0
SPEAKER_03
You probably knew at that time what I thought was the most important thing going on in my life was what s going on with me and girls.
0
SPEAKER_03
That was probably what we were talking about 90% of the time in our conversations.
0
SPEAKER_03
And that s honestly probably what consciously I was going through 90% of the time, while subconsciously I m sure I was confused and mourning and like, what the fuck, and not really confronting what just happened.
0
SPEAKER_03
You can t really do a high school show without talking about this.
0
SPEAKER_03
In some ways, this is everything.
0
SPEAKER_03
When the boys and the girls, when we started realizing that we wanted each other, I don t want to intellectualize what was happening there because it was so unintellectual.
0
SPEAKER_03
I remember having a sleepover with some of my friends when we were probably in eighth grade, and we watched the movie Leprechaun.
0
SPEAKER_03
And there s a guy in a cellar, and the leprechaun can do tricks.
0
SPEAKER_03
And this guy sees what he thinks is a woman with her top half naked.
0
SPEAKER_03
and he reaches out to touch her, and the reveal is what he thought was like a naked boob there is actually some kind of sharp engine fan, and it chops his whole shit up.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s this one three-second snapshot of nudity, and me and my friends, we must have rewound that clip 15 times just to see a boob.
0
SPEAKER_03
That s the kind of shit that s going on, you know?
0
SPEAKER_03
All right, it was a few things that were going on for me at this point in time.
0
SPEAKER_03
The social pressure notwithstanding.
0
SPEAKER_03
There s this push to like be sexually active, talk about your sexual activity, pursue girls.
0
SPEAKER_03
But there also was like a feeling of, wow, girls are interested in me.
0
SPEAKER_03
I remember after a basketball game when a girl who lived in my neighborhood, who I always thought was cute, we re all hanging out in one of my teammates  basements.
0
SPEAKER_03
And we didn t even talk to each other the whole night.
0
SPEAKER_03
This is how it goes in high school sometimes.
0
SPEAKER_03
You don t even talk.
0
SPEAKER_03
You just see each other the whole night.
0
SPEAKER_03
I was a little too shy to spark a conversation.
0
SPEAKER_03
I guess she was too.
0
SPEAKER_03
At one point in time, the kid s dad, whose house we re at, she s like, all right, ladies, it s that time.
0
SPEAKER_03
And she just hangs back for a second and just kissed me.
0
SPEAKER_03
Didn t even say any words, just kissed me, walked up the stairs and disappeared.
0
SPEAKER_03
There was no Instagram.
0
SPEAKER_03
We didn t have each other s numbers.
0
SPEAKER_03
I just had to wait to see her again.
0
SPEAKER_03
And that was a part of the constant tension that was always crackling.
0
SPEAKER_03
You didn t know when you were going to see your little crush.
0
SPEAKER_03
That was a Friday night.
0
SPEAKER_03
I had to spend that whole weekend thinking about that she had kissed me.
0
SPEAKER_03
waiting and hoping that when I saw her again, she would still be into that.
0
SPEAKER_03
I mean, you can hear it in my voice.
0
SPEAKER_03
It was such an exciting time.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s kind of all like a really delightful little puzzle that all the kids are playing with each other.
0
SPEAKER_03
Like who fits where?
0
SPEAKER_03
And in all of that, this is 2004, 2005.
0
SPEAKER_03
I could get up here in front and be like, at that point in time, I knew gender and sexuality were social constructs and this, that, and the third.
0
SPEAKER_03
No, no, no, no, no, no.
0
SPEAKER_03
I was a boy and I was doing a boy impression in all the ways.
0
SPEAKER_03
I was not woke.
0
SPEAKER_03
I thought that there was one way to be a boy, basically.
0
SPEAKER_03
I thought it was like, you hang with boys, you play sports, you make the joke, you are tough.
0
SPEAKER_03
My sister, Shannon, was a complicating factor in that because she was, in earnest, my best friend.
0
SPEAKER_03
And she was very keenly, acutely observing my behavior.
0
SPEAKER_00
Alicia was not your girlfriend, she wasn t somebody that you were dating, and you just didn t have really female friends that anybody was aware of before that.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so this really strong platonic friendship is just something that at that time in our lives, at that time in society or whatever, that was not something that we as a family had the box for.
0
SPEAKER_00
It was just hard to square for me even.
0
SPEAKER_00
And now this seems unthinkable because I think that everyone should have as many types of friends as they possibly can.
0
SPEAKER_00
It was hard for me to really put my head around you having that close a woman friend who was not your girlfriend or whatever.
0
SPEAKER_00
But in addition to just not having witnessed it up close.
0
SPEAKER_00
So, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_03
It was sort of discounted because
0
SPEAKER_03
Like you said, didn t fit into any of those boxes that you just described.
0
SPEAKER_03
And she was a special friend because she did not value, for example, machismo and basketball and what girls think you re cute.
0
SPEAKER_03
She, as I remember, she valued art.
0
SPEAKER_03
She valued books.
0
SPEAKER_03
She was kind of like us, you know, and she had gone to our preschool, which
0
SPEAKER_03
would explain why she was kind of like us.
0
SPEAKER_03
And so she was a break from all that other stuff that felt like every day was like a ropes course.
0
SPEAKER_03
Perform, activity, study, basketball.
0
SPEAKER_03
There was so much structure that nothing was loose.
0
SPEAKER_03
Nothing was free.
0
SPEAKER_03
Nothing was just easy.
0
SPEAKER_03
So when she was gone, it was like, man, now everything really is work.
0
SPEAKER_03
I ve gone back and forth in my head while thinking to myself about this time, did I know I was in love with Alicia?
0
SPEAKER_03
Did I know I had a crush?
0
SPEAKER_03
I certainly tried to portray not to, but I mean, I called her on her house phone multiple times every day.
0
SPEAKER_03
Alicia s parents, Lulu and Arturo, they were watching with adult eyes on this whole experience.
0
SPEAKER_03
And they had their own point of view on what was going on with me and Alicia and what they wanted for there to be there.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s weird because when I was a kid, I didn t realize Alicia had so many friends either.
0
SPEAKER_03
Do you feel you were the only friend?
0
SPEAKER_03
I didn t think I was the only one, but I tried a lot harder to have a bunch of friends than Alicia.
0
SPEAKER_03
And she got to just have them, it felt like.
0
SPEAKER_02
I always kept insisting.
0
SPEAKER_02
Well, I should say insisting.
0
SPEAKER_02
I would ask, why don t you date chat?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that came up.
0
SPEAKER_02
That came up quite a number of times.
0
SPEAKER_02
And what was the answer?
0
SPEAKER_02
The answer was, we are very good friends.
0
SPEAKER_02
Let s keep it that way.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, let s not go into her choice of boyfriends.
0
SPEAKER_02
She said it could get complicated and I want to keep him as a very good friend.
0
SPEAKER_02
She dated a different Chad, I remember at that time.
0
I know.
0
SPEAKER_03
We can stay out of that.
0
SPEAKER_03
Alicia actually dated a different guy named Chad.
0
SPEAKER_03
I want to say he was 18 or 19.
0
SPEAKER_03
I think they had been recently dating, or maybe they had just fallen out.
0
SPEAKER_03
And she used to tell me about this guy all the time.
0
SPEAKER_03
And he was white Chad.
0
SPEAKER_03
And, you know, I was me.
0
SPEAKER_03
If you ever have seen Ryan Gosling s character in The Place Beyond the Pines, he was a sweeter, less stoic version of that same guy.
0
SPEAKER_03
There was an element of, you know, I would bet that Dax has known many people like this.
0
SPEAKER_03
Cut off white t-shirt and tattoos, cigarettes, dusty boots.
0
SPEAKER_03
It was interesting to me that Alicia, she had found herself connecting with
0
SPEAKER_03
a type of guy that was so different from me in a hundred different ways.
0
SPEAKER_03
But also, I thought so different from her, so different from her father.
0
SPEAKER_03
In a way, edgy and dangerous, but still kind of sweet.
0
SPEAKER_03
I think Alicia knew I had a crush.
0
SPEAKER_03
And I think she knew how to gently keep people boundaried where she wanted them.
0
SPEAKER_03
So if I had asked her out, she had me so firmly in the friend zone from birth, basically.
0
SPEAKER_03
I think she would have sort of taken care of me in that moment.
0
SPEAKER_03
She would have made it clear that the answer was no, and she would have gracefully guided us into now what that means for our friendship.
0
SPEAKER_03
She would have done it, I think, in a way that would have kept us close and not made me feel humiliated, because underneath it all, that s the fear of asking anybody always, am I going to humiliate myself?
0
SPEAKER_03
And I don t think she would have made me feel that way.
0
SPEAKER_03
I do want to talk about her friends a little bit, because apparently she had so many of them.
0
SPEAKER_01
I agree.
0
SPEAKER_03
So many people think that their kids are special.
0
SPEAKER_03
And I think, of course, there s something special about everybody.
0
SPEAKER_03
I don t mean this facetiously, but do you think that some kids are special?
0
SPEAKER_03
And do you think she was special?
0
SPEAKER_02
Well, Chad, any parent will tell you that their child is special.
0
SPEAKER_02
Any parent or anybody who invests the amount of love and time, et cetera, into anything better think it s special or else you re wasting your time.
0
SPEAKER_02
Alicia had a gift she was a very good listener and she knew how to relate to people.
0
SPEAKER_01
Alicia knew what to say, what to do to make the person in front of her happy.
0
SPEAKER_01
And recognize and feel special.
0
SPEAKER_01
And seen.
0
SPEAKER_01
And to know how to do that at such a young age, it s unique or exceptional.
0
SPEAKER_01
Not that all kids are not exceptional.
0
SPEAKER_01
This is what I believe.
0
SPEAKER_01
She was meant to be on earth.
0
SPEAKER_01
The 16 years that she was on earth.
0
SPEAKER_01
it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she was perhaps a more mature spirit, what they call sometimes an old soul, because she really knew.
1
SPEAKER_00
Alicia packed a lot of life in 16 years.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just thinking of these high school years, she dated, she was a prolific artist.
1
SPEAKER_00
She was different, but she did say something to me that hurt me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember I was in my parents  basement, we were on the phone talking for hours as usual.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I imitated something Justin on this show, something that he would say all the time, like a euphemism, like a slang word or whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
It hurt me so bad.
1
SPEAKER_00
She was like, uh, is that your black impression?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, oof.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I remember in that moment feeling like, what does this mean?
1
SPEAKER_00
The person who I ve known since I was zero thinks I have to do a black impression.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s real bad.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t think she knew that it was such a stab because at that age, she probably didn t have a very sophisticated understanding of race, but she knew enough to make a joke like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
That really fucked with me.
1
SPEAKER_00
At the time,
1
SPEAKER_00
I probably wondered why Alicia was attracted to the driver.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember seeing him and seeing that bald head, no eyebrows, baseball cap on, a funky like band t-shirt with a button up over it and some gnarly jeans and maybe some converses or some kind of low bottoms before dudes were wearing those.
1
SPEAKER_00
There was this guy, came from a different culture, clearly had a different point of view and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
1
SPEAKER_00
and the girl I liked liked him.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think as I look at it now, it wasn t because of any specific thing I can put my finger on, other than that he was a unique cutout of himself.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think Alicia, who was an artist, she could see that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I also think that sort of speaks to who Alicia was, because she didn t care about any of that shit.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
This is not an apt comparison, but Alicia was the sort of person who talked to the special needs kids when she saw that they were alone at lunch.
1
SPEAKER_02
She didn t like to see people alone, I noticed, from what I saw of her in the cafeteria.
1
SPEAKER_02
For a 15-year-old, how often do you see that?
1
SPEAKER_02
That s a snowflake.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so it made sense that she would be able to overlook any sort of
1
SPEAKER_02
physical abnormalities or things that were just kind of out of the ordinary that might seem unattractive to other people because that s the kind of heart she had.
1
SPEAKER_02
That s part of the whole irony of the thing.
1
SPEAKER_02
She s in that car with him in part because she s seeing through what he looks like to who he is, which is what we all sort of aspire to.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how you get to have that as a kid, to be able to see people as they actually are.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think she knew because our conversations were so intimate and there had been a through line in our conversations.
1
SPEAKER_00
We talked on our own channel.
1
SPEAKER_00
When she heard me do a different voice, imitating my friend, Justin, and she said that was my black voice.
1
SPEAKER_00
What I think she was really saying was you re talking like somebody else, but we talk like this because we had our own channel.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had our own AM FM station.
1
SPEAKER_00
She knew I was making a choice at our school.
1
SPEAKER_00
that she wasn t making.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was choosing to try to be the varsity blues popular kid.
1
SPEAKER_00
She was just choosing to be herself every day.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was attracted to that.
1
SPEAKER_00
It felt like it gave me permission to be myself even though I wasn t taking that permission at the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
She knew who she was, and I didn t have a clue.
1
SPEAKER_00
And ironically, I ended up becoming a more authentic version of myself after she was gone.
1
SPEAKER_00
I do wonder if she would have liked me the way she liked those other boys at that time.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t mean to, but I became an artist, and she always had a thing with the other artists.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think the artists find each other.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then her other best friend, Amanda, she was a dancer.
1
SPEAKER_01
So Alicia and I shared a locker that year.
1
SPEAKER_01
After POMS, we got home.
1
SPEAKER_01
After we did our homework, we spoke on the phone, possibly two hours every night, just like talking.
1
SPEAKER_01
My mom said, picking out our outfits for the next day of school.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so then it was, I guess, the Thursday she was saying that she was going on a first date with me.
1
SPEAKER_01
And they were going to go to the movies and for ice cream at the Olney Shopping Center.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I spoke to her before she went on the date, like that late afternoon.
1
SPEAKER_01
She was really excited, you know, nervous.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I went to bed that night thinking nothing of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I remember so vividly that my dad came, I think it was 1 or 2 a.m., into my room.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he s like, Amanda, Alicia s parents are on the phone.
1
SPEAKER_01
They want to know if you ve heard from her, where she is.
1
SPEAKER_01
She s still not home yet.
1
SPEAKER_01
And she had a curfew of midnight.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, of course, I was freaking out.
1
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, we didn t have, we weren t really, were we?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, we were texting then.
1
SPEAKER_00
We were.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had our little, like, Nokia phones.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I guess once I had went to bed, I wasn t like texting her or anything.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I was like, no, I haven t heard from her since before she went on the date.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I laid in bed for hours.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, did she go back to his place?
1
SPEAKER_01
Even though that wasn t really her.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it was shocking, but I was trying not to think of the worst while thinking of the worst.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I eventually fell back asleep.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I woke up and I immediately heard my parents  footsteps come running to the bottom of the steps.
1
SPEAKER_01
And honestly, as soon as I heard them like running to the steps, I knew it wasn t good.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so in that moment, they just looked at me and cried and I cried.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can t even imagine as a parent telling your child that your best friend passed away, you know?
1
SPEAKER_01
And then honestly, going back to school, I remember being very hard.
1
SPEAKER_01
Again, we shared a locker.
1
SPEAKER_01
So the first time I opened up my locker,
1
SPEAKER_01
And her palms were in there and all of her books were in there and pictures of us were in there.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then another random tidbit is that next semester was in my math class and our teacher changed our seating assignments and put me right behind him.
1
SPEAKER_01
I just remember thinking, like, how am I supposed to concentrate in this math class when now all I can think about is Alicia and, unfortunately, the person who was driving the car and got into a car accident and killed my best friend.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m staring into the back of his head trying to focus on math.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have to wonder, as he sat in classes every day and walked around the school and got back in a car at some point to go drive and had to wait in the line driving out of the parking lot where all the teen drivers had their music blasting and he s trying to get home or go to 7-Eleven, get a Slim Jim, whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have to imagine that he felt like we were all looking at him.
1
SPEAKER_00
He must have felt Amanda s eyes in the back of his head in that classroom.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or he must have detached himself so much from us as a monolithic society of kids that he instead must have felt completely alone and in the abyss in every room that he was in.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know which one of those is more comfortable.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to just conjecture about how this guy made it through high school after this incident.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have to talk to him.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if he apologized to his parents for whatever they had to go through after this.
1
SPEAKER_00
Did he ever feel in danger at our school?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was a murder at our school.
1
SPEAKER_00
Did he ever feel threatened?
1
SPEAKER_00
Shit, and just what was that night like?
1
SPEAKER_00
What movie did they see?
1
SPEAKER_00
What music did they listen to?
1
SPEAKER_00
What kind of ice cream did they get?
1
SPEAKER_00
Did he drive fast or slow?
1
SPEAKER_00
Did Alicia have a point of view on his driving?
1
SPEAKER_00
Years later,
1
SPEAKER_00
Alicia s dad took me on a ride around in his sports car and he drives fast.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if Alicia liked to drive fast.
1
SPEAKER_00
I need to know all that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Amanda, you know, we didn t really know each other.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, like we saw each other.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t have a lot of girlfriends.
1
SPEAKER_00
We didn t really know each other until after Alicia died.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think it was like we were looking for someone who still had Alicia s spirit on them.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so we started to have our own thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
We started to date.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, like high school date.
1
SPEAKER_01
This is terrible because I don t remember how we had our first interaction.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I m not sure if it was from Alicia s parents saying this was Chad, you know, like introducing me to you.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can t quite remember, which is really sad.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can t either.
1
SPEAKER_00
I know.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t know why.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I will say that
1
SPEAKER_01
I think that s what brought us so close is that I was like, here is someone who is going through something that I m going through so I could relate to you.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I just felt kind of comforted by hanging out with you.
1
SPEAKER_00
So did I. Yeah, it was I felt like we had our own kind of like secret code a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why I do feel like we were texting back.
1
SPEAKER_00
We were definitely texting back then.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_01
I feel like, no, we were, we were.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think I feel like I have different memories like being in my car texting.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because we weren t driving all of our car.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, not while driving all of our
2
SPEAKER_03
conversations were not via phone.
2
SPEAKER_03
That would be impossible.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I also remember having this feeling, in a way, we had a very unique high school relationship because it was born of someone s death.
2
SPEAKER_00
I do feel like it was a weird thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t like, oh, Chad s my boyfriend.
2
SPEAKER_00
We grew close because of a tragic thing that happened to us.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we had this special connection that kind of went up and down.
2
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes we were hanging out more than others.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then other times we were doing our own thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
I have to say this because this can t get lost in the telling of the story of this year.
2
SPEAKER_03
I had a girlfriend throughout most of high school, and there were some ons and offs, and it was a meaningful relationship.
2
SPEAKER_03
But, you know, our relationship was separate from a lot of this.
2
SPEAKER_03
She lived in a different part of our county.
2
SPEAKER_03
She went to a different school.
2
SPEAKER_03
She was kind of a part of a different world.
2
SPEAKER_03
In this world, Amanda and I connected because we were both missing Alicia.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I think we both saw and knew, even when we didn t have to say it, we re both a little somber.
2
SPEAKER_03
We re both a little damp right now.
2
SPEAKER_03
We started to become those kids who were a little bit lived in.
2
SPEAKER_03
And that s when those kids get to see each other.
2
SPEAKER_03
That s how it happens full circle.
2
SPEAKER_03
Now I m starting to understand, oh, this is how Alicia and the driver saw each other.
2
SPEAKER_03
because their eyes were a little low.
2
SPEAKER_03
We couldn t pretend to believe in the make-believe anymore.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was over.
2
SPEAKER_03
Elisa s death ended that for us.
2
SPEAKER_03
And now, we had to be real.
2
SPEAKER_03
Again, I don t want to be disingenuous.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was taught in the most formative part of my community, which was very Black.
2
SPEAKER_03
Obviously, we re a Black family, Black church.
2
SPEAKER_03
The elders did not mince words.
2
SPEAKER_03
How do I say this most plainly?
2
SPEAKER_03
I wasn t supposed to date white girls.
2
SPEAKER_03
That was not something I ever had to read between the lines on.
2
SPEAKER_03
That information was given in a way that was straightforward.
2
SPEAKER_03
Also, that information was given in a way that was contextualized.
2
SPEAKER_03
It wasn t just like, oh, don t date white girls.
2
SPEAKER_03
We don t like them.
2
SPEAKER_03
It wasn t that.
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It was, well, there s a history of violence against boys and men like you.
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who get entangled with white women.
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But I was a teenager with a car.
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And I am the type of person who will adventure into something that is forbidden.
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I have to explore.
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Before I was having sex, I would go to 7-Eleven and buy condoms and try to learn how to use them.
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and then go bury them in my parents  yard because I thought they would find them in the trash can.
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And it wasn t enough for somebody to tell me that it was dangerous to mess with white girls.
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I was a teenager.
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I was just attracted to girls of all kinds.
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But what was simple for me in feeling, which was being attracted to a lot of different girls, was much more complex in society and much more complex in our community.
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SPEAKER_03
I think my sister can say it perhaps more eloquently.
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What did you as a sister and as a young woman at that point, when you see your younger brother, a boy, start to like really get into that world, what do you notice about him change?
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What worries or fears do you have?
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I should also mention, I started dating white girls around that time and becoming interested in them when the basketball team was good, because that s when they started noticing me, I guess.
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And we re a black family.
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I think in some regards, we re a traditional black family, or at least our parents can be.
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And I know that was always a concern.
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Is Chad going to, one, get himself in trouble, messing around with white girls, or two, is he going to end up with one, married to one?
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SPEAKER_02
It started really even before high school.
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SPEAKER_02
You had a girlfriend in middle school too.
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And I remember you told me that you weren t even really interested in girls at the point when she and other ones started sort of clawing at you.
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You were not ready for that, but they all wanted to pair up and they wanted to have a boyfriend.
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And so therefore you became someone s boyfriend.
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And so I came to see that that was going to be the big thing for you.
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I think at some point, obviously, by the middle of high school, you were sincerely interested and you definitely also really valued their attention and wanted that validation and just wanted to be around them because you liked girls.
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But initially, at least, I think it was
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a construct that you were just being pulled into.
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So obviously, as you know, it s completely different for girls entering that same situation.
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Society treats you very differently if you re getting a lot of male attention.
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And perhaps I guess it s worth saying also that if you re the exact equivalent of you, but you re a girl at that age,
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you re not going to get the same attention.
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So if we shared all those traits, if we were nerdy and bookish and kind of earnest or whatever, those things worked for you.
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They obviously did not have the same impact for me, by which I mean I just have zero dating life of any sort.
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Not until college did I have any kind of dating life.
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So you were going through all of this stuff and I felt like you were really participating in all of it in a way that was just
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really out of my reach.
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And I started to see how maleness and how being a black guy was different from being a black girl, even in an environment that was predominantly white, which for both of us, it still was for a lot of the time.
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SPEAKER_02
And like you said, you had white girlfriends and white girlfriends, I guess.
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even though there was also that tension and that friction of our parents and maybe even you to some extent wondering what that was going to mean for you, was it going to lead to trouble for you?
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SPEAKER_03
There was a danger, a very present danger, both danger of getting in trouble with your family and I was aware by at latest 15 years old that if you show up places with a white girl, the spotlight is on you and the spotlight is not always great.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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I mean, I m talking about this at the remove of 20 years or whatever now.
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Now I look back and I see how that was dangerous for you, how there was all this freight beneath it.
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And I know that at the time, you and some of your friends even got pulled over by cops because you had white girls in the car.
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SPEAKER_03
No doubt.
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Or vice versa, you know, because they had black guys in the car.
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But I guess setting aside all of the context of danger that we both understand now, you were able to participate in things that were not in my reach at that point.
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SPEAKER_03
Danger is all around a teenager.
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For us, it was danger if you get pulled over by the police.
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There s danger in the basements.
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There s danger in the bedrooms.
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Everything s dangerous because you don t know how to manage yourself, because you re not formed.
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SPEAKER_03
But that danger is also the magic.
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SPEAKER_03
That s the crackle of magic that when we re nostalgic about high school,
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SPEAKER_03
The danger is a part of it, that whiff of risk in everything.
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SPEAKER_03
And after that fight, after that fatal fight in front of our school, the adults were scrambling.
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SPEAKER_03
They were desperate.
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They didn t know what to do to try to create some type of safety bubble around us.
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SPEAKER_03
Laleh remembers very vividly how life changed at Blake after that fatal fight between the two girls in front of our school.
2
SPEAKER_01
I do remember a little bit of what happened in the aftermath.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, first of all, it didn t involve people from our school.
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No, it didn t.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think that s what was kind of crazy about the whole thing.
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I felt like we were in a safe place.
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I felt like it was something that we didn t have to worry about in our specific community.
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SPEAKER_01
I just felt like we were one of the safer schools in our consortium.
2
SPEAKER_01
It definitely felt like a more
2
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dangerous experience afterwards, because it was almost like the catalyst.
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SPEAKER_01
If this can happen now, then what s next?
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SPEAKER_01
What is this opening up to?
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SPEAKER_01
Not to say I didn t experience witnessing my fair share of fights in the Blake Hallways and girls  hair being pulled out and things like that, but to have a lot of people witness a murder and something so violent and unnecessary, it just felt like not our community.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s the only murder that s ever happened at an MCPS high school.
2
SPEAKER_03
So that s accurate.
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SPEAKER_03
I mean, still, there hasn t been another one since then, according to Mrs. Goodman, and I trust her.
2
SPEAKER_03
No, I never felt fear of death at school.
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SPEAKER_03
I certainly felt the tension of a fight brewing and stuff like that all the time.
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SPEAKER_03
Even afterward, I was never scared of getting stabbed at school.
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SPEAKER_03
It was weird.
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SPEAKER_03
It was like a little surreal.
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SPEAKER_03
It felt like our school was on TV.
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SPEAKER_03
It was like, oh, a murder happened here.
2
SPEAKER_03
That s crazy.
2
SPEAKER_03
What a crazy story.
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SPEAKER_01
I do remember more security at our school.
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SPEAKER_01
We weren t allowed to do open lunch anymore.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that s right.
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Like things were taken away from us.
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And I m not saying those were the wrong things to do, but I do genuinely feel like it was the interest in keeping us safe.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
I do know you mentioned racial implications during that incident that I, at the time, wasn t aware of.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I do.
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SPEAKER_03
I ll just give a recent anecdote that opens the box on that.
2
SPEAKER_03
When Mrs. Goodman was describing the girl who was stabbed, she said, I guess they ripped her shirt open for the paramedics to do their thing.
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SPEAKER_03
And she had a tattoo on her chest that said something like, boss bitch, or something like that.
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SPEAKER_03
And I understand that that detail adds color to the story, but what s the relevance?
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SPEAKER_03
But I know what the relevance is.
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And I know with some certainty that had that been a white kid that was stabbed and killed, the fallout from it would have been more robust.
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SPEAKER_00
More coverage, more fear, more privileges revoked, I would imagine.
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More people implicated.
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That s my educated guess based on just history, I guess.
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One thing about the parties and going in and out of the really American white kids world and then back into our world was there was just sort of a safety net that felt to be there.
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SPEAKER_00
And I always was curious about whether or not that safety net included me.
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SPEAKER_00
And at home, I was honestly taught that it did not.
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So I was very careful about it.
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SPEAKER_00
That s another reason why I didn t feel totally comfortable at their houses.
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And I do remember thinking, and it wasn t like a fear reaction, but it was just, wow, a kid can be stabbed here at school.
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SPEAKER_00
Can I be stabbed here at school?
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SPEAKER_00
But I wasn t really scared of it.
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SPEAKER_00
It was just, I don t know, it just kind of was like,
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SPEAKER_00
almost like the Alicia s thing.
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SPEAKER_00
It was just like, oh man, this can happen.
3
SPEAKER_00
Teenage dating is treacherous.
3
SPEAKER_00
There was a game of feelings and desire and egos always at play.
3
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, I played.
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SPEAKER_00
I was in there.
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SPEAKER_00
I was very much in there.
3
SPEAKER_00
My friend Eli, he and I were close, very much a part of the same small circle of friends.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he
3
SPEAKER_00
dated somebody who I had been dating and who I still had feelings for.
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SPEAKER_00
And I mean, I didn t like that he dated her.
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SPEAKER_00
And I behaved, I behaved dishonorably.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you had dated this girl when I think you guys were younger.
3
SPEAKER_01
You d known this girl for some time.
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SPEAKER_01
And then I was really attracted to her.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was into her in 10th grade.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I asked her to be my date to a homecoming.
3
SPEAKER_01
She was a little standoffish on whether she wanted to date me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then sort of once I had finally convinced her that we should take a shot,
3
SPEAKER_01
then that made her more interesting to you and you decided you might be back interested in her again.
3
SPEAKER_01
And she d always harbored, you know, I m speaking for her here, but I think you maybe broke her heart when you guys broke up and she d sort of always hope that you guys may have a lingering thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
So once you were an option again, I was quickly back off the table.
3
SPEAKER_01
So obviously it felt like we were fighting over the same trophy.
3
SPEAKER_00
that all just feels and sounds like things to get dinged for, for sure.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, we were 16 year old boys.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t remember the conversations vividly.
3
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I think one of our conversations was like over AOL instant messenger, as I recall.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know, I know, I know.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was the mode of the day.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what stayed with me was a boy told me directly, why did you do this?
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SPEAKER_00
We re friends, you hurt my feelings.
3
SPEAKER_00
That stays with me now.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s still some really hard shit to say to a person.
3
SPEAKER_00
You did this thing to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
We are friends.
3
SPEAKER_00
You love me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why did you hurt my feelings?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why did you undercut me? 
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember that even then, it was kind of eye-opening that boys are even allowed to say that to each other.
3
SPEAKER_00
As you can hear, I have learned how to express myself.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve learned how to connect feeling to thought to word, and I have made a career out of that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So when it became time to reach out to the driver, I realized something, which was that I didn t know what I felt, which is why it took me literally an entire day to write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite the note to the driver.
3
SPEAKER_00
because I just, I wanted us to have any chance to get him to show up for a conversation about that day, about that night.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would love to be able to see a snapshot from his eyes of Alicia that one last time before it was over.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I could have that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just wanna be able to know what he knows.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what I ultimately wrote him is this.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is Chad Sanders from Blake class of 06.
3
SPEAKER_00
Please forgive the abruptness of this message.
3
SPEAKER_00
I am working on a podcast series called Yearbook, exploring my junior year of high school at Blake, 04 to 05, and the ways that it impacted my life and our community.
3
SPEAKER_00
As part of the podcast, I have been interviewing people who were a part of that year, including Mrs. Goodman, many of our classmates, my parents, and other members of the Blake community.
3
SPEAKER_00
A major part of that year, of course, was that we lost our beloved friend Alicia.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would love to include your voice and point of view on Alicia, that one terrible night, and some of the events that followed the accident as well as your own recovery, emotional and physical.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know this must be an incredibly sensitive subject matter for you, and as much as I d love for you to participate, I have no expectations.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re open to a 60-minute recorded conversation with me that will be included in excerpt in the project, please let me know and I ll connect you to our producer.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there is absolutely no pressure, and regardless, I will be sure to cover the subject matter sensitively, appropriately, and in a way that maintains your privacy and represents you positively, which is how I have always seen you.
3
SPEAKER_00
All the best, Chad.
3
SPEAKER_00
I thought the only way I can reach out to this person is gently, like an olive branch, like someone who is pushing lightly an inflatable raft across a shallow pool to someone and asking them to just lower their body onto it and come over to my side.
3
SPEAKER_00
But that s not real.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m being fake.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m trying to force closure.
3
SPEAKER_00
After Alicia died, our community came together and we did walks and vigils and candles and
3
SPEAKER_00
wrote on stuff, we tried so hard, we did the stuff we see in movies and on TV about how people find closure, people went to church, people went to synagogue, prayers, holding hands, hugs, tears.
3
SPEAKER_00
It didn t work.
3
SPEAKER_00
If it did, I wouldn t be here.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wouldn t be talking about this.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in this next episode, I am gonna go and try to find that somebody was able to put this to bed somehow, because I don t think I have yet found that person.