That One Time a Kid Almost Bled Out in my Arms

At times life seems to come sneaking up on you in the darkness of the night.

It was shaping up to be a quiet Saturday night in August of 2009. I was twenty-two and living with my mom in Jackson Heights, Queens, while finishing my last year of college. I had just broken up with my girlfriend and quit my job at H&M, so I had nothing to do and no money to do anything. I was probably settling in to watch TV all night when Daria, a friend from junior high school, called and convinced me to grab a drink with her. (The names of people in this story have been changed to protect their identities; some of them are currently in jail, for reasons unrelated to this story, while others are gearing up to become lawyers.)

After a few rounds at a bar in Elmhurst, we headed across the street to a bodega to buy two Four Lokos, then walked around the corner to a dead end that offered a good vantage and a dumpster to ditch our cans in case NYPD pulled up. The scene wasn’t lost on us: we realized that we were, in fact, sitting between a “DEAD END” sign and a dumpster while drinking …