The night Winston saved my life (part one)

I've been thinking a lot about high school lately. I put myself in a lot of dangerous, foolish situations back then, situations that could have gone another way very easily. I often think I must have had an angel on my shoulder a lot of the time, keeping me safe. I certainly wasn't keeping myself safe.

I'll tell you a story of one such incident, but I'm at work, so I might have to tell it in two parts, so bear with me.

I was 17, a senior that year, and I was invincible. My friend, Alicia, was a good person with a big heart and a bad reputation (which was undeserved), but she sought out trouble. If there was trouble to be had, she'd find it, and I'd go along for the ride.

I was dating The Greek at the time, and he lived in Cambridge, one city over. You could take a bus and then walk a really long way to his house, or you could take a train and walk across a baseball field in half the time. One particular summer night, Alicia, her friend Reynalda (I think that was her name), and I decided to take the train.

Despite being a warm summer night, the train station was completely deserted. The three of us were the only people on the platform, and we laughed and gossiped as we stood waiting for the train. Finally it arrived, and we got on, once again alone in the car. We weren't scared, although we did remark at how odd it was that there weren't more people around. But that changed quickly.

The train pulled in to a stop, I don't remember which, and eight or nine young black men entered the car we were in. They immediately surrounded the three of us, asking where we were from, where we were going, what school we went to, and if we had any cigarettes. They laughed as one of them grabbed Alicia's purse and took her pack of smokes from it as she pulled it back from his grasp. "Fat Newports!" they shouted, passing her smokes around between them. They squeezed in closer to us, asking if we had boyfriends. One of them asked if we had deep throats.

I was scared now. So was Alicia, although she was trying to be cool and laugh with them. I thought Reynalda looked as though she might throw up, she was as pale as a ghost. My knuckles were white as I held on to the bar, hoping they'd get off the train soon...or hoping they'd let us off when our stop came.