Light It Up

by Kekla Magoon

  “Tell me you heard me,” the lawyer says.

  You stare at her blankly.

  “Don’t talk to anyone. No reporters. No one. No matter what.”

  “They wanna silence me?”

  She sighs. “It’s for your own good. You didn’t actually witness the shooting. There’s nothing good that can come from speaking out.”

  You do the sensible thing, nod.

  She hands you a card. “I’m dead serious. Not a word.”

  Dead. The image has been floating there all along, but the word brings it into full focus. Smooth young cheeks, gone slack. Eyes unfluttering. Sleeping but not sleeping.

  “Need a lift?” she offers.

  “I’ll walk.”

  You need time, and space. To clear your head. You have a daughter, almost thirteen.

  TINA

  I am the last to know

  most things.

  Mom crying means there has been

  an occurrence

  or maybe it is just one of those days.

  I don’t ask questions

  put on my headphones

  and wait.

  DEVANTE

  “My roommate is driving me nuts!” Robb storms into my dorm room. I turn down the music.

  “Still?” It’s the third week of January. Freshman year, second semester. You’d think they’d have pulled it together by now.

  Robb throws himself down across my bed and starts fiddling with the throw pillow fringe. All the guys make fun of me for that damn fringe, but Ma said we needed to dress up the place a little. Whatever. Between the throw pillows and the homemade quilts and the cookies she sends, my half of the room is cozy as hell and everyone knows it. Where do they all come sit when they’re feeling out of sorts? That’s right.

  So, I’m making friends left and right around here. Ma knows what she’s doing. Can’t deny her. Not that she’d let me.

  “He never wants to do anything interesting,” Robb gripes. “Studies around the clock.”

  “It’s almost like he’s in college or something.”

  “I know, right?” Robb sighs.

  I half laugh. “You know you’re gonna have to make your peace with it eventually. Half a year to go.”

  I don’t want to hear about this from him. His roommate is black and the way Robb complains about him … I don’t know, it’s not racial in a serious way, but it feels like it might be underneath. Robb doesn’t quite get that some of his aversions are coded.

  “It’s madness,” Robb says. “We have scheduled music hours and quiet hours.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  It’s hard being the one everyone comes to gripe to. I’ve already decided that I’m applying for RA as soon as possible. Might as well get paid if I’m doing the work, right? And it does feel like work. It doesn’t really seem like my suitemates or any of the guys on the floor really like me that much.

  Robb’s my one good friend on campus so far. All semester he’s been cool to me, when some of the other guys around here come across pretty standoffish. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought there’d be more of a community feel, but for some reason that doesn’t work when you’re one of only two black guys on the whole floor.

  It’s weird. All my friends from high school were white. I feel perfectly comfortable here. But I also feel like I’m coming from some other place, or they think I am, and there’s a distance there. If it wasn’t for the damn throw pillow situation, I’d probably have no friends at all, and be stuck in my room all the time, like Robb’s roommate.

  Sometimes I feel guilty for not making more of an effort with him myself. Black guy to black guy, or something. But I also don’t want that kind of obligation.

  “Dude,” Robb says. “Twitter’s blowing up.”

  “Yeah?”

  Robb’s thumb flicks over the screen. “Another shooting. Cop versus kid. In the hood.”

  It’s when phrases like “in the hood” slip out of his lily-white ass that I have to give him the side-eye. He doesn’t notice. He’s too into his phone.

  “That sucks,” I say.

  “They gotta stop this crazy shit, man, seriously.”

  “Tell it to the history books,” I say.

  “It’s the twenty-first century,” Robb answers. “For crying out loud.”

  I bite my tongue. We’ve been crying out loud for quite some time now, haven’t we?

  “Whoa. Check it.”

  “What?”

  “This is the same neighborhood as that other famous one, Tariq Johnson.”

  That other famous one? Come the fuck on. “Oh yeah?”

  Robb scrolls. “Yeah, they’re saying it’s the same exact street.” He doesn’t even look up. “How messed up is that?”

  “Pretty messed up.” It’s easier to agree with Robb than try to get into a conversation.

  Robb rolls up off the bed. “I’ll be back,” he says.

  No doubt, no doubt.

  When he’s gone, I pull up the news on my laptop. It’s good to stay current. And it’s happening not that far from here, really. Less than six hours away.

  News of the shooting is popping up all over everything. It stabs me all the way through. My eyes get thick. I pull on a sweater and tuck myself among the cozy pillows.

  My mind replays the scene with Robb from moments ago. How … excited he sounded. To him, it’s all a story, all a theory. It’s not everything he sees when he looks in the mirror.

  I close my eyes. Things had been feeling okay with Robb, finally feeling okay with some of the other guys, too. My gut says this is going to shake us up.

  TYRELL

  Differential equations are a slice of heaven as far as I’m concerned. My pencil slides across the page, and I lose myself in the math. Solve for x. Solve for y. The more complicated the better. Mental gymnastics is better than meditation for making the whole world disappear around me.

  “Yo, T,” Robb says, bursting into our room. All semblance of calm slips away.

  “Tyrell,” I correct him for the thousandth time.

  He barrels in like he didn’t even hear me. “Yo, you hear the latest?”

  “I’ve been studying.”

  “You gotta check your Twitter at least sometimes, dog.”

  “I do.” I’m just not on it 24/7, brah.

  “Check this. Some kind of shooting happened.” Robb flips his phone toward me so fast that only the key words jump out at me: Police shooting. Child. Underhill.

  “That’s tragic,” I mumble. My skin tingles in little ripples, like goose bumps.

  “Cops shot a girl. Only thirteen, and retarded or something.”

  “Don’t say ‘retarded,’” I correct him automatically.

  “Yeah, whatever you call it.” He waves his hand.

  Breathe. Robb gets under my skin without even trying, and at the moment, it seems like he’s trying. Ignore him. Focus on the next problem set in the textbook in front of me.

  “That’s all you got to say?” Robb looks annoyed. “That’s your hometown, dog.”

  I’m well aware of where I come from, thanks.

  He pushes the phone closer, like it’s going to make me see something I didn’t already.

  I turn away. “So?” The cold feeling starts to rush in.

  I don’t want to think about home. Definitely don’t want to think about people dying there.

  My head is full and pounding, out of nowhere. My fingers curl around the lip of the desk.

  Shootings are way too common. Anytime one happens anywhere, it reminds me of Tariq. Not that I forget about him the rest of the time. T’s always with me. I carry him, like a satchel, everywhere I go. I don’t mind. He’s still my best friend. I carry him, and he helps me carry everything else. Sometimes it’s like I can even hear his voice.

  This is different. It’s not in my mind—it’s physical. A head-throbbing, throat-clogging, stomach-aching feeling sets in when the news hits too close to home.

  Breathe in and out. Hold th
e edge of the desk. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.

  “So, did you know her?” Robb says.

  It’ll pass. “You think I know every black person in Underhill?”

  Robb rolls his eyes. “I’m not racist like that, yo. It’s just, if there were riots where I come from, I’d be all over it.”

  “Lots of dissatisfaction down there at the country club?”

  Robb laughs. “I know, right?” He doesn’t even feel the dig.

  “News at eleven,” I say. He thinks we’re buddy-buddy. A couple of guys, just joking around. It will never make sense to me. I’ve stopped trying to understand.

  Robb scrolls through his phone. “Peach Street,” he says.

  A shiver goes through me. “What?”

  “Dunno. They’re making a big deal about where it happened.”

  The story writes itself in my head. I can see the street, the convenience store. The block I’d avoid like the plague, except I can’t because I have to walk down it to get just about everywhere.

  “Dunno,” Robb says again. Scrolling. “Oh, wait, it’s the same block where—”

  He’s going to say it, and I don’t want him to. He doesn’t know.

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” I push the words at him. I’m rarely this direct with Robb, but he can’t take a hint. I need to sit with it all in my own mind. Calculate the odds of a second shooting happening in the same exact place. Like a vortex. A Bermuda Triangle, right down the street from my so-called home.

  He smirks at me. “I don’t get you.”

  That’s right. You don’t. You don’t get me. And you don’t get to get me just because you want to. You can’t have me.

  “Leave me alone.” I reach for my headphones. I need better ones, the kind that really block out all the noise.

  Robb huffs over to his bunk. I breathe in and out slowly until I can see straight again. Until my fingers uncurl from the edge of the desk and it becomes bearable again. The truth, that my best friend was shot for no reason, by a man who will never be prosecuted.

  “This is wack,” Robb mutters, still fixated on his phone.

  When you’ve lost someone, the way I lost Tariq, nothing makes sense anymore. “Mmmhmm,” I mumble. Robb doesn’t know from wack.

  BRICK

  Noodle was right. The block is lit. Quite literally. Floodlights and flashing lights, and Noodle in the middle of it talking about trying to move some product.

  “Unwise,” I tell him. “Just let it shake out. Come on.”

  I don’t like the look of things here. The crowd is on edge and it feels like things could all boil over. We gotta bounce. ’Fore it’s our faces on the news.

  “Come on.” I grab his arm. Nothing’s moving tonight. And even if it was, Noodle’s not going to be the one to do it. We got kids for the nickel-and-dime shit.

  We start pushing back, back, away from the center of this mess. We’re almost out when the scream comes.

  “Shae!”

  The deep cry pierces, like something being torn to shreds. A sound both full and empty at the same time. And close. “Shae?” Bill Tatum tears through the crowd, a wild man. “Shae! Shae!”

  The murmurs begin. Oh, God. That’s the father. Her father.

  Cops move toward the place where he will emerge.

  The next five minutes play out in my mind in sped-up slo-mo fashion: He’ll run at them. Try to bring them down with his own hands. Then he’ll be laid out beside her and they will feel justified.

  No time to think. I’m moving.

  I use my size, my power to part the crowd. People jostle around me. No complaints. The urgency wins.

  We meet at the edge of the caution tape barricade. My hands go up, blocking his path. “Tatum.”

  He bursts forth into my arms. He’s tall and wiry, but I am a wall.

  “Let me through! Shae!”

  I am a wall. A shield. A punching bag.

  “Shae!” he screams. “Answer me, baby!”

  He pummels me. I’ve taken worse, but just barely.

  “Back it down, bro,” Noodle shouts. He’s trying to get an arm in.

  Tatum pushes hard, slips past me. A man possessed.

  I catch him again, this time from behind. My arms X across his narrow chest, locking him to me.

  Holy fuck.

  We’re facing a crescent of cops, guns drawn. “Hands in the air! Freeze!”

  Tatum strains against my grip. “That’s my baby. Let me go! That’s my baby!”

  “Back it down,” Noodle shouts, as if reasoning with a madman is possible.

  Keeping hold takes all my willpower. “I got this,” I tell Noodle. “Get us a doctor.”

  “Doctor?” Noodle echoes.

  “You killed my Shae! Get up baby, Daddy’s here.”

  “One of them ambulance guys.” I can hold Tatum for now but he ain’t gonna stop. We are two big black men under the gun, and still, I can feel it. He ain’t gonna stop.

  The cops call out in a cacophony.

  “Hands in the air!”

  “Stop right there!”

  “Freeze, asshole!”

  “Put your hands up!”

  “Show your hands!”

  “You can fucking well see our hands!” I answer. “It’s her father. You get that?”

  Noodle edges away, one step. But he can’t, really. He’s in the crescent with us. We are three big black men under the gun.

  Noodle looks to me, uncertain. If I order him to go anyway, he will go. My bones hum with the power of it. Even as my muscles ache with powerlessness. Under the gun.

  “Stay cool,” I order.

  “We need a doctor!” Noodle shouts.

  A Mexican-looking dude in an ambulance suit runs toward us. He pauses, becomes a part of the crescent.

  “It’s her father,” I tell him. “You got something to knock him out?”

  He glances sideways at the cops, takes one step forward. Pauses.

  Tatum bucks and screams. We’d be on the ground already but for the crowd behind us, and the television cameras.

  “He ain’t deserve to get shot,” I scream. “Fucking sedate him!”

  The paramedic takes another step. “You got him?”

  “I got him.”

  “Going in,” he announces to the police. They shout at him, but he comes toward us with a syringe. He has a ring on his finger. Probably some little rug rats at home. He meets my eye, brown man to black man. All I gotta do is hold on.

  “Give him more,” I tell him. “It wasn’t enough.”

  “That’s the standard dose,” the paramedic answers. “It’ll just take a moment to kick in all the way.”

  “You sure?” Even as I’m asking, Tatum begins to slacken in my arms.

  The paramedic’s dark eyes are clouded with worry. “You good to get him home?”

  “I got this.” But over his shoulder, the crescent is firm. “They gonna let us walk away?”

  He looks at me, looks at Noodle, looks at the crowd. “Walk him straight backward. Right now. No hesitation.”

  Our eyes are locked. Brown man to black man. He pulls in all his breath filling his chest and broadening his shoulders. He takes one step back, takes my place as the wall.

  I move, on faith. Straight back into the crowd, dragging Tatum with me. The cops are shouting, but the crowd enfolds us.

  The stone-cold ache of the crescent is with us, all the way to my car. Out of sight, out of mind, my ass. We shuffle Tatum into the backseat. His listlessness is no comfort. “Shae, baby. Daddy’s here. You’re okay, baby.”

  Noodle starts to hop in the front seat.

  “No, sit with him.”

  “Man,” he complains. “He’s all spread out. What you want me to do back there?”

  “Fuckin’ Christ,” I shout. “Just sit with him.”

  “Shae, baby,” Tatum moans.

  The paramedic didn’t give him enough. Black pain is deeper than Western medicine.

  In the car on the way hom
e, even through the sedative, he keeps repeating, “My baby. My baby.”

  EVA

  Daddy comes home late, and he’s not alone. When the garage door starts creaking, I run to hug him like usual. Our routine is for me to hang up his coat while he takes off his uniform shoes.

  I wait by the door. Mommy said Daddy had a problem at work today, and I am to be well behaved and not cause any trouble.

  “We’ve already had dinner,” I tell him. “We covered your plate.”

  The other men with Daddy are also in uniform, and looking Very Serious. The cold air comes in on their clothes.

  “Come in,” Mommy says. “I’ll take your coats.”

  I get a bad feeling in my tummy. Everything is wrong.

  Daddy kneels in front of me, which is not from our routine. His cheeks are bright red with cold. I lay my hands on his stubble. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

  His whole face folds up. “Eva, baby.”

  Daddy never cries.

  OFFICER YOUNG

  We holster our weapons. Crisis averted. Still, nothing is calm. The dark sea of worried, angry faces still looms behind the barricade. They shout. They hiss. They hold up their phones, filming us.

  “You blocked our shot, idiot,” snaps the officer to my left. O’Donnell.

  Chip Mendez caps his syringe. “Gonna shoot a grieving father on national TV? Really?”

  O’Donnell sniffs.

  “If that was the plan, then I saved your ass, O’Donnell.”

  “Shut up, Mendez.” O’Donnell sneers. “Get back in your rig.”

  My eyes comb the crowd. That’s the job, after all. The father is gone. We’ve just come face-to-face with the leader of the 8-5 Kings. And his lieutenant. They’re easy to recognize. We got their faces up on a wall in our precinct.

  O’Donnell might’ve been set to shoot, but I doubt it was at the father.

  Every glint of silver is a double take. Weapon? Phone. Weapon? Phone. No one wants to screw up tonight. But here we stand, in the open. A thousand eyes on us. A thousand unseen hands out there. All angry.

  “No respect for authority.” O’Donnell curses. “We need to shut this down.”