Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers Read Free Book Online Page A

Kelly asked. Same voice. Flat. Cold.
    â€œâ€™Cause they check to see if you got a record, and I might have one,” I said. “I’m not sure, butMaurice is my boy and I didn’t want him to know I been in jail.”
    â€œFor selling drugs?”
    â€œNo, for trying to be somebody besides me,” I said. “One time I was almost where I am now—”
    â€œOn this block?”
    â€œNo, man, don’t be stupid,” I said. “You know, not the outside of me, but inside. The way I feel and stuff, and the way things were going down. It was like, every way I turned, I was getting some heavy grief and I didn’t see no way out of the situation. So, and this probably sounds a little stupid to you because you ain’t into nothing, I decided to go down a different road. It was like, who I was—me—didn’t have a way to make it. So I decided to be somebody else.”
    â€œSomebody else? How you going to do that?” Kelly turned and looked me up and down.
    He hadn’t really turned to me before, and where I was sitting I couldn’t get a good look at him. But when he turned, I saw he was younger than I thought he was. That was a little disappointing. If he had been older, it would have been right that he knew stuff.
    â€œThat’s just the way it was,” I said. I was back in the chair. My arm hurt when I put it on the armrest. It was getting stiff, too. “Look, I ain’t got no more time to waste with you.”
    â€œYeah, you do,” Kelly said.
    I didn’t know what he meant by that. I got up and went over to the window and pulled up the shade a little. There was only one police car and a dark van on the street.
    â€œYou thinking they waiting for daylight?” I asked.
    â€œThey probably waiting for you to show up,” Kelly said. “But they don’t know you in here, or else they would be coming in looking for you. So you might as well hang here until it’s clear.”
    â€œI can’t see the whole street from here,” I said. “How I know if it’s clear or not?”
    â€œMaybe you can change something that will clear it up,” Kelly said.
    â€œI can’t change nothing and neither can your dumb ass,” I said.
    â€œYou just told me you wanted to change who you were,” Kelly said. “Something about beingsomebody else and how it got you in jail. Didn’t you say that?”
    â€œI should cop some sleep,” I said. “You don’t know how tired I am.”
    â€œAnd everything is supposed to stop and wait for you to get some rest?” Kelly asked.
    â€œShut up.”
    We sat quiet for a long while. From the street I could hear car horns every once in a while. Kelly was kind of slouched down in his chair. I wondered how tall he was. He was thin, like me, and he sounded like he knew something about the street, but he was different, too.
    When he was facing away from me, he looked regular, square shouldered, a little thin, not too strong. But when he moved, it was like I needed to pay attention, like something was going on. I thought of dudes who could play ball, who could lift their game into some other level that I didn’t know about. That was Kelly, lifting his game even as we talked. I was hanging on. But I was afraid to let go.
    I hadn’t talked about trying to be a differentperson before, but I had thought about it when I was down in Texas. I had thought about it and it made sense to me even though I didn’t think it would make sense to anybody else. I wondered if Kelly could dig where I was coming from. He was changing a little. When I first got into the apartment, he was calm, and he seemed okay but not really friendly. Now he was getting irritated, like he wasn’t really feeling me.
    Sometimes I could put my thoughts into words and sometimes I couldn’t. I thought if Kelly would ask me some questions, maybe I could answer them, but he