Live to See the Day by Nikhil Goyal

Author:Nikhil Goyal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

14

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This Is Some Grown Man Shit

Ryan caught the bus to Front Street and Hunting Park Avenue. He tried to calm his jitters for his first day at Educational Options Program, an alternative education program run by the Philadelphia schools. This was his latest attempt to earn a high school diploma, prompted by a conversation he’d had with a coworker at PECO Energy. The first thing he looked for in an employee, the man said, is whether the person has the diploma. “If you have your GED, what that tells me, at some point in life you quit,” he said. “Granted you went back and you got a GED, but you still quit.”

Ryan heard about EOP from Carl, a classmate at El Centro de Estudiantes. The program was housed in his old haunt: the tan-brick CEP building. Fuck, I’m back here, he thought. Like old times, he walked through the metal detector, albeit no pat-down. And he could bring in his backpack. His anxiety intensified as he passed the classrooms. The vicious fights and staff restraints were lodged in his hippocampus and suddenly surfaced. Nobody had bothered to change the building’s layout, which made him mad. Inside the gym were more than a hundred students. Ryan listened as someone gave an overview of the program, which was largely computer-based. It ran from 3 to 6:30 p.m. Monday to Thursday, and he would start the following week.

On the way home, Ryan stopped by the corner of Mutter and West Somerset Streets in Kensington, where his friend Nilsa was selling drugs. Ryan had been fired from his job at McDonald’s after he was overheard making disparaging comments about the boss. For some reason, he had been able to collect unemployment benefits for a few months, but they had run out. Now he was desperate for cash for Marc and the rest of the family.

A short, fit Puerto Rican girl with large silver hoop earrings, light-brown bangs, and flower and text tattoos across her right arm, Nilsa was wearing a low-cut white T-shirt, navy pants, and hot-pink-and-white kicks. Like Ryan, she was a 1995 baby, born over a month after him. She walked Ryan over to the trap house, a dilapidated two-story row home. Ryan sat on a seedy couch while Nilsa waited in the kitchen for someone to bring her a replenished supply. The floors were cracked, and the walls had water stains and chipping paint. The house gave off ominous vibes, and he wanted to get the hell out of there. To his relief, they left in under ten minutes. For the rest of Nilsa’s shift, Ryan surveilled the block for cops and sold a few of her packets of crack cocaine. She told him to come back the next day ready to sell full bundles.

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