Dani.

Dani Hikari.

I can't forget that name. How could I forget it? She saved my life.

I was in San Francisco for a long time. I lived with just my mother. I hated her. She would treat me like was worthless. I couldn't find a job and she resented me for it. I was fifteen when she lost her son while she was pregnant. I tried my best to help her, I truly did. I'd clean, cook, sacrifice my grades in school to take her places after that. She'd still yell at me. Beat me over the smallest things. At sixteen, I moved out.

I was homeless for about a month. I made friends with a few of the homeless and other people down on their luck. I started helping, fixing our little community up and protecting it as well. I was surviving, not living, however. I needed work. I just want to know where my next meal was coming from. Some shady dude wanted me to sell some weed to some college kids as a favor for my efforts around the homeless camps. I made money, for the first time. It was $130. It felt so good. Soon, I was a mainstay, selling weed to a few kids and oldheads to get me a lower-end apartment on the shady side of town. It was nothing new, of course.

Something always goes wrong. It's the story of my life. There were more weed dealers out. There was competition. I was gonna lose my house, I had to step things up a notch. I remember one of my plugs named Sam. I called him over one day in June.

"Yo, what's the word?" Sam said, once stepped into my den.

I look out the window, determined. "Yeah. I'ma sell crack now. I need people."

"Woah Woah, crack? You know what happens if we get pinched with crack, dawg?"

"Same thing with weed: Jail. You know the risks regardless, bro. I ain't snitchin' and I put that on everything I love. I just need help pushing it."

Sam sighs. "Fine. But don't say I ain't warn you."

A few months later, I was balling. High-end apartment, chains, and the women. I had it all. All I had to do is ruin the community with what I sold. I would walk around the old parks I used to play in. All I saw were baseheads and bums smoking up. Dopeman got rich off these fool's backs, simple as that. That sent me into a deep depression. I was smoking a cigarette one night, leaning against the rails on the Golden Gate Bridge. I was thinking about jumping, actually. There was gonna be another Dopeman.

"Hey." I hear a woman say behind me.

"What's your name?" She asked me. She had white hair. "I'm Dani Hikari."

I was slightly surprised at the question."D-Dopeman. The streets call me the Dopeman."

"I'm not asking what the streets call you. What's your actual name?"

I told her my name. I can't remember.

"Oh! I like that name. I'm calling you that from now on, ok?"

I nodded and started smiling. Why was my heart beating so fast?

Oh yeah.

The girl with the white hair had stolen my heart.