Equality and Balance: Part 4 by Ben Sparks, staff writer

It had happened. Our mother found out, and immediately I felt my heart pound, and my face flushed. I ran into my room and my brother laid on the bed listening to his i-Pod.

“Mom’s on the phone, she knows.”

“Seriously?” He said, his face immediately turning a sickly pale.

I gave him the phone and left the room not wanting to watch my brother try to slither out of this one.

I tried to distract myself and decided to go on my computer to search up this Hidden Valley MMA place on Northern. Pressing the power button on my computer, I waited five minutes for it to boot up. I clicked on Internet Explorer and proceeded to Google. Once on the place’s official site, I looked around and found that the place looked pretty official, and had a list of famous fighters whose career had started there. It offered a variety of different classes like Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and whatever else. I got the address and checked the time. It was four thirty, so I had a little bit before my date with Sabrina. My brother walked out the room, and his face was beet red, and his eyes were wide.

    “How bad did she tear into you?” I asked him.
    “I-it was just a bit worse than usual, but she seemed a bit happy that you were looking out for me.”  

  “You’ve been stuttering all day, hope it doesn’t become a habit.” I said to him jokingly trying to lighten the mood. He didn’t answer me, and just plopped down on the couch and turned on the T.V.
   

I stayed on the computer for a couple of hours until it was time for me to get ready. I just hated the fact that Sabrina always made me get dressed up for our dates. I threw on some black slacks with black loafers, and a dark red button down shirt with a burgundy tie. As I walked outside the sun was just beginning to set and the sky looked like it was exploding into multicolored fireworks. There was a light breeze going around every corner as I walked to the bus, but it wasn’t bad enough for a jacket. The Q36 came quickly, so I took a seat all the way in the back and waited for the ride to be over.
   

When I got to the terminal Sabrina was already there, and we started the walk to the train station. As we were walking I saw my boy Manny in his pickup.
 

   “Ayo, I can get us a ride,” I told Sabrina as I walked up to the car.
    “Yo Manny remember that favor you owe me?” I asked him.
    “What about it?” He replied.
    “I need you to give me and my girl a ride into the city.”

he gave a huge sigh. “Aight fine hop in,” he said annoyed, but I didn’t care.

I called Sabrina over, and we both hopped in the back seat because his boy was already in shotgun. The ride was quiet, especially since Sabrina was shy around people she didn’t know, so she made it pretty awkward. Once we got to the city, Manny asked for directions and I had no idea where the place was. I just turned to Sabrina, and she gave the directions while constantly tripping over her words. I gave her a look because I have never seen her act this awkward. She just shrugged her shoulders. As soon as we got out the car he just sped off, I could tell he was annoyed.

“Are you okay? Why are you acting so weird?” I asked Sabrina.

“Oh no, I’m fine,” she replied.

“Are you sure?” I asked one more time hoping that she would open up, I had never seen her act like this.

“Well its just that. He seems to have a scary aura about him, and it just made me feel a little nervous. Like at any moment the cops would pull us over.”

I didn’t find this realization too surprising. It wasn’t the first time someone told me that Manny looked scary, he just had that criminal face. I used to get tight when people said things like that because I used to think that me and him were one and the same, but lately me and him just didn’t chill as much.

We got to the restaurant, and it had some french name that I couldn’t pronounce. As we walked in a wave of cold air from the A/C hit us making a shiver run through my body. There was an attractive girl at the front desk dressed in what seemed to be the restaurants uniform; a black vest with a white button down shirt, a black bow tie, and black shoes. Sabrina saw me studying her frame and gave me a quick glare as she led us to our or table. We walked farther in and I got to see how luxurious the place was. There was a red carpet going up the middle of the entire restaurant, and there were golden colored chandeliers adorning the entire ceiling giving the place a glow. The restaurant had round tables in the middle with two seat booths along the walls, and each table had a luxurious bouquet of flowers as the centerpiece along with a candle. How on earth was I going to afford this?
   

They seated us in a booth along the wall, and as we waited for our waiter to come I decided to take a look at the menu. Sabrina began to make small talk as I flipped through the menu and well… Once again I had no idea how I was going to afford this. Just then the waiter came.

“Hello my name is Darius, and….” There was a long pause as he and Sabrina stared at each other.

“What’s going on?” I asked, but no answer came from either of them.

He walked away, and Sabrina just looked down at her silverware for a couple of seconds.

“What the heck’s going on?!” I said raising my voice a little bit.

“He’s my ex,” she replied without picking up her head.

Oh man this was going to be one interesting meal.