Discovering Wes Moore

We were all enclosed by the same fence, bumping into one another, fighting, celebrating. Showing one another our best and worst, revealing ourselves—even our cruelty and crimes—as if that fence had created a circle of trust. A brotherhood.

I did learn, though, the chilling truth that Wes’s story could have been mine; the tragedy is that my story could have been his.

She thought of me as the bad apple in the class. One day, she flatly told me that it didn’t matter to her if I showed up because the class ran more smoothly when I wasn’t there. From that moment, I understood that [my teacher] and I had an unspoken agreement, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” pact that worked for both of us. She didn’t want me there disrupting, and I didn’t want to be there.

The kids in my crew loved one another, but how long would we mourn if any one of us disappeared? I’d seen it happen already, kids leaving the hood in one way or another—killed, imprisoned, shipped off to distant relatives down south. The older kids would pour out a little liquor or leave a shrine on a corner under a graffiti mural, or they’d reminisce about the ones who were locked up. But then life went on. The struggle went on. Who really cared? Besides my mother, who would truly miss me if I went to jail?

Our birth names were irrelevant. Our past lives and our past accomplishments and failures didn’t matter. We were the same now. We were nothing. In fact, we were less than nothing. We were plebes.

I had never seen a young man demand that much respect from his peers. I had seen Shea get respect in the neighborhood, but this was different. This was the kind of respect you can’t beat or scare out of people. In spite of myself, I was impressed.

These people made it clear that they cared about whether I succeeded. Eventually, their caring made me care, too. Having people around me who believed that I could succeed made me want to succeed.

I had spent so much of my childhood feeling out of place. I’d allowed other people to dictate my expectations of myself. I was finally realizing that I could do better than that. I didn’t need to have different versions of myself for different people.

Then he said something I will never forget: “When it is time for you to leave this school, leave your job, or even leave this earth, you make sure you have worked hard to make it matter that you were ever here.”

It made sense that Mayor Schmoke wanted me to learn the history of the scholarship: he wanted me to know that we can change the world that Rhodes and people like him had left for us.

Hard work is essential, but you also need people around you who believe you can make it. Otherwise, if you don’t think you can succeed, what would you bother working for?

Wes had his operation organized with the precision of a military unit or a division of a Fortune 500 company. He liked the feeling of holding down a corner with his boys. It was the place he felt the most in his element. An unbreakable bond united the crew—for many members, it was the only support system they had. It was family.

But he’d never seen this coming. Maybe because it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between second chances and last chances. Or maybe because he’d never thought ahead about his life at all. He’d always figured that to get by in the hood, short-term plans were enough. Now, all of a sudden, Wes’s future was sealed.

“If they expect us to graduate,” he went on, “we will graduate. If they expect us to get a job, we will get a job. If they expect us to go to jail, then that’s where we will end up.” He gestured around himself with an ironic smile. “At some point you lose control, no matter how much you learn.”