From Innocence to Arrogance

by Ezekiel King

  “Is this the same weed that you and Cyrus are selling?” my dad asked. My dad had said it in a way that would have led Chris to believe I had told him everything. It was blatant manipulation, especially because I had just told Chris to give him the two bags of weed. Cheeky bastard, I thought as I stood watching with mixed feelings of shock and admiration. I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. My dad was using my manipulation skills on Chris. I thought I was the only manipulator around here! My dad had just watched me tell Chris to give him the weed, then took the weed from Chris as he looked Chris in the eye, put the weed to his nose while still looking Chris in the eye and said, “Is this the same weed that you and Cyrus are selling?”

  The cheek of it, I thought; and worst of all, there’s nothing I could say or do. Anything I could do or say would be instantly accepting defeat, unless of course Chris was to say ‘no…what are you going on about?’ which there was more chance of a leprechaun knocking on our front door riding a unicorn.

  “Yes, that’s the same stuff, isn’t it, Cyrus?” Chris asked as he looked at me for confirmation. As he did so, Chris looked a bit confused, like he assumed I had told my dad I was getting Chris to drop ‘our’ weed off, instead of ‘some’ weed off, Chris assumed! Just like my dad had wanted him to, I wasn’t worried about the repercussions because my dad wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t already know; and if he already knew, he wouldn’t have wanted to get angry. He just looked at me and winked as I looked back at him in defeat. Yes one—nil, Dad, I thought as my look of defeat turned into a cheeky smile. My dad winked once more at me while maintaining a poker face and taking in every morsel of self-praise.

  “One second, I will be back. I’m just going to tell Mum to grab the cigarettes for Chris’ uncle. Have a seat, Chris,” I said as I remembered his uncle would be here any minute.

  As I walked towards the living room, it dawned on me, I had given Jabber 256 sleeves of cigarettes for £10,000, he had been given six for free. I couldn’t expect my mum to carry 500 sleeves of cigarettes from Trish’s. “Chris, call your uncle and tell him to make sure that he has room in his car because it’s a lot of sleeves,” I said after turning around in the tiny passageway at the bottom of the stairs in between the kitchen and living room behind the front door.

  “Okay,” he said breaking his concentration from being admonished by my father.

  “Oh, and I need you to come over the road to carry some of these over here,” I said signalling him to get up. I walked back to the living room this time with Chris behind me. “Mum, Trish, I need to go over the road to grab 500 sleeves of cigarettes for Chris’ uncle,” I said with the same pleading tone that seemed to instil some urgency and importance to any question I asked.

  “Yes, come on then,” my mum and Trish said as they got up.

  “Chris’ uncle would be here in ten minutes,” I said to let them both know why I was in such a rush. It was only about 30 paces or footsteps from our front door to Trish’s back door, so the four of us were inside Trish’s living room in under a minute.

  “No way, Cyrus! Look how many cigarettes you have got!” Chris said in amazement. He was right; there were loads of cigarettes left. Trish’s living room was still half-full, still brown boxes full in towers, still towers of sleeves six per level over shoulder height tall. The big boxes were stacked on top each other three boxes high in each tower.

  “You see, Cyrus, there is still loads left. In fact, we haven’t sold that much,” my mother said as Chris and I looked around.

  “I’ll count them and pass them towards the sofa, and you three, box them up and recount them,” I suggested. I counted up to 100 by counting two sleeves at a time slowly and meticulously. When I had finished, I started again until I had counted five separate piles of 100 sleeves. I assessed what I had left after counting Chris’ uncle’s pile. The pile that I had left was slightly bigger than the pile for Chris’ uncle. After counting the first 100 sleeves, I abandoned the idea of passing them towards the sofa through lack of space and delegated a section of the room just for Chris’ uncle’s cigarettes. “Let’s take these over the road than,” I said as I picked up a box full. We made just shy of three trips each to retrieve all the cigarettes for the sale.

  “Cyrus, look how much you have stolen,” my dad said as he scanned the kitchen floor, realising the scale of the robbery.

  “I know. I was only going to take 100, 200 sleeve, but I changed my mind,” I joked; my dad just shook his head at me and fought back the urge to smile.

  “Can I roll a joint?” Chris asked realising the need to hide anything had passed.

  “Yes, but you should smoke it after your uncle has been; you should always do business before pleasure,” my father advised. As Chris took out his cannabis and utensils to start constructing a joint, his phone rang.

  I only heard half of Chris’ conversation as I listened to what he said, but from what I heard, his uncle had arrived.

  “One second, I will go and bring him inside,” Chris said before getting up and heading out of the back door.

  He returned a few minutes later with his uncle. “This is my uncle, Arthur. Arthur, this is my friend Cyrus and his dad, Calvin,” Chris said as he gestured with his hand to show who was who. Not that there was any chance of him not being able to work out who the father and who was the son.

  My dad extended his hand to shake Arthur’s hand. I would wind Chris up later about Arthur’s name, I thought to myself as I stood up to shake Chris’ uncle’s hand. Arthur was the same height as Chris at roughly 5’10“, which was slightly shorter than my dad. He was white and a little Irish looking, he was wearing a shirt and jeans, and he was fat with his shirt tucked in at the waist but over-hanging slightly where his belly stuck out over the top. He had a red-and-white chequered shirt on and light blue jeans. His head was big and rectangular-shaped like a big chubby block. Arthur had light brown hair all the same length. He was standing holding a big blue shopping bag in his hand like a sort of reusable shopping bag.”Arthur, here are the cigarettes you wanted," I said pointing at the unmissable piles of cigarettes that were taking up a third of the kitchen floor.

  “How many have you got there for me, my friend?” Arthur asked as he scanned and opened boxes and looked inside of bags.

  “I’ve gave you 500 sleeves here for you, and then 10 separate sleeves for free, because you are Chris’ uncle,” I explained. Arthur stood and looked at the piles for a moment before picking out a sleeve randomly and opening the box to check its contents. He opened the sleeve, ripping the clear plastic from the outside of it, then opened the cardboard up and took out a packet of 20 cigarettes; then he opened that up and took out a single cigarette.

  “Is it all right to smoke in here, my friend?” Arthur asked looking at my dad for approval.

  “Yes, carry on,” my dad said as the three of us watched on. Chris and I were sat at the dining table; my dad was leaning against the kitchen side where he had been cooking. Chris’s uncle lit the cigarette and took a big pull.

  “Here you go, this is your money,” Arthur said as he exhaled and walked over to place the bag of money on the table.

  I picked the bag of money up and put it on the ground in between my feet to look inside of it. It was almost full to the brim with bundles of notes laying on their sides the whole length of the bag; the bundles had little red paper binders on them. I picked one of the blinded wraps of money up for closer inspection.

  “A thousand pounds exactly, all in new notes inside the little red binders with £1,000 written on them.”

  “Okay, thank you, Arthur,” I said as I picked the bag of cash to take it into the living room.

  “Could you count this money, please, Mum,” I asked as I put the bag on the seat next to her. Not even waiting for a reply, I walked back into the kitchen. “We will give you a hand to your car,” I said to Chris’ uncle.

  Chapter 11

  Two months had passed since I had spent the night at Holly’s house. I h
ad no cigarettes left; between Chris’ Uncle Arthur, Jabber and my mother selling my stolen haul, the cigarettes were gone. The money I had earnt through the robbery combined with the money I had saved from my drug dealing business meant that I had saved £80,000. My mum had £50,000 put away for me, and my auntie had £20,000 put away for me. I had £10,000 in a carrier bag at my feet on the passenger side foot well of Chris’ car, and I had £250 of brand-new notes in my left-hand jeans pocket. We had been on the motorway for almost 30 minutes when I saw the first sign saying ‘Northampton’. The satnav stuck to the dashboard told us we were five miles away from our destination. John and Tom’s cousin was in the back of Chris’ car—a skinny, spotty kid called ‘Kieran’. He was the same age as Chris at almost 19. After following the satnav for another eight minutes, we arrived at our destination. It was a brand-new housing estate. All of the houses on this housing estate looked similar; they all had yellow bricks with white windows. Definitely, people with good jobs around here, I thought as I waited for Chris to call the man he had been speaking to. “Hi, mate, I’m outside number 24,” Chris said politely. A skinny, white middle-aged man came out of the house we were parked in front of. The man looked intelligent but somewhat nerdy. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt that was tucked in at the waist and had his hair gelled pointing up at the front. Chris and I got out of the car.

  “Wait here, please, Kieran,” I said quietly to the McBrides’ cousin as I climbed out of Chris’ car. Chris had on a dark blue tracksuit, and I was wearing a new pair of designer jeans with a designer T-shirt. I had got the items from my most recent shopping trip with Chris. Two thousand pounds I had spent in the designer clothes shop, it was my own treat to myself. I figured I deserved it for robbing the Kosovos/Turks. They had moved out shortly after I had robbed them.

  “It’s in the garage, I will just get it out,” the nerdy-looking 30-something-year-old said. I had treated myself to £2,000 worth of clothes, but I had made roughly 65,000 from the cigarettes. The contents of this nerdy guy’s garage was my main treat.

  I watched as the nerdy guy pressed a button on a fob attached to his bunch of keys, and the garage door started to lift. The red high-performance Japanese rally car bonnet was shining. It had little vents in the bonnet that made it look aggressive and angry. I had fell in love with it as soon as Chris had showed it to me. “Look at this monster!” Chris had said showing me a picture of the car on the screen of his phone.

  “I’m buying that; call whoever owns that, I’ll buy that tomorrow!” I had said leaving Chris gobsmacked. Tomorrow was now today. ‘Pop, pop, pop’ was the sound the car’s engine made as the man edged it slowly out of the garage. It had black wheels that shined in a gloss-finish immaculately, bucket seats and a big spoiler and a big round exhaust, 400 bhp just like Chris had said ‘this was a monster!’ It was exactly the same as one I had seen in a movie that I had watched.

  I had picked my carrier bag up with £10,000 in it as I got out of Chris’ car. I walked over to the car’s driver side door and said, “You want £10,000 for this, don’t you, my friend?” I asked. The man turned the car off.

  “Yes, mate, it’s only four years old, it’s worth £12,000 at least. I just need the money quick, that’s why I’m letting it go for £10,000,” he said sounding a bit upset at the prospect of selling such a sought after road/rally car.

  “Well, here you go. There’s £10,000 here, I counted it myself,” I said while handing him the bag of money.

  We had only been on the make motorway for 25 minutes when we indicated to come off the motorway back into Coventry. We had left Kieran far behind us as we drove out of the nerdy man’s housing estate. We imagined he was probably only half his way into his journey back to Coventry. Chris was driving my new car, he had a face like a kid in a sweet shop. As soon as he touched the accelerator, the car would ferociously pin us back into our seats as the turbo would kick in.

  The car growled and snarled as we drove. I had only brought the car because the feelings of restlessness and anxiety were becoming too much to bear. I was having trouble getting to sleep at night and constantly feeling tense. The cigarettes had all been sold, giving me no more days of earning £20,000 or £30,000 in a single day. Not that I was ungrateful for the amazing luck I’d had; I just wanted more.

  Business was good. I was earning between £600 and £900 a week from the McBride’s, and the new cannabis Jabber had given me to sell was even better—‘Lemon Haze’, Jabber had said it was called. Light in weight, which made our deals look bigger, and it was covered with THC crystals from being dried perfectly, which made the THC look like minute pieces of frost. It had the strength, the look and the taste.

  Chris and I were going through 50 ounces every five days minimum. I knew this was doing well, but I didn’t feel like I was doing well. I had made £30,000 in one day when I had stolen cigarettes to sell; so after that, it made £1,800 a week feel like I had won the battle but was losing the war.

  Whenever I was just sitting down and trying to relax, the feeling of restlessness would come back. I was like an adrenaline junkie that was clucking for his next fix of adrenaline. I had brought this rally car to try to feed this urge and relieve my constant need to feel major excitement once and for all. I was hoping that the novelty would never wear off with this car like it had with Holly, or my business with John and Tom or the business with Chris. It’s not that I wanted Chris to stop selling drugs for me, or that I wanted to close my shop at the McBride’s any less than I wanted to stop sleeping with Holly. It was just none of that excited me anymore.

  I didn’t look forward to any of it anymore. I felt like I was missing something, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. “I love this car, Cyrus,” Chris said, eyes glued on the road.

  “It’s ferocious, isn’t it, mate?” I said agreeing with him.

  “Where shall we go?” Chris asked. The time on the dashboard said 7:15 in the evening.

  “Go to that nice restaurant I took you the other day,” I told Chris in the hope to show off my new car somewhere nice.

  “Okay, sound,” Chris said as he changed direction and started to drive towards the restaurant. I didn’t let Chris drive ridiculously fast when he started to be excessive in terms of speeding. I’d say ‘calm down, Chris’ or ‘stop ragging my car!’ I knew I had to learn to drive properly soon. I knew the basics, how to change gear and reverse. I had driven on the main road twice before, once joyriding with other underage kids when I was 15 and once driving sensibly with one of my mum’s friend’s husband.

  Walking towards the restaurant with Chris, I looked back at the shiny red rally car. I told myself I’ll be driving that soon. It was a Thursday evening, and there were families everywhere as we sat down to eat. I got Chris to order two cocktails. “That’s all the alcohol you are drinking while driving that car,” I’d said to him as the waitress left the table without questioning my age. I had put my phone and car keys on the table in front of me as I sat in my £200 T-shirt with matching jeans and trainers. We took our time to eat, mainly talking about girls and business. We spoke about what my dad was going to say when he saw the rally car, or my brother’s face when he saw the car. I wanted to say ‘I wonder what Jason will think when he’s watched me go from getting four-and-a-half ounces of cannabis on consignment to having £70,000 and a rally car’, but I didn’t. I kept my reserve and held it in. I felt comfortable around Chris, as comfortable as I felt around anybody; but even then I had to keep some things guarded and to myself. I didn’t tell Chris who Jason was, and I was never going to no matter how much I let my hair down. As far as Chris knew, it was my aunt’s boyfriend who gave me the cannabis. One thing I’ve learnt is that people believe what they hear if it’s backed up with what they’ve seen.

  For instance, I told Chris when we got our first batch of weed to sell to drop me to my auntie’s, so I can discuss getting weed to sell in bulk with my uncle. Me telling him I needed to speak to my uncle to get the weed was the first step to him bel
ieving, the second step was him coming to pick me up from my auntie’s and seeing me come out with the weed. So, in Chris’ head, he had worked out it was my uncle supplying us, and, of course, he was wrong.

  We finished our food, and I felt just as stuffed as the first time I had ate here with Jason and Jabber. I had steak and shrimp, and Chris, who was putting on weight by the hour, had a mixed grill. As we drove back towards our area of town, I noticed that people were looking at us. People looked as they heard the car’s engine as we drove past and smiled or put their hand up to say ‘nice car’. Total strangers were acknowledging us with respect, purely judging us on the car we drove. It was the same change in acknowledgement I had received through my recent change of dress sense. I was smart enough to know I was the same person in Chris’ car, or my shiny rally car. The only difference was I got no recognition in Chris’ car, and in the rally car, everyone seemed to take an interest. Shallow bastards, I thought to myself. Admittedly, I liked the fact I would now turn heads in my new car, and I planned to take full advantage of that.

  “Chris, go to my house, please, mate,” I said as we entered our area. It was starting to get dark outside. Tomorrow would be Friday, Friday had become the biggest day of the week for me. It was the day we sold the most drugs! Presumably because the majority of people get their weekly wage packet on a Friday afternoon. I planned to get Chris to drive me around in the rally car all day on Friday.

  “Let’s go and show Tom and John, Cyrus,” Chris suggested as we pulled into my street. I think he wanted to continue driving the car as much as he wanted to show John and Tom if I’m honest.

  “We will show them tomorrow, Chris, let’s park this up outside my house and have a joint while we wait for Kieran to bring your car back,” I replied much to the disappointment of Chris. As we parked outside my little cardboard council house, I had mixed emotions. My brother would jump with joy when he saw my new car, but I knew my dad would not be as pleased. I imagined the things he would say. ‘Cyrus, that car is going to attract the attention of police and people’ or ‘how the fuck are you going to explain buying that car at 16’ or the almost certainty of ‘Cyrus, you haven’t even got a fucking driving licence’. Chris and I sat in the car smoking our citrus-flavoured skunk while listening to my favourite song at the time. I felt relaxed, partly because I was now high and partly because the restlessness had gone. The excitement of sitting in the monster that was my new car mixed with the fact that everyone was going to be talking about it fed my need for excitement. This solved my anxiety and feelings of missing out momentarily.