Prologue

Prologue

            Gun shots ringing, and the screeching sounds of rubber tires rubbing against the already hot pavement in an attempt to get away before the cops came was all you could hear down the street. CJ and Markus were used to these noises even though it sounded louder than usual. The two boys were standing on the steps outside the deli waiting on their other friend Quarmel so they could get their plans for the day in order.

The three boys all grew up Foster care, bouncing back and forth between homes since they were five years old, living with people they didn’t know, until they all were assigned to live in the same group home. In the beginning the three boys all hated each other with a passion. They always got into fights, physically and verbally, and never got along. All of that changed when they were forced to go to a group meeting and had to open up to everyone else in the group and all shared similar stories. All three boys came from households in which the father was an abusive alcoholic and/or the mother was never home, leaving in the middle of the day with the sun beating her home on a day to day basis.  

After their neighbors called child protective services, the three of them began going to school more but were often ridiculed because their mothers were prostitutes, or drug addicts known in the community. After a while they all felt unwanted and didn’t think they fit in at school. While in the middle of the session they all realized they all been through similar struggles and if any of them ever planned on running away from the group home that they would have to work together.

When the group meeting was over, they all met up afterwards and made amends with one another. That was the beginning of their supposedly lifelong friendship. The three boys; Markus, CJ, and Quarmel broke out of the group home when they were fourteen and joined a gang. The initiation was a brutal one but all three of them would have given anything to be a part of something besides a group home. They began selling drugs to make a living.

            Two years after running away from the group home, the police department gave up their search for them and the group home staff acted as if those boys never existed. Within those two years the boys also reunited with their mothers and they each developed relationships with them.

Each mother of the three boys all regretted the way their children had to be raised and promised to do better but Quarmel, Markus, and CJ didn’t allow their mothers to be as involved in their lives as they wanted too, no matter how hard they tried.