Almost 13

On Neighborhood Boys with Guns + Anger.

So, I have this crazy thing to admit. 

I’ve been stalking a neighbor kid. A teenager, barely 13. 

I’ve known Coolio - we are calling him Coolio because he thinks he is soooo cool - since he moved in a few doors down with his mom, dad and teen brother about six years ago. Coolio was about my son’s age and they ended up going to elementary school together. Coolio had just been returned to his parents after a stint in fostercare, and my son had just come to us as a foster child, something they bonded over.

Later, when Coolio’s mom let him have an IG account, I followed him there because he got his smartphone before my son and my son used my phone to communicate with him. But by now, I’m sure Coolio has forgotten that I follow him, so I can stalk him unfettered. I am a speck in his brain now. To him and all the other boys in the neighborhood, I’m an oldie at the intersection of death and irrelevance. 

I have spent some time analyzing his videos. Looking for clues, signs. That grainy smudge in the corner, what is that? Over and over. Like I am one of those ladies in Don’t Fuck with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer. 

But Coolio isn’t a killer. Not yet anyway.

How are killers made? I ask myself. After reading David Cullen’s brilliant, masterfully written and paced, Columbine, about the infamous spree killing that killed 13 people, wounded more, and left the town of Columbine, Colorado, scarred and beaten up. The attack was perpetrated by the partnership of two boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

As I write this, I see Coolio is posting a photo of a gun, aimed into the camera. Then at his own head. It looks heavy, real. I can see down the barrel. The amber metal just inside the barrel.

“Not a toy,” I think.

My mind wants to make sense of it: BB Gun?….Starter pistol?

But I know. Deep down I know.

In another video, Coolio is making gang signs and exhaling a cloud of smoke into the camera behind a text box that lets us know he is outside juvenal court. Another, he and his friends are making gang signs in front of a juvenile detention center where a friend of theirs is supposedly being held. It’s like they are there in protest.

Coolio is young enough that I still see the kid who piled into my car for weekend trampoline park trips and ice cream. I also see a kid who bragged about toys and elctronics he didn’t have, money his family didn’t make, and grand stories to impress my son. Coolio stole $1,000 in cash (rent given to us in cash by our tenant). It was in my nightstand drawer. I was sleeping next to the money when he did it.

He was barely 10. 

We stopped inviting Coolio over. We imposed boundaries on the relationship, when and how they could be together. More supervision, more planned activities to keep them from bringing out the worst in each other. They were younger, it was easier.

I click on his IG videos again. I notice its a different account name. He must’ve changed it after CPS rolled up at his curb last week. My son had seen the car, knows it’s tell tale markings: “If Coolio has to go back into foster care, will we take him?”

This is a reasonable question. When he was younger, if it helped his folks, I would’ve. But now? My whole focus, one of our parenting raison d’etres is keeping Coolio away from my son.

“Babe,” I say, “you do better without Coolio. My focus is on you, not him. It would be bad for you.”

In bed, when everyone is asleep, I think: Why does Coolio have gang signs on the bit of skin between his thumb and first finger? Is this a performance to impress friends or is it real? Both? Why was he was expelled from the neighborhood highschool this year, as a freshmen? How many times has the ambulance been to his house? How did his mother break her nose so badly the cartilage was showing? Is that a marijuana vape or a nicotine vape he is using?

I decide to ask my adult daughters. They will know. 

To illustrate the kind of relationship Coolio and my son have, this event sums it up: Coolio invited my son to hang out at a mutual friends house. This was maybe a year ago. My son was thrilled. Coolio had my son get money from me, go to the gas station, get chips, candy and soda for everyone, and then had me drive him to them. I was happy to pay the $40 for bad food, so my kid could enjoy being included. Something that doesn’t happen for him, mostly his own doing. Ten minutes later, I get the call. He needed a pick up. Coolio and friends took the snacks, went inside the house, locked the door and wouldn’t let him in. 

Coolio fucking broke him. He sobbed for hours.

My fear is not that my son will become a school shooter or a spree killer (that’s not his challenge) but more that he will be led in directions that he wouldn’t be led in parallel, kinder, less fucked up universes.

Coolio could be the Eric Harris to my son’s Dylan Klebold. I see how Dylan Klebold would never have participated without an Eric Harris. One egocentric, sociopathic, deceitful, charismatic, manipulative, charming boy finds his opposite, the shy, withdrawn, depressive boy who is sunk into his hoodie, who is in it to do himself in, off himself, more than anything else.

In the neighborhood, whatever mayhem was happening with the boys in their younger years - messing with the dumptrucks on a construction site, graffiti, harassing the unhoused, ding dong ditch, trying to scam McDonalds workers into giving them free fries, whatever, it was almost always Coolio’s idea and my son was his right hand, reaching out for him, executing plans and orders, amped up by the thrill of it all.

When Coolio wanted to steal packages off the porch, my son had his face on the Nest camera. My son picked up the package. My son had to return it, sad-faced and shamed. My son was the one who had to deal with our discontent. My son was the one snapshotted on the neighborhood FB group where people called him a “little asshole” and “punk” and suggested he needed to get his “ass kicked.”

He was 9. 

Another time, the boys took my husband's tools, and disassembled a fence-door that completely opened up the school. The police caught them. I picked up my son sitting on the curb next to Coolio and a kid I knew from a few streets over. He held it together for the police and their motivational-slash-scary curbside lecture (they were great, really. Very effective.)

He was only a few steps out of Coolio’s earshot, when he burst open, sobbing.

Walking home, he grabbed my hand.

“I’m scared,” he said. He shook. His lip quivered.

“You can no longer be friends with Coolio,” I said.

“I know.”

“You will end up in jail.”

“I know.”

I talked to Coolio’s mom and told her that I needed her support to keep the boys apart. I didn’t blame Coolio. My son has to learn not to be lead by stronger-willed people. To not be taken in by their charisma and performative charms. He needs to learn that life is full of Coolios. And that he is his own man and has to make decisions only for himself. That is the lesson.

That’s where we are now. Same street no contact.

I’m not mad at Coolio. He deserves to have good things. I want his life to be better. Things havent been easy for him.

Coolio’s folks used heavy drugs. They told me, but I also see the hard living in their faces. They got clean to get Coolio out of foster care. That’s something. I respect people who rise up and do that really impossible shit for their kids. They love him and his adult brother. But they struggle. I’ve talked to them so bombed as to be incoherent and word-slurring on multiple times. I hear Coolio’s dad screaming at him, screaming at mom, ranting. The night air is cracked with it sometimes.

And other days, grandma - visiting from the Philippines - sends Coolio over with a plate of her famous spaghetti. Coolio has told me it’s so much better than Italian-American spaghetti. He is proud. I down the plate and think he has a fair point. Coolio’s mom and I borrow rice, back and forth. We borrow avocados. When they are short, I front them money. When mom’s car breaks down in the middle of the road, I go get her when she can’t reach her husband. When I need an onion, I ask. They try not to ask too much. I try not to ask too much. We have a cadence. Coolio’s mom always has a new phone number, so I have to email her or ring the doorbell to talk to her. She always knocks on the door to get to me. I like that about her. 

When there is turbulence between us, always because of the boys, the mothers negotiate and commiserate. We keep it civil. Coolio’s dad is a wild card. I am not sure about him. He will die soon anyway. The ambulance is always there. He is always unable to breathe. Coughing, wheezing, even as the cigarette dangles from his lip. His heart, I think, is on the ropes. We see the lights, red bursts in our living room. My youngest, who is eight and worried about nearly everything, goes to look out the window..

One of us will say: “Must be Coolio’s dad, “ And we are always right. 

I wonder if Coolio worries about that? His dad? 13-year-old boys aren’t sharing their feelings openly on Reels. But maybe those are his feelings. All that anger? All that rebellion? All the fuck you to the world? All that trying to be someone important, to gain some control? I see in his feed he has a beer in his hand. A long neck. Is that his house? Do I recognize that chair? Does his mom know? I am not surprised he already drinks. Why wouldn’t he? Do his parents allow that? That wouldn’t surprise me either, really.

Right now, I am in training to become a CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocate) for teens in the foster care / criminal justice system. I will be sworn-in in June. My job will be to advocate for kids like Coolio. To see their goodness and their potential and their hurt and be there for them, as a mentor, a trusted ally, a voice so that people hear them.

How can I be there for the Coolio’s of the world? And how can I not be there for this particular Coolio? My therapist tells me the difference: These are my boundaries and boundaries change when the danger runs straight up to your own front door.

“Your boundary is your son,” she says.

Being a CASA will fit differently. My boundaries will adapt and reform outside of my neighborhood and my family.

I check IG. Coolio has a gun in his bedroom. His face is blocked out with squiggles. But I know Coolio’s room. His hands. He has a new tattoo. It’s big with letters. Covers the whole of his arm from wrist to elbow. He is proud of it. It has meanings I can’t understand. He shows it off. He wants us to see it. The next video, he is on the edge of his bed. He has the gun again. He wants us to see it at all the angles.

David Cullen tells us that 81% of school shooters have told people what they want to do. More than 50% have told more than two people. But we also know that “vague, implied and implausible theats are low risk. The danger skyrockets when threats are direct, specific, with a motive, and indicates work has been done to carry it out.” There is a “preoccupation with death, destruction and violence.” But the FBI reminds us not to freak over a single violent drawing or story. “Normal teen boys enjoy violence and are fascinated with the macabre,” Cullen writes.

"They key,” he says, is “repetition leading to obsession.” The FBI stresses help and support for these kids, not jail. Still, discerning what is and isn’t a true threat to the community is a crapshoot at best.

I think about calling his mom. Will she care? I wouldn’t be surprised if dad bought him the gun, afterall. Do I want to step into this? What happens if I don’t? What is the cost of being involved? Not being involved? And what could I do anyway? The criminal justice system is already involved, afterall. Who is left to call?

“I want to hang out with Coolio,” my son says to me one day, a couple weeks ago. He is bored.

“But bad things always happen for you when you do…” I say. My tone is flat, just business.

He is silent.

“You are almost 13 now,” I say turning to him.

“You are a big kid. People don’t see a little boy when they see you.” This has been important for us to stress because my son sees himself as a child and developmentally he is younger than his age.

“You are a young man,” I say.

“And what happens to you now happens to you, not us. We won’t be able to protect you.”

“Would you bail me out of jail?”

I laugh. But he is serious.

“Not if you are with Coolio,” he is surprised. He raises an eyebrow at me.

“We’ll support you through jail and the rest of your life, we’ll be there, with visits, and put money in your commisary account. But you’ll have to accept the consequences. It’s on you now.”

He thinks about this.

And then, he asks me if I want to watch some Walking Dead. This is code for spending time with me. I am bouyant on the inside. Good choice, son. We settle in to his room, fell some zombies and decide how we would survive the apocalypse. Me with a katana like Michone, my son with a bow and a motorcycle like Daryl. He has always admired Daryl, seen himself in the character, someone who never fit well in one world, who finds his footing in the apocalypse.

For right now my son does not want to hang out with Coolio. And Coolio has moved on to different friends.

For now, everything is okay. Even when it’s not.

____________________

END NOTES:

Johnnie, when I made her smile for the camera.

I saw Johnnie this week and gave her the cash you all raised. Thank you.

She is not out of trouble yet, but this cushion helps so much. She wanted to do a thank you video - this was her idea - but her anxiety won’t let her. No worries. I snapped a quick pic by the micro greens.

She told me to tell you: Thank you, so so much.

I think the eviction really triggered her need for stability. She is thinking about buying an RV, so that no one can evict her again. The experience reverbates and rattles her. After a childhood of insecurity, the idea of being dependent again on the whims of a property manager are too much.

I’ll keep you posted on how she is doing. I have sent her all your messages and I know they mean so much to her.

Also, if you are interested in reading Columbine by David Cullen don’t wait. It’s masterful in its plotting. If you are writing a reported non-fiction book, I would consider this the holy grail of mastery. I am a troubled reader and can get really distracted, but I was gripped for the whole almost 500 pages. Brilliant.

Thank you, as always, for reading. xo Kim

*None of the boys in the photos are Coolio.