**ASHUR POV**
I don't know why I didn't destroy that speaker as soon as I heard Adrian's voice. I knew every word that was going to play from that recording, but my mind was under assault by millions of thoughts, leaving my body motionless.
I couldn't believe that Tianna did that. I told her, and she promised, not to share the recording with anyone, especially not Lith. Adrian didn't even know that I had that recording, but now everyone did, and that meant there were going to be problems.
I wanted to turn my attention to the root of the problem, Tianna, but that would be a mistake. Ultimately, the real consequence of what she did was coming back to the grove.
When someone is about to fight, they show it. The entire rhythm of your body changes in response to the fear, or anger, that you feel while looking at the other person, knowing that one of you is going to be on the ground soon. When Lith and I used to fight, his hands shook, his voice cracked, and he cried, no matter the outcome.
Tonight was a stark difference. When things reached their peak, he wasn't shouting, shaking with fear and anger, or crying. At that moment, a single thought came to my mind. It was something that Calvin told us.
"Where I come from, if two people are in a screaming match, trying to look bigger than each other, and are trying to sound scary, that's everyday stuff. You can stop those arguments with a joke or two. Even if they fight, you'll see those same two guys on the street corner the next day, smoking and hitting on the underage girls like they always do." He had explained to us.
The part that I was thinking about was this one. "Whenever a fight is serious, you don't hear anything until it's over. The dangerous ones are the ones who say nothing and try to prove nothing, so if we see a guy looking like he's on a mission, our mission is to reach home before the gunshots go off." He told us. "One time, I saw a guy walk up to a rival gang member like they were friends. He shook the guy's hand and the other guy accepted it, confused. The next thing he knew, there was a knife in his lung. Died before he knew what happened."
Don't get me wrong. None of us except Calvin knew anything about that life, so I wasn't expecting Lith to shank me like the other guy did to his rival gang member, but his slow pace made me reconsider things, but just for a moment.
Wait a minute, I'm not scared of Lith... It will be the same result whether he walks or runs at me.
It took a long time for him to reach the table again, but as soon as the lights illuminated his brown eyes, I realized he would not calm down until one of us was on the ground.
I wasn't the one who played the recording, but I was the one who had to bear the consequences. The icy fire in his eyes expressed his blame. The worst part about being the leader was having to stand at the front. Usually, I didn't want to, but this time; I was grateful.
Everyone expressed their issues except me, so it only made sense for us to settle things with action. If he wanted to start something that he couldn't handle, I wouldn't back down.
When he was close enough to hit me, I braced myself to catch the stupid windup punch that he always did, but...
He passed me. I thought.
He veered around me as he did with everyone else. I stared blankly ahead as the adrenaline in my system dissolved into nothingness. If he didn't come back for me, then who?
Tianna was the only person behind me, but no matter how angry one made him, he was never the type to hit a girl. Surely he didn't change that much...
I turned to see him taking casual steps toward her and I heard Calvin suck air through his teeth, as he created distance between himself and Lith.
She was stepping back as Lith approached her, one step for each of his, but apparently, she was fooled by the lack of vindictiveness in his movements. She was still smiling ear to ear, satisfied with what she had done. The only thing separating them was the distance and her hands, which she had playfully extended in front of her. She clearly didn't understand the situation.
It was only when she backed into a tree that her expression changed. Her smile faded and her hands became much more rigid in front of her. Being backed into a corner had a way of enlightening people.
'"It's not funny anymore, stop!" she pleaded.
Despite her actions, she was still my friend. There must have been some... explanation for what she did, so as far as I was concerned, she didn't deserve to be crept up on like that. Rashidi wasn't doing anything to stop Lith, and the rest of them wouldn't try to calm him down. In the end, it was always up to me.
I stepped between them. "Calm down, Lith."
He gave me a look of confusion, as if he couldn't understand why the obstacle he just avoided was blocking him again. He tried to walk around me, but I extended my arm in front of him to show that this obstacle didn't intend to let him advance.
"Move."
"I'm not moving until you leave the park. We can sort it out without you."
"Ashur, I gave you a warning. If you don't move, I'm going to move you."
This guy seemed to forget what followed him talking so much shit. If the tears from my laughter fell, they would hit the top of his head, so I couldn't understand where the confidence came from.
As I reached a hand to my face to wipe said tears, an unexpected impact made my ears ring. I was caught off guard by that punch, and before I could even recover from how much force he put into it, I was already on the ground, desperately trying to push him off of me.
No matter what I did, I couldn't get back onto my feet or achieve as little as getting my back off of the ground. He had complete control of my center of gravity, so I couldn't use my core strength to escape and every blow made my head hit the dirt behind me, so pain assaulted both sides. Eventually, I had to keep my head on the ground to prevent the pain.
I knew that I was hitting him. When we were younger, using barely any strength at all was enough to stop him.
So why is that now, when I'm hitting him with everything I have, he's just eating the punches.
It was like he forgot that his body was supposed to feel pain. There was no wincing, flinching, or protecting his face.
I heard Brianna and Howin screaming in the background, while the rest of them were shouting some variation of "Lith, stop!"
"See This! Is What! I Don't! Understand!" He shouted between punches.
My consciousness seemed to be fading, something completely new to me. Darkness crept into the edges of my vision, moving quickly toward the center. I fought with all I had to stay awake because something told me that whether I was awake or not, he wouldn't stop.
As I was about to fall unconscious, Lith seemed to fly off of me, like how people on movie sets get pulled into the air when they're attached to cables. He went more horizontal than vertical, but the way he moved made my eyes widen.
As soon as he was off of me, I sat up. The rest of them surrounded me. They were crying or offering some kind of help, asking me to show them the damage. Rashidi was holding Lith's hands behind his back, but he wasn't trying to escape.
That explained the strange force that pulled him away. Rashidi himself was a strange force. The guy was too strong to be considered human. The reason Lith wasn't trying to get away was that he knew that he couldn't. Regardless, his acceptance of being restrained didn't match how much effort he was putting into hurting me.
When we were on the ground, I thought that he wanted to kill me, but seeing his face now made me wonder if I imagined the entire thing. The throbbing of my face and the pain at the back of my head confirmed the reality. Everywhere hurt, even places that he wasn't targeting were in pain, somehow, and there was a slight taste of blood in my mouth.
It was only at that moment, while I processed the image of a stranger, that I realized just how many things had changed. The last time we fought, he gave me a chance to recover when I tripped over Wynn's comics, but tonight, he used dirty tactics and fought like a wild dog. Even when I was down and out, he continued, and he didn't seem guilty, nor happy about it.
Is it my fault that he's like this? A thought surrounding a topic that I was trying to avoid finally made its way to the surface of my mind. All the things I wanted to say to him dissipated as a feeling of suffocating guilt made me wish I was unconscious.
Shiloh and the rest of them pampered me using some medical stuff from Brianna's purse. I couldn't even count how many places they had to apply the medicine. The only silver lining was that I wasn't bleeding because there was no way that I could ever explain that to my mother or his mom.
When I was patched up, one by one, their eyes turned to Lith, who was still being held back by Rashidi. Nobody seemed to want to be the first to speak, but ultimately, Shiloh spoke up for me.
"That was uncalled for." She said solemnly, looking at him the same way I did like she didn't know who he was.
"I gave him a warning."
"That's not enough!" she exclaimed. " What would have happened if Rashidi wasn't here? If it was Howin who pulled you off, would you have gone off on him, too?"
Silence.
"Lith... If Howin tried to stop you, what would you have done?"
Silence.
"Lith-"
"I don't know."
Lith, Howin, and David were friends ever since he moved into Ensom Acres. The fact that he couldn't answer that question made all of our opinions of him change in an instant. Shiloh seemed especially hurt by this, even more so than Howin.
"Why are you always like this? You always choose the harder route instead of just sitting down and handling things before they reach this point. When Ashur was trying to talk to you, you brushed him off instead of letting him speak, and now look what happened. How long do you intend to blame him for something that he didn't do?"
"He shouldn't have played hero, especially not for Tianna. After everything that's happened, do you think that he, of all people, should be standing up for her?"
"She's my friend!" I protested.
"Which is why you gave her that recording? We all know that Tianna is the evilest, most vindictive, and most disgusting bitch that has ever existed. The girl talks about everyone here while we're not around, and all of you are trying to convince me she didn't deserve what was coming to her? Crazy."
Calvin casually raised his hand. "I think you should have beat her ass and beat Ashur's some more." As if I got beaten that bad. If it was a fair fight, this wouldn't have happened.
Tianna, who hadn't moved since Lith tackled me, finally spoke. "Are you crazy?! I thought that you and Ashur were friends!" With the way she stuck to the tree, it looked like she was trying to make a Tianna-shaped dent in it.
Tianna and I were attached by the hip up to the meeting. We shared the same schedule in school and we often went out together with some of her friends, so I saw many sides of her, but never had I ever seen her look and sound so pathetic.
My heart skipped a beat at what she said. "What would ever make you think we're friends?!"
"Everybody complains about their friends once in a while, but that doesn't mean they'd do this to one another. You guys were beating on each other like animals!"
'You're lucky that it wasn't you," threatened Lith. "Rashidi and Ashur won't always be here to protect you, Tianna. Even if it's not tonight, there's always tomorrow."
"Lith!" reprimanded Shiloh and David. He didn't show any remorse despite them trying to tell him he was going too far. They were both talking over each other, frantically trying to get him to take back something that he didn't mean, but he rolled his eyes at their performance.
"You shouldn't say things like that, Lith."
When Rashidi spoke, it was like a parent scolding a misbehaving child. Instead of dismissing what he said, Lith narrowed his eyes at Tianna, but that was the last time that he looked at her during what happened next.
We thought he was calmer now, but he let out frustration as a loud, pained groan. "Why are you guys so calm about this? Am I the only one that remembers Adrian?" Surprisingly, there wasn't much anger in his expression. The only emotion that I could identify was a familiar look of despair.
"Don't you dare say that!" warned Brianna. "How can you say that when you were with me when I was crying?" As if proving her point, tears rolled down her cheeks again, following the same paths taken by the last ones.
"Not you, Brianna, but the rest of you... How can you all be so calm about everything?" he asked. "When you're together, it's like you forget that he's supposed to be here too. Trust me, I'm trying so hard not to blame you because I know that things happen, but seeing you move on so easily while I have to go home to- while I have to go home to an empty house is so grating."
Shiloh tried to explain to him. "We're all dealing with this in our own way, Lith. I don't see why we have to prove to you we're suffering."
"None of you are dealing with it except Brianna. I know everything about each person here, and I know what you're like when you're facing a problem. Whenever the topic comes up, you force it down because dealing with it is the last thing that you want to do. You're running away from it because you're scared to confront the guilt. That's why some of you don't look me in the eye and that's why you make stupid jokes all the time when you're around me. You're so scared of facing the issue that you're fooling yourselves into forgetting."
Guilty looks grew on the faces of each person, including mine. Everything that he said, word for word, held the truth.
"See? Even now, you're doing it." He pointed out. "Rashidi isn't the one that's talking to you. Look at me and say something."
Nobody was willing to meet that ice cold gaze. "Tell me you aren't trying to forget your best friend." He said, looking at Howin, "... Your boyfriend,' He said, looking at Brianna, "... or someone who was as much of a brother to you as he was to me." His gaze landed on me.
Lith was talking a lot tonight, not that I had an issue with his speaking. He had just never spoken this much before.
Lith wasn't the type to talk your ears off, or speak much at all but whenever he opened his mouth to speak, it was to say something that would make your role change.
Adrian was closer to me than anyone else who was present at the meeting. I was there through everything, things that Lith wouldn't be happy to hear, but deep down, I knew he was right.
The last time that I thought about it was a long time ago. I used to have to tranquilize the thought, knowing well that it would reappear in the next hour, but the repetitive cycle became part of my daily life, until the point where I thought about it less. Less turned it to lesser and lesser became not at all.
It was a similar situation for all of us.
"I don't blame you for what happened, but I won't accept your running from it. I don't know exactly why you feel so guilty because I wasn't there, but I will say this. If that guilt is so strong, then there must be a reason for it, and if you choose to ignore it then you deserve to feel that way."
The silence that followed was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The thoughts in my mind and the surrounding noises were gone as he finished what he was saying.
"I'm not the reason you feel guilty, so don't avoid my eyes as if I'm the problem."
Despite what he said, I didn't look at him, and neither did anyone else. He counted down from ten.
At first, we didn't understand, but by the time he reached 5, the message was clear. He was offering us one last chance to prove that we weren't trying to forget his brother.
The lower the number, the less confident his voice sounded. It was to the extent that we had to finish the counting ourselves because we couldn't hear him.
"Rashidi, let go." He said. "I'm leaving."
When you know that you're being watched, it's as if you don't remember how your legs worked. Your walking habits change because you know that there are people watching you do something that you don't really "know" how to do. After all, nobody followed specific instructions while walking.
As Lith left the park, his walking didn't change at all. He kept a regular pace until he was at the gates.
The gates opened slowly, but it took a while for us to hear them close again. I changed my mind. That was the last chance, and the soft shutting of the gate meant that we missed it.
Slowly, we came to our senses, realizing what just happened.
"Wow, Ashur. You fucked up," said Calvin.
"Me?!"
"You're the one who brought little miss 'I-love-to-torment-Lith' when David didn't invite her here." He clarified, shrugging.
"You did what?!" shouted Shiloh. "I thought David was just being too nice again, but it was you?!"
The glares pierced into my skin. I became defensive as I tried to explain my side to them. "How was I supposed to know that she would do something like this?"
"Tianna Campbell is the evilest, most vindictive, most disgusting bi-" She paused. "Woman who has ever walked the earth!"
"Yeah, honestly, you should have seen it coming." The person in question shrugged her shoulders as if her qualities were uncontrollable. "Anyway, Ashy, I'm leaving now. Thanks for inviting me!"
With that, she packed her things away. While she was putting away the speaker, she accidentally hit play, and the recording restarted.
She giggled and powered off the speaker, while the rest of us cringed. "I'll remember to tell Lexi about you, Howin," she declared as she left.
"I don't want it anymore," he said solemnly.
Tianna shrugged. "Suit yourself."
She was gone, walking in the same unaffected manner that Lith did.
"You said that you could control her!" David said, gesturing to her diminishing figure.
"Nobody can control Tianna!" I retorted. He should have known that.
"Then why did you bring her in the first place?"
'Because-"
"Because nothing, Ashur. Please stop talking. The more excuses come from your mouth, the less respect I have for you." Shiloh interrupted. "I'm leaving now, David. This was a good plan. I'm sorry that it didn't work out."
Why was she was still defending Lith after everything that he did to all of us? Even if he had a point about us trying to forget his brother, he was not a good person. It wasn't like he was good to me over the years. Maybe he never did anything as bad as this, but it if you put it all together, he was probably worse.
When the topic was Lith, she always showed so much emotion, but never that much care for me, and though I knew her long before he did. All of them seemed to have forgotten that I knew them before we even knew that someone with a dumbass name like "Lith" existed.
I was better than Lith in every conceivable way: taller, stronger, faster, smarter, better-looking, more charming, nicer, and more humble, yet they all...
The pain from my injuries seemed to flare with each dirty look that I received from them in the place of a warm goodbye. Even Howin shook his head at me before he left with David, who was dragging his eye-bags behind him like chains.
When she was leaving, the thought didn't occur to me, but Tianna brought me to the park, so she was supposed to be my ride home.