The Resistance

Hey wassup everybody. For all four of the people who people who actually read my online book, "Legend", I'm sure everyone felt the same way I did when Y.C was killed. He went out like a soldier though didn't he. You can't hate on the boy who pulled out his Desert Eagle and shot at the boys trying to kill him but I still hated to see him die. So I made a little side story just in case Y.C survived those three shots. So here is "Fireworks". Enjoy.






After surviving five shots, I had what you would call an epiphany, a revelation if you will. Them shots'll change you. It made me see the end result to banging the hood. When I was shot, I was all alone. No homies, no Shorty, no nothing, just me and my two pistols.
Laying up in that hospital, I spent a lot of time exploring my
mind, exploring my potential, the potential I have to change the world.
When I woke up in that hospital bed, I was woken up to bad news. An old friend of mine from Oakland was sitting by my side holding my hand telling me that everyone who I had known had been murdered. She told me how my girlfriend, Shorty, went out into the enemy's hood with two pistols and my brother, along with all of my homies. I just shook my head. That's one thing I learned about repping the Calio. When you rep a place so cutthroat, that the people you call friends would kill you, you can't expect to survive long. But that's where I was from.
I asked about Blue Eyes and Sarah just shook her head. I knew it had to be something bad to make Sarah cringe like that. East Oakland isn't nothing sweet either. I know she seen her fair share of lives being ended, so she had to be used to it, but when she told me how my old homies did Blue Eyes, I knew then it was time to leave.
Tears poured down from Sarah's face after she told me that story. I felt her pain. All of my friends had been murdered in one hot summer. I've been laid up in this hospital since 2009 and now I'm looking at the calendar and it's 2010. A lot has changed, but the one thing that hasn't is Sarah, my best friend.
She was still the beautiful, short Hispanic beautiful girl who was brave enough to be with me, a mystery, walking through Cold City. The only difference between me and her was that she had a future. She was going to be a nurse and go to a university out there in Tennessee, but me, as soon as I was able, I was going to be right back on the block, no matter how much I didn't want to, I really didn't have a choice, or so I thought.
I remember her turning around on my bed and offered me a chance to change my life. She told me about the university she was going to, how it's way in the mountains of Tennessee, a far cry from all of the madness out here. She told me how her homie got it good with some of the people there, and how he's been helping to bring some people out of the hood into a better life. I was thinking to myself, there had to be a catch, but the only one she presented me with was the fact that it was a school full of white people. Sounded like cake to me. I told her to sign me up.
She was so happy that she wrapped her arms around me and squeezed forgetting that I was in the hospital for multiple gunshot wounds and I would probably suffer from pain every time it rained. She quickly let go, but I still smiled, letting her know that she just changed my life.
And now, it's August and a day away until I leave California. Even though I'm in Oakland hundreds of miles away from Calio's madness, it still feels like I'm stuck in a bad situation when I'm here. Even this is home, it's time. It's time to be away from here. Shorty's memory is here. Killa's memory is here, and his legacy is supposed to be continued through me. They wouldn't died if it wasn't for me. Now I have to make them proud to call me brother and boyfriend. Even though they're in Heaven, I still have to bring a smile to their faces, along with the rest of my tiny locs and my b. G's.
Thinking back on the summer I spent up here with Sarah, I've done a lot of things that I would've never dreamed of doing had I been back home in Compton. I got a job at a gas station around the corner, I played with Sarah's little son, and I got me a new girlfriend now, a little Asian whose mouth runs a million miles per hour. But she's cute though and she real, real unique. She bout the same size as Shorty, just a tad on the petite side, but she keeps me grounded and she love some Y.C. Her and Sarah been best friends for so long and I can still remember her facial expression when she first saw me.
I knew something was up when Sarah first reintroduced us. "Hey Skyy, you remember NLes don't you?"
I can remember staring at her up and down, trying to put that unique name to that small person that stood in front of me. She wasn't anything like Shorty. She was extremely feminine. If Shorty was a wolf then NLes was a poodle, but an extremely cute poodle nonetheless. NLes was still hood though. She still smoked weed and that was when she offered me her most valued secrets. I realized the reason she talked so much was because with her parents, she doesn't speak because they just didn't really realize the place where they were raising her. They didn't realize how much Oakland, CA had been a part of her upbringing. They felt she had been dishonoring their family so in her household, she was the black sheep. So while in her house she was mute, but with me, her mouth was the voice box to her heart. Maybe that was the reason we were so compatible. She could talk as much as she wanted and I would be the person to listen. Plus her lips tasted like bubblegum.
Speaking of bubblegum, "Hey baby."
Wow, how could someone so small have a voice that traveled like that, but of course I quickly forget what I was thinking whenever her bubblegum lips touch mine. All I could do is smile when our eyes meet. "You ready to go?"
She just shakes her head, "Always to the point ain't you huh sweetie?" I knew what came next. I never understood why she had to pinch my cheeks, but whatever, if she like it, I love it. "That's why I love you, baby. Yeah we all packed up. You ready Sarah?"
"Yeah, all I'm waiting on is Skyy."
I couldn't help but smirk at my little smart ass friend. NLes just looked at us and laughed, "You two. I love that name by the way Sarah, how come I don't have a nickname? You knew me longer."
Sarah smiled, "It's just what I been calling him since forever. Ever since we met he been calling me Starr so I call him Skyy, simple."
"That's wassup. So are my Starr and Skyy ready to go?"
I was ready to go. Little did they know that I had to make a quick stop before I left the state. I couldn't leave on bad terms. I had to see the hood one more time before I left. I had some unfinished business to tend to.
We packed all of our stuff and soon we were on the road, traveling back to Compton. Four and a half hours later, I was back in the hood, and for the first time, I seen the hood through brand new eyes. I never realized the conditions we lived in, we survived because I was always a part of the madness, but now my eyes were wide open. The corners were filled with hustlers all younger than me, all who I can remember them looking up to me. I showed them the way and now the streets are soaked with bloody money. Young girls walked the streets with faces filled with trouble and pockets filled with money and pistols as large as their heart. Shorty could be blamed for that. The Tri-Cities were at war again, and my hood was the hood of soldiers, straight gunners.
I whipped the car around the hood until I saw my young homie on the porch by himself, gun in lap. I yelled the hood call because if I knew anything about Dooley was that he was more than capable of killing. I made sure of that.
He jumped off of the porch and when he seen it was me, it was like he seen a ghost of his past. "Wazaam wit' you love!?Mane, where you been at daddy? The hood need ya."
"Been doin' me, Shorty. What's been poppin' Lil' Dooley?"
"Aint nothin just been tryna get this money dog. Ain't too much else to do round here, round. Now that everybody from Shana crew gone, Killa gone, the truce is through, everybody been branching off doin' they thing. And you know the motto."
I knew I well. The law was get it how you live in Calio.
"What 'bout you dog? What the lick read?"
He shook his head. "Mane, you know my sisters got they own lil' clique. They talking 'bout taking over. I just think this foolishness need to stop. If they knew, they would understand. It's cutthroat out chea' and they killing for nothing. Once y'all left, y'all left a void ya heard me. Nothin' the same no mo'. Every man for himself right now. What you got goin' on right now though, who you got in the car wit' ya, I know who Starr is, but who slim is right chea'?"
She was quiet. Something was wrong. I turned around and looked in her eyes and for the first time, she was shy, no more than that, she was scared. She was definitely ready to go. "That's wifey right there, fall. She got me on a new page, her and Starr do. Me and my baby NLes finna dip wit' Starr off to her school in Tennessee, do our thing out there, ya' heard me."
Dooley nodded his head and put his open palm in the car. "I feel you, my nigga. Keep doing ya thing, love. Maybe when you come back, I'll have some sense in my head to go wit' ya."
All I could do was nod my head in agreement, shake my head, and tell him I love him. I wished he could come with me, but I knew his grind. I understood it. Hopefully he'll live past another year. Hopefully he'll be on this ride with me.
"Hey NLes, how you doing baby?"
She smiled. I guess she was good, but more than likely, she just didn't want to tell me she wasn't. "I wanna show you something real quick if that's cool with you, love."
She nodded her head and I knew the exact spot to show her. I drove her to the house where I got my first burner from. The house where I first killed somebody for the hood. I pointed to an old abandoned house where my grandma used to live and I began to tell her the story of how I first got put on to the hood. Everyone in that car had open ears now, ready to hear what I had to say. "This was the house where life began for me." NLes' eyes were burning as she listened, giving me her full attention. "This my g-ma old house, the place where I killed my first man. This lil' boy thought he was about that action comin' through the shooting up my block. But see growing up in Calio, you get used to the bullets on the ground, even the sounds start to sound like fireworks after a while. You know ya' boy who we just met?" They nodded their heads anxious to hear more. "Well he had an older brother my age who I used to function wit' on the regular til' that lil' boy came on the block and killed him. The bullets were so close to us that we thought we had been hit. That's when my grandma got her shotgun and told me to get the pistol she kept in the backyard. I couldn't have been no older than fifteen, but I was ready, out there bad, ya heard me. I waited on that porch til' them boys came back who had did my homie like and I raised the gun and stole him in broad daylight. I'll never forget that day."
The car just became quiet as I whipped it through the hood as I told them I had one more stop to make. They didn't seem to mind. They probably thought that I had more stories to tell, but that would have to come at a later time. I couldn't reveal that part of my life yet. I pulled in at the cemetery where all my peoples were buried, took my black and gold bandanna from the dashboard, and told them I would be back.
That walk through the cemetery was like walking through my past. Everything I loved was in the dirt of this cemetery. I can't cry. These were soldiers and they knew what they was getting into. Still didn't stop me from shedding steel tears.
I stopped short when I found her grave site. Words couldn't describe the pain not having her here with me. I was under distress. I couldn't do anything but shake my head to hold back the tears. I couldn't stay any longer. Our time was short lived but even in her death, I will never forget her. I laid the flag on her tombstone and felt the etched stone where he name was. A tear fell down my face that I quickly and I wiped it away. I placed the tear on her name and I left the sadness there. Today was the day when I change my life. Soon I'll be on the plane heading toward my future. Tennessee, new life, here I come. I'm uh holla Shorty.