Bruce Alexander - Contributed

I was waiting for Teddy. Problem was, I didn't know what time he was coming. Teddy had to wait for his mother to fall asleep before he could sneak out and make his way down the lane to my house. I don't know where he got the idea from, but Teddy was always coming up with good ones. It was late and I was fighting the sleep.

One day after school I saw Teddy sitting on his wall. He was wearing the shorts and the Michael Jordan jersey his father had given him. I always found him on the wall with his notebook and pencil and that serious look he got when he was working on one of his ideas. Teddy didn't go anywhere without his notebook and pencil.

'Teddy, you doing homework?'

Teddy looked up to see who was disturbing him. Then he kissed his teeth and said: 'No time for school. I have ambition.'

Teddy always said that. He didn't need to go to school. Teddy was a few years older than me and when I didn't understand something that had happened on the lane I would go to Teddy and he would explain it to me. You have to keep your ears open, he would say. Teddy was my best friend on the lane and I thought he was the smartest person in the world.

I climbed up on the wall next to him. 'What you working on?'

'Soon,' Teddy said. He closed his notebook and put his pencil behind his ear. 'Soon.'

So I would have to wait. But it was the best kind of waiting, like the feeling I used to have on the night before Christmas. Teddy and I chatted for a few hours about the latest news on the lane and then my mother came back from work and made me go home for dinner. She waited until we were inside the house before she started in on me.

'What I tell you about that boy?'

'We were just talking, Mom.'

Mom never liked Teddy. Ever since that time when I skipped school and went downtown with him. That was one of Teddy's big ideas. I don't know how he came up with it; maybe he had heard about it from someone on the lane, but Teddy decided that we had to go to see the big murder trial. I didn't care about the trial, but I had never been downtown, and it didn't take much for Teddy to convince me.

Teddy knew which buses to take and where we had to get off. You have to do your research, he would say. Teddy was upset when they wouldn't let us in the court and we ended up waiting outside and talking. It was late in the afternoon when the police brought the big man out. A small crowd, mostly women, had gathered outside the court and they were screaming things at the police. The big man was actually very small and thin. He didn't say anything; he just got in the car and then he was gone.

Teddy had an unusual look on his face. 'You see that,' he said. 'He's not afraid of anything.'

When I got home Mom was waiting for me. That night I went to bed hungry and I had to sleep on my side,but it was worth it.

It was a few weeks later when Teddy told me about his latest idea.

'You know the house that burned down?'

Of course I did. The whole lane had been out that night watching the fire. I could still remember the look on Mr. Lewis' face. I thought he was going to cry but he never did. He just sat on the sidewalk in his underwear while his house burned to the ground.

Mom was out for dinner with her man friend and Teddy and I were sitting on the couch in my living room. He had his notebook in his lap. Teddy said that he had checked it out and there was a section in the middle where it was so overgrown with bush that it was like a cave and no one could see you from the outside.

'We can make it our little hideout.'

The barking woke me up. I went into the living room and found Mom looking through the bars on the window. She wouldn't let me go outside with her. When she came back she sat me down on the couch. Mom had a strange look on her face, like the one when she told me my father wasn't coming back. I started crying before she could say anything.

It was Teddy. He had gotten into a fight with his mother and had stabbed her. The police were looking for him. Mom held me until I stopped crying and she never once said anything bad about Teddy.

The next day, Teddy was all the talk on the lane. The newspaper man said that he heard Teddy had joined a downtown Crew and was living with them. The woman who swept the lane in the mornings said that Teddy was going to end up like his father. I even heard from some of the older boys that the police had caught up with him and he had died in a shoot-out.

That night I got up my courage and went to the burned-down house. I was sure Teddy would be there. I found the cave. The four walls of the room were largely intact and a tree had spread its branches over the top, blocking out the sky. But there was no sign of Teddy; and I never saw him again.

It was Mom who told me the truth about Teddy. She showed me the picture in the newspaper. It turned out that the man from the courthouse was Teddy's father.

I don't think about Teddy much, anymore - I left him behind when I left the lane. But when I do, I think about that notebook of his, and I'd like to imagine that, wherever he is, he still has it with him.

END