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him I'll see him later and he leaves. Always stuck inside my head. Can't find a way out of this mess.

A few hours pass, and I'm wondering what Lynne is up to. Wondering what she meant by she has
work to do. Before I know it, Tao is back from work, knocking on my door. I have to let him in. As
soon as he walks in he starts talking about how a black guy has been parked down the street at all
hours of the day for the past few days. I put it in the back of my mind and pay no attention to it
because I know he is going to jump to the next subject soon.

To my surprise, soon after he ends up leaving because he has to work on something, or be
somewhere, one of those two. I can't read in between the lines. After he leaves, like many other
things in the back of my mind, the idea of the black guy sitting out in a car waiting for so long tries
to push itself to the front and unlike so many other things it succeeds.

My curiosity causes me to go out my back door, walk across the alley and attempt to find this man.
I eventually find him, and I am surprised for the second time today. That's not true, earlier today I
was surprised when I realized that the superficial cut on my right thumb was getting worse. I'm
surprised because the man in the car is the same man that came to pick up Derek. The same man
who told me that Jamal had died, but in only so many words.

I begin to ask myself why he would still be around here, in this neighborhood. I question my
safety. I question Lynne's safety. For some reason, even Tao's. After I come to my senses, and
logic finally prevails, I assume that if he were going to do any harmful acts to me, they would have
been done already. I also helped out one of his associates, why would he do me harm? We all know
life doesn't work that way, though. You help someone out and they still find some way to justify
screwing you over.

The only other conclusion I could come to is that the people Jamal and Derek were hiding from
found out they were staying with me and now this man is sitting on my apartment so he can be
there when they decide to do me harm, if they ever do decide to. The question is though, who
dedicates this much time to help protect someone you hardly know? My guess is Jamal was
well-connected and the leader of his organization has sent this man out to help me out for helping
out Jamal. Back when I first met Jamal, he made it so obvious that he was part of something big.
Something illegal.

Or maybe it's as simple as something like Jamal's people are waiting for their enemies to attack me
so they can attack them unexpectedly and kill a few of their people. Appear to be resting. I would
just be a casualty of war.

After a while I find that I am not taking this situation seriously enough, because my life may
actually be in danger. I knew it was a bad idea to take them in.

I go back home and go to the room that houses the composition notebooks and pick a random
notebook. Which one is going to be lucky enough to be chosen. I end up looking through about
twenty of them in the span of two hours trying to forget that I could die soon. I guess it was just my
luck that they knocked on my door. Maybe I'm overreacting now. Never could seem to find that
balance.