Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was a warm but very breezy day in April; warm enough not to wear a jacket but too breezy to let your hair down. Tynae got a phone call at 7a.m. from her best friend from Ajax, Leanna.“Hello?” Tynae answered her phone with sleepiness and confusion in her voice.

“Hm. Do I have a big pot of mix-up for you about Steven!”Tynae slowly got out of bed and went into her washroom, wondering what sweet Steven could have done to deserve this phone call at 7a.m. on a Saturday morning. Tynae put some toothpaste on her toothbrush and started brushing her teeth.

“He effed Stacy!”
“He did what?” Tynae snapped as she spat toothpaste all over her bathroom mirror.

“Yup,” Leanna continued. “I heard it and saw it for myself… well I didn’t watch but, as I was walking home from Terri’s jam, I heard some loud noises coming from around Stacy’s house. You know me, I’m well cotch, so of course I had to take the long way and pass by Stacy’s house, and as I was passing by her bedroom, I just so happened to trip and land right in front of her window, and I saw, none other than Steven bumpin’ and grindin’ all on top of—“

“Okay stop!” Tynae yelled into the phone as she started cleaning her toothpaste off of her mirror. She couldn’t bare the mental image of her long time friend doing… doing something like that. “When did all of this happen?”

“Yesterday. I saw it when I was walking home from Terri’s jam. I thought you said you would try to reach?”

Tynae hated hearing about events happening in Ajax; because it brought back so many memories of when she used to be able to go to all the hot jams.

“I did try, but daddy was busy so he couldn’t drive me.”

“Oh. Well anyways it was live! Terri got a hot DJ from NewEra Soundcrew, and Nicole and Jay disappeared around 11:30, but I followed them to the corner and—““Leanna,” Tynae cut her off. “Can you call me back later, please?”
Tynae wasn’t in the mood to here about all this Ajax news so early in the morning.

“Alright. Deuce!” Leanna was gone.

Tynae turned off the light in the bathroom and went back into her room. She dropped onto her bed, pulled her covers over her body and went back to sleep.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Tynae lifted her hand and dropped it down hard on the snooze button on her alarm clock. She sat up slowly and was blinded by the sun that was shining through her window.She got up, stretched, then she went to her desk and hit play on her iPod speakers. The Cool Kids came blasting hard into her room. Tynae wasn’t in the mood for Chuck and Mikey’s upbeat sound that morning. She turned the music off.

Tynae went over to her computer, and opened up her Facebook account; 87 inbox messages, 15 notifications, 3 friend request, 8 event invitations, and 10 group invitations. These people are ridiculous, she thought to herself. She decided to check her notifications first; 8 people wrote on her wall.“Tynae! When are you coming back to Ajax?”“Tynae, did you hear about Terri’s jam?”
“Ajax is not the same without you, Tynae!”“Come back home to Ajax, we miss you!”
Ajax. Ajax. Ajax. She closed Facebook.

It was 11a.m. Tynae had work at 12:30. She got dressed; a gray v-neck t-shirt, black cardigan, black washed-out skinny jeans, a brown belt, and a pair of comfy grandpa socks.

Tynae went downstairs, and opened the back door for her overweight dog, Pickles. She went to the kitchen for a quick cup of orange juice to tie her over until she could get some breakfast.
She let Pickles back inside and shook her head as she watched him waddle his way back into the house.

Tynae went back upstairs to get her cell phone, threw her SLR in her purse, grabbed her iPod, threw that in too, and then went back downstairs, picked up her keys, put on her moccasins, and walked out the door.

When she got outside she called her work.
“Hi, Daddy. I’m on my way right now.”“Hurry up Tynae! You were supposed to start 10 minutes ago.”
“Okay, but at least I’m coming right?”
“Just hurry up.”
Tynae’s parents owned a cereal factory, and Tynae worked at the main shipping office at the intersection, Don Mills and York Mills Rd.

Ty got to Leslie Rd. just in time to catch her bus.

When she got to Don Mills and York Mills, she went into the Tim Horton’s across the street from her work and bought a French Vanilla Cappuccino and a chocolate chip muffin, then she went into work.

“Tynae, it’s 2:15! You get off work in 45 minutes. What was the point?” Her father was angry.

“I’m sorry. I woke up late and I had to get—“
“Forget it. You’re late almost everyday. Just… leave. We’ll talk about you keeping your job here when I get home.”

Tynae left without saying anything. She knew there was no point. She got outside and thoughts of Ajax flooded her mind. Everyone was happier in Ajax. She thought about Leanna, Steven, Barry, and all her friends and family she was forced to leave behind.

She crossed the street and headed towards Don Mills Park; this is where Tynae usually went after work to just spend some time alone, think, clear her mind.

Tynae’s phone rang. It was Leanna.
“Hey.”
“Okay so as I was saying earlier… what was I saying?”
“Terri’s jam.
“Right! So… I followed them to Nicole and Jay to the corner of the room and it was really dark, but I pretended to be on my cell phone so that I could use the light…”

Leanna kept talking but Tynae wasn’t really in the mood to hear all the latest drama in Ajax. She missed being there.

Leanna and Tynae grew up together. They lived right beside each other in Ajax but they met a while back when they both lived in Scarborough. Leanna was a great friend. Tynae loved her like a sister, but lately Tynae’s mind state was in other places from Leanna’s. Instead of thinking about partying, and the what the next hottest thing would be, she wondered about what she really wanted from life. It was such a struggle. She didn’t get the point of life. What was it supposed to bring? She thought she was missing something in her life. That was her motivation though; she wanted to find what she was missing.

“Yo Lee, I’m not really in the mood for all that stuff I’m missing out on right now. I’ll call you later, alright?”“You sure? Is everything okay? I knew I heard it in your voice from this morning.”“Yeah. I’m fine. Just re-thinking a lot of things. Tell everyone I said ‘what up’.” Tynae smiled to herself, knowing that everyone would be happy that she hadn’t forgotten about them.

“Alright. You know my number, and you know where I live if anything. Keep your head up. Love you!” She laughed.

“Love you too, Lee, you’re gay!” They both laughed and then hung up.

Tynae sat down on a bench in the park, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Di fresh h’air is good fi di soul, sweetie.” The voice startled her. It came from out of no where, and it was right in her ear.

“Pardon?” She quickly opened her eyes and looked to her left where the voice was. She saw a brown skinned man with a red toque and green slush pants. His legs were extremely long, and the scruff on his face was completely out of control.He just looked ahead and smiled to himself, as if he hadn’t said anything just a minute ago.
“Can I help you?” She was disgusted by the mans composure, and his heavy island accent.

The strange man laughed to himself.“Mi just like ‘dis seat here, you know?” the strange man said.

Tynae got up and walked away. Frustrated with everything.

The park is just not doin’ it today. She thought to herself. She continued on her walk around the park and decided she would go into the city; the atmosphere always took her mind to another place. She reached for her iPod; she really needed a dose of Lupe’s Trials and Tribulations. It wasn’t there. She searched frantically for her iPod. But she couldn’t find it anywhere.

“I guess I can just start counting my losses... What a shitty-ass day.”
She talked quietly to herself. Trying to reassure herself. A group of men walked by and interrupted her thoughts with their degrading compliments and compliments to Tynae. There were five guys; the one in the front was the smallest, but seemed to be the leader of the pack. He had a dangerous scar over his eye. Tynae’s eyes followed the group of men as they walked by. She wasn’t paying attention to where she was going and almost tripped over a branch and fell flat on her face. She quickly looked around to see if anyone had seen her, it was all clear, no one in sight.

She laughed to herself and began to look up to the sky, wondering if anything could get worse for the day. She heard noises coming from the bushes.

“Squirrels.”
She kept walking but the noises seemed to be getting closer and louder. She stopped walking and the noise also stopped. She turned around and say no one. She took a step towards the bush where she thought she heard the noise coming from, she took a second thought and decided to turn around and continue walking. she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going, and she walked right into someone and feel flat on her backside.