It was Thursday, March 9 2021. I was up on my laptop downloading an emulator to play old Nintendo GameCube games. As I laid back on the chair, my mother heard the door ring at the door was a family friend named Jay. Jay used to cut my hair back in High school when I was too broke for a 20 dollar haircut.

He stopped by to see us because he wanted to visit and say hello. After this, he states he was hungry, “I’m going to head out to the store real quick,” he said. But something was off- the store is around the corner it takes five minutes to go and come back. He took an hour.

When Jay came back, he seemed off- he seemed drunk, but I did not smell an ounce of liquor when I approached him. Jay then asked us if he could sleep on the couch and was ready to pay us cash for it, so in my head, I said sure why not?

As I grabbed the money, he slurred his words, I told him to sit his butt down and sleep. He then murmurs, “Them boys at Ryker’s ain’t sh*t” then he was asleep.

I went to the bank and grocery shopped, I kept thinking of his actions, but I paid no mind. I was just happy to get some extra bucks in my wallet.

I came home, and everything was quiet.

Jay slept over at our house before he usually snored like a bear. It was dead silent, I thought, “thank god this is a blessing.” My mother came right after me and looked at Jay.

“Jules I think he’s dead,” she said.

“You’re out of your mind, that doesn’t make sense.” To prove my point, I took some cold water and dumped it on his arm.

He didn’t move- My eyes grew open, I looked at her and said, “get the phone now!”

The EMTs came into the house and told us he was dead. By that time, the day was basically over: the cops had to come, the medical examiners had to show up after they came then the body was picked up and left our home. During this time, we found out a lot of information about Jay.

He robbed the barbershop he worked at and was with a prostitute robbing people around the neighborhood, Jay was in Ryker’s Island for a few, and the day he left, guess who he came to see? Us. What really got me was the cause of death which was a heroin overdose.

He came here sober, and left out for an hour to get high, and decided to come back to my home and die on my couch. Jay also apparently gave my mother 220 dollars before giving me 150 dollars to sleep in the house. The kicker behind all this is the left 120 dollars on my pool table when he fell asleep: I definitely took it.

Some would say that is immoral, but when you die your money doesn’t go with you. It all felt planned like he wanted this to happen and needed to leave us with something. Maybe that’s it, but I will never know.

I took some saved money and used the money I earned to grab a Nintendo Switch. Whenever I look over at it, I can’t help but think about that incident.