The Day I Became My Best Friend Was Because Of My Best Friend.

Read the story of my best friend here, so you understand this story more.

Four years after dodging bullets in East Orange, I was in my third year at university in Ghana, grinding through lectures in a sweaty dorm room.

My best friend had started slipping at Akosombo Secondary School—picking fights, skipping classes, arguing over nothing, throwing punches over small things. By our final year, his record was wrecked. He got suspended. Instead of fighting to stay, he bolted back to the States.

After that, our calls thinned out into short texts—new sneakers, new girl. Nothing deep. Just enough to pretend the bond was still there. I thought I still knew him.

One humid afternoon, my phone buzzed. It was a mutual friend from school, voice heavy.

“Your boy’s in trouble. Deep trouble.”

My stomach twisted. “Trouble like what?”

He paused. “He’s in prison.”

“For what? Drugs?”

“What do you mean? Like... drugs drugs?” I asked.

He sighed. “Wait for him to tell you.” Then he hung up.

If I remember correctly, it was a day later and my phone lit up again. It was him. Voice low. Cagey.

“I’m in prison, bro,” he said, almost disappointed in himself. I was asking him what happened? what was going on? But he couldn’t talk much

“It’s online bro. I can’t talk.” he said

Click. Line dead.

My heart was pounding. I typed in his name.

There it was.

His mugshot. On an Ohio news site. Eyes cold. He looked like a stranger.
Drug trafficking and illegal firearm possession.

I pressed my palm to my forehead. Whispered, “No way.”
The dorm walls started closing in.

I flashed back to East Orange. Him yelling, “Move!” Me laughing it off, thinking I knew his world.
At Akosombo, I’d chalked up his behavior to teenage rebellion. But now I saw it. Those were signs. And I ignored them.

We were supposed to hustle legit. Stack bread. Set our moms up for life. Start some business.
Not this. Not heroin.

Old classmates started calling. The news had spread.

IT’s like everyone wanted in on the news and who was the first person they’d call? Me. His “best friend”
He’d been buying out bars at clubs crazy, and what surprising about it is because he didn’t even drink. Didn’t smoke.

“Wow,” I kept muttering. “You really never know somebody.”

I thought I knew everything about him. And he knew everything about me.
But that day, I realized I was the one in the dark. I was the naive one.

Without even meaning to, I closed myself off, I didn’t open up to anyone, I became my own best friend.

And just like that, “best friend” stopped meaning anything to me.

I’d have friends, even close friends, sure.
But best friend? What’s that?

At first, I felt blindsided. But the more I sat with it, the more it made I saw myself delivered from a situation I don’t even want,

He didn’t tell me because he knew I’d never cosign it.
He knew I’d do almost anything for him but that? No.

When I thought about it some more I respected some moves he made because he never got me involved in the mix.

Anyone else would have used me as casualty but he didn’t. That was solid.

It makes me wonder all the situations that happen around me with every relationship I’d never know of.

I am my best friend.