WHEN WE MEET AGAIN
Prologue

      I watched as the movers put the boxes inside the U-Haul truck and held in my tears as I thought about my bestfriend...no my brother leaving me. De'Mario's parents were moving from Cleveland to Los Angeles and I couldn't...wouldn't understand why Mario had to leave with them.

      "Tay, I'ma miss you," De'Mario said as he engulfed me in a hug.

      "I'ma miss you too De," I responded as I placed my head in the crook of his neck.

      "Remember what I taught you," he said as he held up his fists.

      "I know I know. Never slap always throw a punch," I reiterated his motto for me.

      "Come on De'Mario! It's time to go," his mother called.

      "You'll always be my brother," I replied as I help up my arm to show him the scar from our 'Blood Brother' pact.

      "And you'll always be my little sister," De'Mario replied before turning and heading to his parent's car.

      I watched them drive off before heading back home. I roughly wiped the tears from my face that had fallen while I ran the two blocks home. For the first couple of weeks I stayed in my room and cried or wrote in my journal but by the third week my parents interviened. They told me that I had to start making new friends seeing as I was entering the fifth grade in a month.

      At first I was relunctant but I found some good friends. I even had slumber parties but that all ended a few weeks after my thirteenth birthday. My parents gathered me and my older sister, Tammy, and told us that we were moving to New York. I was devastated. How could my parents just make a decision like that without thinking of how I would feel...how Tammy would feel. New York was a long stretch from Ohio...it was on the other side of the United States. There was a freaking time difference for Christ's Sake! Although I hated it, a month later I found myself in a nice penthouse apartment in Manhattan, New York.

      I'd been there a few weeks and was starting to get used to everything. I had to admit that the malls and stores were much better than the ones in Ohio. I had even gotten my first boyfriend, Antiono, who was a cutie. Maybe New York wouldn't be so bad after all.

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