Three

The flashing blue light of a passing police car illuminates the sitting room walls. 

“Seriously though,” Damo began, “don’t all these patrolling feds, and mad things around here make you wonder if you’re living or just surviving?” 

“Easy for you to say white-boy,” Scarlett joked sending the room into a frenzy of laughs. “That doesn’t even make sense,” Damo replied with a sour-faced expression. The room was occupied by only Damo, Ivan, and Scarlett. They were lounging with the tv on silent and music playing from the hi-fi system. Grime rapper Kano was lighting up the radio waves of a pirate radio station. I enter the room. 

“Sup Aaron,” say Ivan and Damo as Scarlett stretches from her seat to offer me a hug before I take a seat on the old couch. “Whatever, we’ve been through the same crap around here together,” Damo adds.

Ivan was my younger brother by two years. Cool clothes, clean haircut, and a charismatic smile, you could argue he was the cool kid of the family. We didn’t own much growing up, but mum always did what she could to make sure we had exactly what we needed, and what you needed didn’t necessarily always mean fitting society’s idea of what’s cool. It’s easy to say now ‘who cares what society thinks,’ but as a growing teenager in those days, image was a pretty big deal on both ends of the spectrum — If you were a nobody and dressed too bling and flashy, you risked being beaten up and robbed. Dress poorly and too cheaply; good luck getting through school, and you still also risked getting a beat down and robbed for looking like an easy target.

Ivan always found a way to make the simple look cool; he had an eye, a gift you could say. 

“You think you’re the Fresh Prince of Stratford or something Ivan,” Elsa would sometimes say and Ivan would reply, “Nah, I don’t think I’m anything.” 

Every teen boy around here had a phase where they wanted to be a rapper or grime MC, including Ivan. The streets knew him by the name ‘Mysterious,’ and enough girls called him ‘Mystie.’ That name was no joke, Ivan did possess this gift of mysteriously appearing or disappearing just in time at places, and I couldn’t understand it. Like being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

I’d be at home some weekend nights doing some graphic design work or talking to mates on messenger, and Ivan would have snuck out the house to some house party, God knows where. Morning would arrive, and his bed would still be as empty as he left it the night before. As I go downstairs, sit down and have my breakfast, mum would call for him to help with the chores. Me thinking yep, this is going to end in disaster, Ivan would miraculously appear as if he had been home this whole time, the whole night. It was mystifying. The same mystic surrounded his name when I would hear strangers in public places mention him. 

Scarlett, my sister Elsa’s best friend, was always at the house. She may as well say she lived here too. The two were the same age and a year younger than my brother. Tall, slender, and athletic, Scarlett had an unmatched love for sports and was a star athlete in track and football, or as you might call it soccer. Never let her pretty looks fool you, Scarlett (or as my sister calls her ‘Starlett,’) could hold her own at any sport that involved running, jumping, or a little wrestling; she always had energy and the type of girl who would laugh if she fell in mud. By societal definition, Scarlett was a bit of a Tomboy and didn’t much care about what people thought of her or try to impress anyone. For a track star from around here, Scarlett was surprisingly very well-spoken, like a poet who knew how to paint vivid pictures with words. A lot of guys took a liking to her because of it and some girls were envious but she didn’t care. We grew up with her, so to us, she was a sister, and in truth sometimes, we saw her as one of the boys.

Damo was white as you may have guessed. He was one of the few white people we knew around our age from around here. He didn’t come from a life of privilege. In fact far from it. His being here today too, is a miracle in itself. Damo had overcome battles of addiction and abuse growing up and was now Mr well connected. Whenever we were out and needed something, a ride, an exit plan, Damo would always have a connect. If he didn’t have something someone needed, he knew someone who would, and that could be anything. He had that cockney gab (meaning chat) where he could just as well talk his way out of a situation as he could into one. Damo and Ivan were like brothers. They met at the youth club of the local church the family attended when we first moved to the area. Soon, they struck a friendship full of pranks, jokes, and a bit of trouble which flourished brotherly with Damo becoming family. Maybe I too fell victim to one or two of their pranks over the years.

“Don’t judge people by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character,” mum would often say.

She clearly had a thing for Martin Luther King Junior or his quotes because outside the Bible there was no one else she would quote as much. Though we often joked about race, we never saw Damo different to us. He was family, though others saw things differently.

Blackout. The power cuts!