The house was booming, walls shaking, cracks splitting with duct-taped windows that screamed for support from the chaos within. My cousin looked like a stranger that’d been swept away into a sea of corrupted adolescents. Dancing, swaying, yelling, screaming, arguing and making love, all under the roof of one house in the projects of Smith Falls. We had been seduced and trapped by circumstance, awoken in the night by the vulgar voices of our parents’ blame game and sent into the abyss of the conflicted and confused that had nothing to lose and nowhere to be.

Cocaine lines ruled the kitchen table, snorted with the aid of monopoly money by the kids who had bet on the right fighter only an hour earlier. We were the youngest at that table, stomachs filled with a steady feeling of queasy uneasiness. We had never even tasted alcohol as this point. Yet I had to block my cousin from volunteering for the next line by planting my feet and asking if he wanted to be like his mom at home. At 11 years old, I still had a few inches on him, but by the time he started using 4 years later, there was nothing I could do.

He wanted to protect me too. Told me the ones to stay away from like Ty, the only black kid here who had been in and out of jail and halfway houses ever since daddy killed mommy. He had a handgun attached to his belt that he wasn’t scared to show anyone. Still, I felt bad for Ty, but I wasn’t going to talk to him, it wasn’t safe enough.

Two tall burly friends of Ty’s walked past us pushing a scrawny guy towards the door. He was pleading for them to let him go, he just wanted to dance to one more song. They pointed to his shirt and laughed. It read “The system has f***’n failed us!”. I didn’t feel sorry for him, no one wanted a reality check at a party.

It was a recipe for disaster manifesting inside each soulful connection we made. Years later I would find out that the hosts of this party were leaders of one of the largest youth crime gangs in Canada. Almost every teenager I met had, or was destined to be, arrested. My cousin and I were supposed to be the future of this gang, so we were paraded through groups.

When my cousin left my side to use the washroom. I was handed off to his friend who left me with a group when he saw a pretty girl. The group was older, probably in their late 20’s, all were wearing the same leather jackets. I complimented them on their excellent coordination, and they invited me to come closer. One guy pulled me to him and whispered in my ear, his voice raspy and quick, “I bet you want to go check out upstairs with someone like me, don’t you hunny?” I pushed him away and was about to bolt when my cousin appeared with Ty. He flashed his gun and asked what the problem was.

My cousin pulled me aside. “Don’t you ever go near those guys. They’re the ones who pick up girls downtown, the girls who disappear.” He started tearing up. My cousin was one of the only people who I cared about and a few months later I would find out that he had just walked in on some guy raping an unconscious girl in the upstairs bathroom but was too scared to say anything about it. He looked terrified. But fear was a funny thing in this part of town. You see, every kid here feared someone, but someone who created fear could be the only one left to save you.

I started to feel claustrophobic. The sounds of graffiti spraying, banging club music, the snorting of coke and fists flying amplified and echoed in my head. What had caused this? My father always said there was a generational elitist behind every homeless kid and drug addict on the street. He’s probably somewhat right, but what if these kids saw that the system was dying instead. What if we started to see that we’d be the ones in a position of power, if, we could hang in for a few years longer. What if we started to make dreams other than being out of our houses at age 16. What if we gave kids an equal chance to pursue internships and post-secondary programs instead of leaving them at that kitchen table trying to see what it’s like to get crossfaded.

See most of us allow ourselves to be conducted by a world of dissonance, surrounded by belligerent counterparts without demanding retribution. Yet if we change into activists and make the small differences we can allow these kids to pursue their dreams without feeling the need to carry ammunition. For the only way to bring justice to the disadvantaged is by changing the tides so that kids, like Ty, are taught that they can cross the ravine that separates rich from poor, despite their race, sex or religion.

I believe that if my cousin was exposed to better role models, he would have become something great like we talked about when we couldn’t fall asleep on the stained blankets covering his cement floors. I believe he would have gone to college, would have been great in the military like he wanted. I believe if the police had asked us questions, before the court progression, that we could have saved him.

But now we answer:
How he became the leader of his gang?
How he ended up in a closet passed out from cocaine?
Why he has 46 charges of stolen property and 22 for assault?
How come he ended up in Niagara Falls with his aunt’s car, if it wasn’t his fault?