it well. I had a cousin born two days before me. We were very close, with similar personalities – the silliest kids in the room. We’d share birthday parties, a two-for-one deal. We did everything together. Samuel was unlike me in one way though. He was afraid of water. Like rivers, lakes, things like that. He wouldn’t go on boats. He wouldn’t go fishing on a boat and when the whole family went on a cruise, fuhgettaboutit! Nope. He stayed in Chicago with a friend of the family. When he and I were both about thirteen, we went on a family vacation, on a farm. There was a river near this big old house we were all staying in. The Iroquois River.” He had to stop to choose his words carefully, and doing his best not to let the memories get the best of him. “I kept sayin’, ‘Come on, Sammie! Grow some balls! Let’s go!’ He’d often go with us for fishing and things like that, but he never got too close to the water.
“So I convinced him to go and it was a gang of us, right? About twenty teenagers; maybe a few more. Sammie was there, having a good time, laughing. He was talking to other members of the family and seemed to be fine. I told him I’d be right back. I went off with a couple other cousins, not far, maybe thirty feet away, and we were smoking some cigarettes I stole from my dad. Sammie never smoked, so I didn’t bother asking. Honestly, I wasn’t into cigarettes, but I was tryna be cool. All of a sudden, I hear all of this commotion, right? Screaming, people runnin’ around. Me and my cousins took off in that direction and found that someone, a guy we didn’t even know who was with his friends nearby, thought it would be funny to run by Sammie and push him in the river. I have no idea why he’d been standing so close to the water. He must’ve been comfortable in that environment for some reason. I guess the guy who did it was just horsin’ around, but Sammie couldn’t swim.
“I and a few others jumped in to get him. I remember yelling, ‘He can’t swim! He can’t swim!’ over and over again, like a siren or something… Like I was tryna remind God, ya know?” Yasmine brushed away a tear and nodded. “Trying to remind Him that my cousin couldn’t swim. We couldn’t find where he went, Yasmine… I stayed in that river forever, shivering, searching, until I was dragged out the water kickin’ and screamin’ by my uncle. A few hours later, they found him…”
Yasmine’s face held pain. It held hope. It held forgiveness.
“It had been all over the news, and that night, I stayed up. I barely blinked. Me and Sammie had shared a room at that old farm house, just the two of us.
“I went in there and tried to fight anyone who attempted to move his stuff, pack it up, put it away… People were leaving back to the city. The entire family was in shock, mourning. I insisted he was coming back, and he’d want everything left just as it was. I never lied to myself like that again. And then, I broke down… I went crazy. I kept playin’ that old tape in my mind – the one that said, ‘You made him go to the river. You made him go, and then you didn’t even have the guts to stand with him, to be with him, spend that time with him. Sammie loved you; you were best friends. I was closer to him than even my own brother. I had let Sammie down. He was in the water, like a fish… like a fish in an aquarium…” Yasmine shook her head. “I had nightmares about how those final seconds must’ve been for him, knowing he was drowning, that his greatest fear was coming true. I wondered if he thought about me, blamed me? I got there too late. If I had just been faster… if I had, if I had, if I had… The list was endless. All of those things haunted me for years and years, Yasmine.
“We’re all fish in a big aquarium. Maybe your sister realized that. You said she was wise, and I believe you. We’re in here, controlled, and we don’t even know it. We’re brainwashed. All of us, in one way or another. If we can’t