The Intervention - Epilogue

The Intervention - Fallout

    By J. Kyle McCormick


    There was fallout as word spread that I was hanging around with the jellies. Letty suddenly became evasive with me when I suggested study sessions, and finally one day at her locker she confronted me.
    "I’ve been hearing some things about you and I want to know if it’s true," she said.     
    Her locker was near a breezeway, and a brisk wind ruffled the shirt she wore with the words "Saturday Night Fever" that she’d bought at the mall. We’d seen the movie together.
    "Are you doing drugs?" she asked. "Tell me the truth."
    "No," I said.
    "That’s not what I heard," she said.
    I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t lie to her.
    "I’m not doing it that much," I stammered.
    She looked at me with a penetrating glare I’d never seen before. At least not directed at me.
    "So you’re telling me you are," she said. "You’re hanging around with those bad kids?"
    "Just sometimes," I said.
    "Kyle, why?" she said, her eyes softening for just a moment. "They’re always picking on you. Why do you want to hang around with them? Just to get friends?"
    "No," I said.
    "Kyle they’re not your friends, they’re always picking on white people. Ruben, he’s my friend’s cousin. I’ve been over there when they’re there and all they talk about is white people. They still talk about you and they tease me and say that I like you. I don’t care what they say, I just ignore them."
    She looked at me in silence for a moment, looked away, then exhaled again as she said, "Is that why you can’t do math, because you’re high all the time?"
    "No," I said. I’d never gone to her house stoned.
    She glared at me again. "I don’t believe you."
    This stung like a nest of wasps. We’d never distrusted each other about anything. Her words cut me, but it wasn’t enough to steer me off the path I had already chosen. I was doing it for survival, but there was no point in explaining it to Letty. She wouldn’t accept it that as an excuse.
    "We were your friends," she said, gathering up her books. "We still are, but if you’re going to be doing that I can’t hang around with you no more. I told my Mom what you’re doing and she doesn’t want you over at my house no more, and anyway my brothers are helping me now."
    She looked at her watch and then out toward the breezeway. I thought I saw tears in her eyes, sensing emotions that were too heavy for me to handle.
    "I have to get to class," she said and walked briskly away.
    I felt my stomach drop as I watched her disappear down the hall. I didn’t understand why, but this hurt more than Molly. I felt a cold wind whip through me. I’d just lost my first love and didn’t even know it.