Chapter 3: Ashes and Air

In the ruins of our broken family, when everything felt like it was sinking, a flicker of stability found us. It wasn't much—but it was something to hold.

My father's people, rooted in South Bay, reached in and pulled four of us—me, Marcus, Sherida, and Channin—out of the undertow of foster care. They didn't promise miracles. They offered something smaller and, somehow, heavier: a roof, a rhythm, and a reason to keep trying.

My grandmother was the center of it. Hands worn down by years of work, a heart stitched tight with prayer and pride. She didn't make speeches; she created space. On our first night there, the air was warm with the scent of Pine-Sol and cornbread. Gospel hummed from a low radio, and the walls stared back at us with faded photos—faces that belonged to our blood.

"Wash your hands," she said, sliding a plate in front of me. "And eat while it's hot."

It wasn't glamorous. It was steady.

Uncle Cal was firm but reasonable. At that age, I thought he was just mean, his sharp tone and quick corrections landing harder than they were meant to. Looking back, I see he was laying down structure, but at the time, all I felt was pressure.

Aunt Vickie was routine. Her days moved like clockwork, every action in order, every moment accounted for. Her rhythm gave the house balance—it was the steady beat beneath all of our chaos.

My cousins, OJ and Vonshay, made room for us. Their lives already carried their own stories, but they opened space for ours too. They didn't question the disruption we brought; they just adjusted, as if we had always been part of the rhythm.

For the first time in too long, the night was quiet enough to hear my own breath.

But the past doesn't leave because you change addresses. It follows you, slow as a shadow. In Muck City, survival was a language you learned young. The morning dew glittered across sugarcane fields like a million tiny blades. Sweetness rode the wind, chased by smoke. The ash from the burns settled on everything—cars, porches, throats. It made the air a negotiation.

One morning on the walk to school, the world should have been beautiful. The sun was lifting itself over the fields as if it had something to prove. Then at school, we lined up for P.E., sneakers squeaking on the concrete. And then the smoke rolled in—thick, heavy, merciless. It wrapped around my chest like a fist that didn't know how to let go.

My steps got slower. My lungs begged for air that wasn't there. I opened my mouth, but the only sound that came out was a small, embarrassing scrape of voice.

"Keep up," the teacher barked without looking back.

A couple of kids laughed. To them, I was just the boy who always fell behind. They couldn't see the weight on my chest or the tremor in my ribs. They didn't feel the invisible hand squeezing me shut.

I was drowning in a sea no one else could see.

No one really knew what was happening—not even me. Pain doesn't always bleed. It hides. Sometimes it vanished long enough to trick me into thinking it was gone. Then it returned meaner, sharper, reminding me it had never left.

I didn't understand the why. I only knew if I kept moving, maybe it would fade. Sometimes it did. Mostly, it waited—lurking—choosing its moment to prove how powerful it could be.

I pushed through those days, one breath at a time. At home, Grandma tuned the radio and stirred the pot like both were part of the same prayer.

"You listening, boy?" she said, glancing at me over her glasses one night as the choir rose in harmony. "God didn't bring you here to quit on your breath."

Marcus nudged my shoulder under the table, a quick, crooked grin. "You good?" he asked, quiet enough so it could be a secret if I needed it to be.

"Yeah," I lied. And for a few minutes, with the music in the air and Grandma setting down bowls that smelled like safety, the lie felt almost true.

Then came the field trip.

Second grade. Kennedy Space Center. We'd spent weeks drawing rockets in pencil and dreaming in color. Space was the only thing bigger than our problems, the only sky wide enough to hold the future we swore we deserved.

I needed this trip like air.

The morning came, and I was a fuse waiting on a match. But time—time betrayed me. Maybe it was a missed ride. Maybe it was chaos in a house that had too many things to fix and not enough hands to fix them. Maybe it was just the world being the world.

By the time I hit the sidewalk outside school, the bus was already moving. I ran hard—shoes slapping pavement, lungs burning, heart hammering against bones still learning how to be a cage. I waved, shouted, hoped the driver would see me, that the teacher would call it back.

The bus didn't slow down. My classmates pressed their faces to the glass, eyes bright with adventure. The tail lights blinked once like a goodbye and disappeared around the corner.

I stood there in the heat, breathless and small, watching opportunity leave without me.

It wasn't just a missed trip. It was a lesson written in metal and distance: life could take your air, and if you let it, it would take your time, too.

Right there, sweat running into my eyes, I made a vow.

Never again.

If I had to wait outside while the sun was still thinking about rising, so be it. If I had to show up too early, so be it. Time would not rob me again. I couldn't control the smoke. I couldn't control the system. But I could control the clock. Punctuality became my quiet obsession—my first strategy in a world that kept pushing me to the back of the line.

At home, I started setting out my shirt at night, lacing my shoes before breakfast, counting the minutes like they were money. Grandma noticed without making a speech. She slid a cheap alarm clock onto my dresser and just said, "Set it five minutes fast."

Marcus smirked. "Now you'll beat time."

I smiled back, small but real. "That's the plan."

Sometimes all you can do is stand up and keep stepping when the air is thin and the clock is louder than your heartbeat. Every choice to keep moving laid another brick in the foundation of who I was becoming.

I started to understand: the world wasn't only something that happened to me. It was something that happened for me. It was something I could build.

Piece by piece, I turned each new hurt into armor. To guard the fire. To protect the minutes. To make room for breath.

Because life would keep trying to take my air, my time, my chances.

And I was done letting it.

Next time, when opportunity came around the corner, it would find me waiting. Early. Ready.

But being ready wasn't enough. I still needed a vision of what to reach for, a shape of greatness I could model. And in a world where role models were scarce, I started to search for mine on the glowing screen in the living room—where two giants named Michael were about to show me what was possible.