactly. And I ain't letting some street politics fuck that up for us."
As we prepared to leave the building, I looked around at the place where we'd made our promise to become better men. It felt like a lifetime ago, but it had only been three weeks.
"Y'all still with me?" Dre asked. "Still committed to this better men shit even when it gets hard?"
"Hell yeah," Marcus said immediately.
"Always," I added.
"Good. Because tomorrow I'm gonna talk to Coach Holloway. Gonna see if we can find a way out of this that don't involve going backwards."
We did our old handshake - the complicated one we'd made up in sixth grade when we were just kids with big dreams and no idea how hard the world could be.
As we walked out into the Chicago night, I thought about everything that had changed over the past few months.
But the streets had a long memory, and they didn't like to let people go.
The next few days would determine whether we could really become the men we'd promised to be, or if the past was gonna drag us back down.
At seventeen years old, with senior year approaching and our whole futures ahead of us, we were about to find out if it was possible to truly change your life in a neighborhood that didn't believe in change.
The streets were calling.