The entire scene invigorated me. I suddenly felt more alert and alive than I ever had in my whole life. My senses were so sharp I felt like I could hold a conversation with God. I felt like there were invisible people around me that I couldn’t see, but somehow, I wasn’t bumping into them. Maybe it was because they could see me. My vision took on a heightened clarity as if I had just slipped on a pair of rose-colored glasses. The air seemed to crackle with energy. Rasul laughed at me when I held a comb up above my head. Jewel had showed me how to make my hair stand up if the air felt right—crisp and burnt like it did now. I patiently looked in the tinted Eldorado passenger side window and watched a few strands rise up like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. It seemed like ever since I had left Chicago all I wanted to do was sleep and laugh. Matter of fact, that’s all I was going to do for the first month that I was in New York. I had some savings; fuck a job. When we piled back into the Eldorado I had MTV, Times Square, Harlem, and the Cosbys on my mind.

FIFTEEN

INDIANA WAS EASY.

I slept most of the way. The even ramble of country road hypnotized me into weariness, and it was inside my dreams where I reignited. I dreamed of Daddy, cotton candy, Ferris wheels, dandelions, and trains zooming underground. I would occasionally stir and open my eyes to stare out the window with its fleeting scenes, quickly deciding that what went on in my dreams was more exciting. A very ordinary milieu of cornfields, barnyards, high grass, and open space was decidedly unordinary to my city eyes. The cotton puffs torn loose from withered dandelions floated throughout the air, a couple even shooting through the window and landing on my lap. Chicago was a fantastic, light-filled mecca for the rest of a state held captive by unbroken darkness at night and unbroken horizon in the day. To the rest of the Midwest, I was a virgin when it came to country. Less so was Rasul, who had vagabonded through Southern states and cities by the time I was just starting school. Within a couple of hours, the adrenaline rush of escape had worn off for both of us. The radio volume had been turned down—by who I couldn’t remember. We no longer had the mental tolerance for hip-hop’s angry noise. This was a calm journey.