This is the opening for my novel-in-progress What the Hell Ever Happened to Yuri Rozhenko? This work is the sequel to my novel Crash Shadow: A Tale of Two Addicts. I have prepared this opening and am offering it up for feedback, as it is still a work in progress.

    Walking down her street, she could see them in the close distance: Shadowy figures standing to the side, by a set of bushes, in a doorway, or hanging around a street sign.
    As she drew closer, some of the figures started to move. A regular person might not have noticed them, but she could see them. She knew a few of them had spotted her.
    She also knew that one particular shadow was headed right for her.
    She braced herself. She knew what was coming. She had to prepare herself.
    “Hey hey pretty lady! How are you doin’ this evening?”
    “Hey man.”
    “You lookin’ for some boulders tonight? The best stuff. Hardly any cut!”
    “No thanks.”
    “You sure? We got the best stuff, and we don’ charge much for it. We want our peoples to be satisfied. Not like them guys down on Sacramento.”
    “Not tonight.”
    “Awright then. Another night perhaps.”
    He always gave his pitch with a bright look and a smile on his face. And he never got too close. He always kept his distance with people, unless he knew he was reeling them in.
    Another dark figure approached her.
    “You want me to tell Les to lay off?”
    “What?”
    “I don’ know why he keeps tryin’ to sell to you. He knows you don’ do that stuff.”
    “It’s okay. He just likes to hustle. He’s having too much fun. Plus he knows I used to get wired.”
    Randy shook his head. “Man, I could never handle that rocket fuel. I don’t know how you did it for so long.”

    It was the same every night. She was either coming home from work or coming home from school. The same shadowy figures around the benches, the trees, or talking on the corner. Slim Randy, tall Jesse, Little Man who was about the size of a house, and the corner trio who were always really quiet and business like. And, of course, Les and Randy, the duo who worked her side of the street in front of her tall apartment building.
    Skye clawed the difficult keyhole with her apartment building key and made the post-workday trudge up the creaking steps. She always came home late, and wondered how loud the squeaking boards on the stairs were in the other apartments. And she always had to jiggle the key around the front door to get it to set right. She didn’t know if it was just her and her key or if everyone else living in the building had the same problem.
    Dig and Jones were at their usual spot on the couch. They were always parked in front of the television when she got home from work. Dig usually had her nose buried in a book as Jones concentrated on whatever show was on.
    “Sup,” said Jones.
    “Hi Skye,” said Dig, not bothering to remove her nose from her book.
    “Wassup.”
    Dig and Jones were short and young. Jones’ hair was always perpetually spiked, and he was almost never seen without his green army surplus jacket, even indoors. Dig was always decked out in all black clothes, as black as her dyed hair which was always impossibly straight.
    They were both working class scenesters who made it to a punk show at least once every week and still made a lot of amorous noise nearly every night despite having gone out for several years. Nothing seemed to be able to stem the tide of their lust for the scene as well as each other.
    Skye always sauntered through the living room and headed straight for her room when she got home. She knew if she hung around the living room for too long she would start watching whatever show was on or start up a conversation with Dig and Jones. She went straight to her room so she could concentrate on her school work.
    Sitting down at the old wooden desk that cramped up her small bedroom, she laid her cellphone down next to her books in anticipation of getting texts from her classmates, usually classmates that had questions about the assignment, and occasionally the predictable ‘What happened in class?’ text from Jane, the habitually late and absent yet still somehow dedicated classmate.
    Skye put on her earphones to drown out the low murmur of the television. No sooner than she had started to write out the first paragraph of her newly assigned essay, her phone’s face lit up to let her know she had a text.