“Boy, you’re going to wake up your brother. You know he’s still sleeping! And get down here for breakfast you’re running late. You have three minutes, Mr. Lazy Ass,” my mom yells from the kitchen.

“You’re going to wake him up yourself! Stop yelling!” I holler.

She slams the fridge door as a response. I dab a piece of toilet paper on my oozing, bleeding zit and go to the bedroom to get dressed.

It’s dark. Jim is still sleeping. “Lucky son of a bitch,” I whisper. His high school starts an hour later than the junior high. I tug on a dangling, worn-out, red string of wrapping-paper ribbon to turn on the light in the closet. It doesn’t turn on. I pull again. It clicks but no light. I pull. I pull. I pull again. No light. “Shit times two,” I grumble as I grab what’s probably my plaid button-up shirt. The jeans from yesterday are crumpled on my side of the bed. They’re baggy; they’ve got cool silver stitching; they’ll be fine. I pull them on, cinch a belt around my waist and hustle to the kitchen.

“You better take this with you out the door,” my mom says.

She hands me a just-out-of-the-toaster Pop-Tart. I juggle the burning ember of a breakfast from hand to hand as I grab my backpack and head out the door.

I get to the subway platform freaking 15 seconds late. The subway car doors nearly close on my nose. “Next one had better come fast,” I threaten to no one on the empty platform.

Then I hear it, Bentley’s voice echoes down from the top of the stairs. He’s the only dude in New York who publicly tries to sing Alicia Key’s part of Empire State of Mind. “In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made. There’s nothing you can’t do. Now you’re in New York. These streets will make you feel brand new. Bright lights will inspire you. Let’s hear it for New York.” But no one giggles when his voice wobbles and cracks like a retard. His crew just beat-boxes along with him. He’s getting closer. He’s getting louder. There’s no place for me to hide.

To keep my nervous knees still, I go sit on the bench. I choose a middle seat hoping to get cushioned by strangers.

“Hey bitch!” he yells.

I pretend like he isn’t talking to me.

“I’m talking to you lame-ass,” he says.

I steal at glance to assess the situation. A few commuters have joined us by the tracks. But Bentley’s not talking to them. They know it. I know it. Everyone is waiting for me to respond.

“Hey Riley, man let’s roll a big, fat-ass joint,” suggests Danny.

“Yeah man, we can roll it in the park.”

The park. If I had known we were going to the park, I would have tried to look a little cooler. It’s the park they used to film the fight scene in the movie Kids, the movie. Patches of grass peak out between concrete slopes and benches. The homeless kids hang out by the arch and in the dry, broken fountain. Poets—without a high school degree or a home—stand in the center and shout angry rhymes. Men with dreads sell incense on the sides. A guy is making chalk portraits on the ground. We just barely miss stepping on one of his drawings and park ourselves against a fence. Riley slips his arms around my back. The pressure almost pushes me down face first. But I try to hold my ground. I know he just wants to be close to me.

Roddie looks like he wants to say something or maybe he’s chewing on something. Danny directs, “Roll the mother fucker.”

Riley cups his free hand into his pocket and slips Danny the bud. Danny crouches low to the ground trying to look inconspicuous. As if! He messes up three times and on the fourth, we have a loose but smoke-able jay. Then Riley lights it.

I know what we look like. We look obvious. We’re so going to get busted. For all of Riley’s self-righteous, honor, truth and dignity bullshit, he’s doesn’t see the obvious. I see thousands of possible outcomes from every single decision. He just sees everything as good or bad—and by default everything is good unless proven otherwise. The consequences of smoking pot out in the open? Good, cause he’s never gotten busted yet. But the first time is all it takes. If I get in trouble my mom will never let me see him again.

I feel like a bug is crawling under my skin. This isn’t rebellion or freedom. This is just stupid. We had to buy the weed on the street. But we don’t have to smoke it here. I try to keep my eyes peeled for cops. No blue suits. There are sirens, but there are always sirens. What if the cop is undercover, incognito? Then what do I do? How do I know who’s watching us? “Riley, this is crazy. We don’t know who’s watching us. We could so get busted.”

“Come here.” He puts his arms around me and tells me to take a deep breath as he passes me the joint. “Everything’s going to be ok,” he tells me. I never believe him until the fourth or fifth time he tells me. He’s only said it twice so far. Or maybe I thought it once and he said it once. I don’t know. Whatever. Roddie passes me the jay again and I take a hit as quickly as I can. I pass it on fast. Riley doesn’t notice it’s his turn.

“Take it!” I jab him in the shoulder.

“Relax, Harmony. Everything’s going to be ok.”

That was two. Or three.

“Everyone is chill but me.”

“So chill out Harmony. It’s not that hard to do. Take a deep breath.

“Ok. I’m ok.” I go through this almost every time we smoke pot nowadays. I am little Miss Paranoia, but I can never convince myself that it is only paranoia. What if it’s like women’s intuition and something’s really is wrong? I am stoned, and therefore I am paranoid. I try to remind myself of this. But then I think, what if I’m more than stoned? What if it was laced with angel dust or strychnine or crack or formaldehyde and this really is the end of me? What if I never get to talk coherently to my mom again? Oh my god. I’m freaking out. Breathe, I remind myself. Regardless of the danger I am in, I must breathe.

“SHIT!!!!”

“Dude, Harmony. You’re ok. I’m ok. Everything’s ok.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, Riley. There really is a problem.”

“What’s that?” Danny asks as he’s jumping around pretending to do skateboard moves without a skateboard.

“The car. We aren’t in a real spot!”

And we’re off running down the street to the car. We’re going too fast for me to concentrate on the steps. I watch my legs and they tickle because I know all of the muscle fibers are working and that tickles. Danny is yelling like some coach whether we should stop or go at intersections. Roddie passes him up and yells for Riley to give him the keys. “I’ll get there first!” he hollers. He chucks the keys to Roddie across 3rd Avenue.

Roddie misses the keys and they skim against the street and land against the curb. Danny grabs them and sprints the last block to the car. I can’t run anymore. Breathe, breathe. I can’t go any further. What if I can’t run because I’m dying? I’m almost there. Almost there. Keep it going. No one ever died from pot. There! I slam myself up against the car. I rest my head against the sun-warmed hood.

“Hey, the car is ok! Thank you, God. What if it had been towed? What if we had been stranded here? That would have been terrible.” I have to be home by 9 or else I’ll get grounded. I don’t say that last part out loud.

“Riley, slow down!” I grip the seatbelt’s shoulder strap. It locks tight. My mom told me they don’t pull dead bodies out of seatbelts. I hold on. “You don’t have to drive like a crazy person!”

“Do not critique my driving, Harmony. You should be kissing my ass for saving you from the lame-o’s on the bus. I’m doing this for you. Do you want to be late to first period? You should have been ready on time.”

“Oh come on,” I argue back. “I don’t have to act a certain way just cause you drive me to school. I don’t have to be indebted to you forever. It’s not that big of a deal. You have to go to work anyways. School’s on your way.”

“Yeah, well I look like a loser showing up there every morning. I should have something better to do. I graduated. I should be moving on.”

“Then why are you going out with a girl who’s not even an upperclassman yet? Huh? Maybe we should break-up for your image.”

“You always throw that break-up shit at me.”

“Yeah, well, slow down. It’s a red light.” He revs his engine twice before slowing down. School is about a block away. I brush my fingers through my Manic Panic Purple Haze hair and check my face in the visor mirror.

“You look beautiful, baby. Except wait.” The light turns green. But he doesn’t go. He holds up traffic at the stoplight to wipe a barely-there mascara smudge off my lower eyelid. The car behind us honks; he flips it off and squeals his tires as he flies into the school lot.

In the lot, he grabs me by the back of the neck and pulls me in for a passionate goodbye kiss. The parent behind us is dropping off a freshman. I’m watching her through the side mirror as Riley smudges my lipstick with his face. The mother gives her dorky son a peck on the cheek. I wonder if she sees us. Riley lets me go. I grab my half-empty book bag, wipe off the red smudges, and hop out.

“Hey, Harm. Do you have to be here all day?”

“I don’t know. It’s only school. It’s optional right?” I smirk.

“Well, I was gonna make a run into the city for some kind bud, but I have to meet the guy before you’ll be out of class. Can I pick you up sixth period? Roddie and Danny are gonna come with.”

“Alright, meet me at the end of the street so I don’t get busted.”

“Cool baby, see you later.” I slam the door and feel people watching me as I walk inside. I’m special. I’ve got a man.

***

Riley drives the FDR as though he owns it. He wildly plunges around cars; speeding up then slowing down inches from their bumpers. It’s as if he’s got nothing to lose. Luckily most people have the sense to get out of his way pretty quickly. But if they don’t, he’ll stick to them like freakin’ crazy glue until they give in. I roll down the window to get some air on my face. A semi thunders past and almost clips off my nose. Riley grabs me back and says in his most robotic voice, “Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.” I thank him for the original insight.

Danny, the one who usually makes the dumb jokes, laughs heartily in the back. He is always so loud. It’s like he woke up one day and decided that he was the funniest man alive. He probably thinks it’s a pleasure listening to him, like he’s doing us a favor. It’s like he’ll say something that he thinks is funny and wait for the laughs. I never give in. It’s so dumb. But Riley does. He laughs whenever Danny cues him. It reminds me of the line my mom used to say about the neighbor’s twins. “Two peas in a pod,” she said. Right now, Danny’s in the phase of saying the pledge of allegiance to anything that he likes, like a keg of beer. “I pledge allegiance to this keg,” etc. It bores me. I think it bores Roddie too, but he always seems bored. He’s like Danny’s alter-ego. Roddie is silent unless he has something of value to share—quality not quantity. Right now he’s gazing out the window at the East River. He’s so smart.

I rest my head on my arms and close my eyes over the open window. This morning was such a drama. No matter how fast Riley drives, I never seem to make it to class before first-period attendance. Today I got there about three seconds after Ms. Lurie put her pencil down, the one she uses to point at each person who says, “Here.” Mrs. Lurie hates me and so even though I showed up to class, she never marked me present. Then on my way out, after the bell, I tripped on some freshman’s monstrous backpack. Mrs. Lurie, of course, blamed me for not watching where I was going.

After it happened, Brian took her to Moldavi’s on Long Island for the weekend. They’d gone there before whenever something special occurred in their lives – a promotion, a birthday, a spat that needed to be resolved. When Brian’s band got a gig in Atlantic City, they’d splurged on the spa package worth every bit of the five hundred a night. So they went again to recover now.

And they needed to recover. For the past two weeks they’d hardly slept. Especially Brian. Even with pills and booze he’d scarcely closed his eyes. That past summer he’d taken a temp job in Lower Manhattan and was on a coffee break when it happened. “Life turns on a coffee break,” he said for days afterward. That day when he finally got home, Jenna kept saying, “I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know what happened to you.” As he held her, shards of glass cut into her flesh. She’d winced in pain. She never told him about the glass.

He had gotten them one of the most expensive rooms, a bungalow really, the kind with the little deck and pathway that leads right to the shore. Because the room was so far from the main house, they purchased some supplies. Chips, a few beers, two bottles of coke. Jenna held one of them up in the palm of her hand as if she was practicing for a circus act. “Coke in bottles,” she said. “How quaint.” They settled into their room, putting the drinks into the mini-fridge. They unpacked, tucked everything away. Then they headed out to the beach. It was a cold, breezy weekend, cooler than one expects in early fall, but still they walked the shore. They walked for miles, it seemed, with the wind at their backs, just carrying them along. But then they had to turn around.

Jenna struggled, thinking she couldn’t walk back. She fought the wind, as sand pummeled her skin. At one point Brian had to drag her. We must look like refugees, he thought, coming across the barren sand. When they finally reached the inn, exhausted, gasping for breath, grit between their teeth. Jenna saw the beach chairs, the bungee boards right in front of their bungalow.

A family with two teenage boys had arrived at the room next door. They were carrying dress bags from their car into the room. “Oh, they must be going to a wedding,” Jenna said.

“I’m sure they won’t bother us.”

“They’re boys. They’re going to stay up all night,” Jenna said. “They’re going to drive me nuts.” She didn’t think she could handle any noise. She didn’t know that this family had come to recover as well. That it was a funeral, not a wedding, they were coming to attend. The father was a fireman and he’d attended twenty-eight funerals so far. Jenna would only learn this the next day as the fireman and his family were leaving.

I tilt my head back and relax as the cab takes me and my boyfriend down Houston Street to a dinner party at the home of old friends. I look up at the sheet metal sky. Night is just getting started. I’m so lucky, I muse. Some kid in Tokyo with East Village dreams yearns to live just once in my neighborhood. At ground level, the squiggles of graffiti on the sides of muted grey and tan buildings look like small, dark red, green and black explosions and feel beautiful. This is the rapid place and time I call home.

But as much as I love New York, New York refuses to be loved. Whenever I’m all warm, fuzzy and ready to give the city a carefree, trusting bear hug, it repels me with some crazy, only-in-New-York type of crap to deal with—like our cab, suddenly speeding up and swerving from lane to lane as though we’re being chased. And I think we are.

Jesus. I wake from my Southern back-porch moment only to see a thick, rugby-faced guy in a dark blue Subaru shaking his fist at our cab driver. Blonde hair is smeared down his forehead. He spits a New Jersey blessing out his window. Our driver speeds up. The blonde guy swerves to get behind us. He’s really close. We turn onto Allen Street. The Subaru turns following us. Our driver slams on the breaks. The Subaru slams to a stop. The maniac barely misses rear-ending us.

Now we’re stopped bumper to bumper like a blood clot in the middle of Allen Street. Other drivers are pulling around us continuing on their way. I try to catch their attention with my eyes. “Help us,” I want the other drivers to hear. “Help. We have no idea what is going on.” My boyfriend, God bless him with his honorable French genes, is genetically obligated to accept any duel. He is quietly but not calmly watching the situation play out. I feel him taking short, quick breaths.

Then our driver gets out. He leaves the door hanging open like an awkwardly unfinished thought. He’s wearing wide white pants, shirt, a long, beige vest and white skull-cap. All of it accentuates his long black beard. We watch him calmly walk up to the Subaru’s driver-side window. The blonde maniac is rabidly cursing. Our driver pauses and then plainly, simply shakes his fist. Then he turns and walks back to his cab the same way most people carry files around an office, like it’s a casual, common chore. Cars, new to the scene, honk as they drive by.

The blonde maniac gets out of his car. Our driver closes himself and us in the cab. The blonde moves stiffly, deliberately, like a hulk, and spits a loogie on the yellow trunk. The taillights glow red against his enraged face.

And then I do it. I flip him off. Me, the California girl brought up on anti-war protests and hugs. I flip off the burly, angry hulk with only a thin sheet of glass between us.

I catch eyes with the driver through the rearview mirror. He saw me do it. I sink down in my seat. I’m a little bit embarrassed, a little bit shocked at myself and more than a little bit scared of what is going to happen next. I look up at my boyfriend for camaraderie and compassion. He protectively grabs my hand.

Our driver’s fight had just turned into mine. Having lived here for some time, often in the far stretches of Brooklyn and Queens that you need a cab to reach late at night, I have a special place in my heart for cab drivers. I’ve gotten to know them, have taken them out to dinner, learned about their homes in Ghana, Turkey, Pakistan, San Francisco as they took me down the BQE. I spoke my broken French when they spoke French; I practiced the few bits of Turkish I knew. I often tipped well as my own good-luck charm and to help ensure their sanity. I imagined myself the self-appointed patron saint of cab drivers in a city that makes them go postal.

The driver doesn’t wait for the hulk’s reaction. He steps on the gas. But within a few measly feet a red light stops us. And without fail, the Subaru pulls up to our side. I notice for the first time there’s a woman in the back seat. The hulk is screaming at us again.

Our driver ignores him. But I watch him closely, incredulously and do think I notice him lightly flinching, doing the behind the scenes work that goes into ignoring someone.

Enough! This is my fight.

The remnants of the Californian in me rise up to call forth spiritual unity and neutralize potential violence. And with the unhinged vigor of a New Yorker, I stick my head out the window and yell, “Peace! Peace! Yoga! You need to do yoga! Breathe!”