Florina laughs as she continues to look at all the baby photos my family has sprawled across the house.

“You were always so cute back then, what happened,” she teases.

I roll my eyes and trail behind her as she scurries around my house, inspecting everything. Our house is pretty small, but my mom made sure that it was decorated from head to toe with pictures of the family. She always took pictures and even has a special small light red camera she takes everywhere she goes. I’ve never been a picture person, but I can’t deny the grateful feeling I have looking at the journey of our family painted in photographs. It keeps me at ease and makes the home have a comfy feeling.

Florina carries on rushing around my house and pointing out certain photos of me, bringing out a different side of her compared to her usually very calm and composed nature. She stops abruptly and looks at me with a quizzical expression on.

“Are you going to answer that,” she says.

Now I match her quizzical look, but then I noticed the soft ringtone of my phone filling the air. I laugh, reach into my pocket and pulled out my phone, I must have been distracted. My eyes adjust to the bright phone screen and Mom is shown in white bold letters. I slide my finger and put the phone to my ear.

“Hello, sorry for picking up late.”

“It’s fine honey, are you busy right now?”

I look at Florina and she smiles like a kid trying to hide the vase they just broke. Innocent and heartwarming.

“It depends, do you need anything?”

“Yes, I’m about to send you the address to where Levi currently is, can you come?”

I look back and Florina’s doing the same goofy smile. She should be fine with a pit stop to what I can assume is picking up Levi, his car probably broke down or something.

“I can do that, but are you gonna tell me the reason why.”

“You’ll find out honey, I’ll see you there, love you.” I hear the tone of an ended call and move the phone away from my ear into my line of view. I see the text notification which shows the address, which I strangely have never seen before.

“I think Levi’s car broke down or something, you want to follow me to pick him up,” I ask Florina.

She nods her head and we both walk towards my front door after I check in with my dad and show him the address, which even he had never heard of before. I open the door for Florina and before I make my escape I hear a dash of steps come from below me. I look at where the noise is coming from and see Genesis bolting towards me.

“Where are you going,” Genesis says, breathing quite heavily due to the amount of distance covered in such a little time.

“I’m picking up Levi, something might be wrong with his car. When are you going to Helios’s.”

“In two days.”

“You got this bro, your passionate and one of the most creative in the rap game. Just do you and don’t freak out, sometimes you drop the ball.” Genesis replies to this statement with an eye roll.

“Whatever, I’m gonna need you and Levi to read these lyrics when you come back today, cya.” Genesis heads back downstairs.

I continue outside and survey around me. Florina seems to be nowhere in sight. I go towards my beat up honda and look inside the window. All that sticks out to me is the extra dirtiness of the car.

“RAHHH.”

I jump back and put my arms over my head, shutting my eyes as tight as I can. After the moment passes, I unglue my eyes from each other and that’s when I hear Florina’s laugh. Not wanting to hear her laugh continue to echo in my head I quickly launch at her and flip her body over my shoulder.

“No STOP,” she screams. I ignore the warning and carry her towards my front lawn. I gently slam her on the ground and pounce on top of her, holding her arms down.

Still laughing, she tries to wriggle out of my grasp, but I lock down my hold even tighter. She admits defeat by letting out a sigh and stopping her struggle to reliqunish my control of her body. She grins showing a full mouth of strangely pearly white teeth. Her lips look as plump as ever and her ocean-like eyes seem to put me into a trance.

I dip down my face and put it closer to hers. The light brown curls of her hair are sprawled all behind her, her small nose twitches as I keep closing the distance between us. Her pure childlike face sustains my enticement towards her and before I can think my lips are pressed upon hers.

Surprisingly, she presses her lips harder to mine. I move my hands to caress her soft face and continue pressing my lips on hers, our tongues interlocking. I pull my face from our exchange. She looks up at me in a daze, but the daze is soon replaced with her same goofy smile.

“Oh Romeo, why have you stopped,” she says.

“Because I still got someone to pick up remember.” I stand up and wipe the grass off my clothes. I reach my hand towards her.

“That’s true, just promise me that won’t be the last,” she says still trying to pull off a shakespeare accent.

“I promise.”

She takes my hand and springs up. Our hands still together, we travel to my car and I start the engine. I take out my phone and type the address into google maps. After another irresistible makeout session in my car, we headed off to the address.

*

I make the turn to neighborhood the mysterious address lead me to and was bewildered by the size of the houses. I shouldn’t even call them houses, they were definitely more like mansions, each one bringing out an aura of wealth.

“Woah, the people living here must be filthy rich,” Florina says, face glued to the car window.

I couldn’t disagree with her, the only question I really had was why Levi would be here. I suddenly become worried and when I arrive at the house with the address, I realize that the worry feeling was justified.

Two cop cars are stationed around the house, one in the driveway and one in the street in front of the house. Not knowing where to park I take a minute to take in exactly where I am. While observing my surroundings, my mom’s car caught my eye. I look closer and see that my mom is still in the car. Our eyes lock onto each other and she motions me to park on the side of the road. Not having any reason to not trust my mom, I obey.

“Is everything ok,” Florina asks. I look at my mom and she makes a stop sign with her hand and points at her watch.

“Yeah, I think we just have to wait here.”

We wait for what feels like an hour. Impatience runs through me and just as I’m about to get out of the car, the front door of the house swings open. Levi with his hands up slowly walks out, the most terrified look on his face. My instinct as an older brother makes me reach for the door, but when my hand touches the handle, my phone rings. I pick up,

“I know this might sound weird, but don’t do anything. I’ll handle it when I know the right time is, I need you to learn from this, don’t be reckless,” my mom calmly speaks the words through the phone then hangs up. I look back at the situation unfolding and reflect about my mom’s words.

Two police officers follow Levi out, one of them goes and grabs onto his shoulder tightly. The police offer then proceeds to what looks like yell right in his face, you can tell by Levi’s expression that he wasn’t listening. His eyes were shut tight and you can see the slight shake of his body. After more yelling, the police officer pushes Levi to his car and slams him on his door. I must have been visibly angry, because suddenly Florina’s hand hovers slightly above my lap.

I take my eyes off the horrible state of affairs Levi is in and look at Florina. She has a determined look in her eye and has one hand holding her phone towards the event, recording it.

“I think we should trust Skye, you just running towards him right now won’t solve anything and you might just find yourself in the same situation as him,” Florina orders. I’m taken aback by the seriousness of her voice and decide to listen to her.

A spanish looking girl tries to run out of the front door, but what looks like her father and mother is holding her back. Tears flow from the girl’s face and by the movement of her mouth it looks like she’s screaming.

The officer force handcuffs onto Levi’s hands. Looking at Levi’s eyes it still looks like his soul is out of his body as the cops continue to manhandle him. I hear a door open and catch sight of my mom leaving her car.

My mom walks up the driveway and the police officer handling Levi motions the other one to confront the strange woman walking up to them. The officer confronts my mom and they enter a conversation.

The conversation seems to be going well, if you ignore the annoyed expressions the officer gives occasionally. In the middle of the talking though, my mom nonchalantly walks past the officer and towards what looked like the family who owned the house. With a smile she speaks to them.

A lot of nodding, and surprisingly what I can guess is laughter fills the air between my mom and the family. After a little while the daughter has a smile on her face and my mom gives the other mom an embrace. The police officer’s faces let me know that their as confused as me. The father of the family strolls towards them and a few exchanges of words end with Levi getting his handcuffs, still rather forcefully, removed from his wrist.

Levi seemed to regain his composure as he rubbed his bruised wrists and stands by the side of my mom. Everyone inches towards a huddle as the conversation reaches the whole group that the event transpired amongst.

“That went so well, your mom’s amazing,” Florina says while shoving her phone back into her pocket.

“Thank you for not going out, honestly I wouldn’t know how I would react seeing you just like Levi.” Florina scoots closer to me and rest her head on my shoulder. I’m glad that she ended up coming because I really couldn’t predict the actions I would of taken if she wasn’t there to reassure me.

Levi and my mom returned to her car and drive off after calling me and making sure I was ok. I trailed behind her car as the situation that I just encountered plays back in my mind over and over. I can’t say it put the cops in the same positive light that I used to shove them in due to what I was told in school. I can’t help but have now instilled fear of them and I can’t put it pass Levi to have the same feeling.

I drop Florina off and seal her goodbye with a kiss, our relationship has seemed to get closer day by day. I’ve had girlfriends in the past, but this was a girl I feel like I could share anything with, our friendship already built our trust. However, there are still things that I feel like I know nothing about, but she was always mysterious like that.

When I enter the door in my house I can already hear my mom and Levi talking. There was no anger in her voice however, only a kind of serene tone. I go up the stairs and enter the living room.

“I’m sorry, you trusted me and I am disappointed you, I wasn’t smart. I’m just not smart, my stupid hormones got the best of me.”

“It’s ok baby, the police can scare anyone and everyone makes mistakes, just don’t make them again. Honestly even I got lucky, their family was nice even if you might not think they were,” Skye lets out a hearty laugh when she says this. When she sees me enter she gestures me over and weaves her arms around me.

“I’m so proud of you for not letting your emotions get the best of you. I wanted you to be there to show you how to act when facing the police, make sure you know your rights, don’t let them walk over you. Don’t be aggressive however, I don’t want to turn on the news and see that my son’s were shot by an officer and the officer won’t be receiving any punishment. That’s one of my worst fears,” my mom says this solemnly.

I nod and sit on the opposite side of Levi. I, quite awkwardly, put my hand on his shoulder just to let him know of my presence. Levi though intelligent can get pretty sensitive. We continue in this position as the night fades away.