by Angie Thomas
“Oh.”
I cancel one of the milks and put the carton into a bag. Kenya’s probably cooking for herself and Lyric tonight. She does that sometimes. I ring up the rest of her stuff, take her money, and hand her the change.
She stares at me a second, then says, “Were you really the one with him?”
My throat is thick. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah, it matters. Why you keeping quiet ’bout it? Like you hiding or something.”
“Don’t say it that way.”
“But it is that way. Right?”
I sigh. “Kenya, stop. You don’t understand, all right?”
Kenya folds her arms. “What’s to understand?”
“A lot!” I don’t mean to yell, but damn. “I can’t go around telling people that shit.”
“Why not?”
“Because! You ain’t see what the cops just did to my dad ’cause they know I’m the witness.”
“So you gon’ let the police stop you from speaking out for Khalil? I thought you cared about him way more than that.”
“I do.” I care more than she may ever know. “I already talked to the cops, Kenya. Nothing happened. What else am I supposed to do?”
“Go on TV or something, I don’t know,” she says. “Tell everybody what really happened that night. They’re not even giving his side of the story. You’re letting them trash-talk him—”
“Excuse— How the hell am I letting them do anything?”
“You hear all the stuff they’re saying ’bout him on the news, calling him a thug and stuff, and you know that ain’t Khalil. I bet if he was one of your private school friends, you’d be all on TV, defending him and shit.”
“Are you for real?”
“Hell yeah,” she says. “You dropped him for them bougie-ass kids, and you know it. You probably would’ve dropped me if I didn’t come around ’cause of my brother.”
“That’s not true!”
“You sure?”
I’m not.
Kenya shakes her head. “Fucked-up part about this? The Khalil I know would’ve jumped on TV in a hot second and told everybody what happened that night if it meant defending you. And you can’t do the same for him.”
It’s a verbal slap. The worst kind too, because it’s the truth.
Kenya gets her bags. “I’m just saying, Starr. If I could change what happens at my house with my momma and daddy, I would. Here you are, with a chance to help change what happens in our whole neighborhood, and you staying quiet. Like a coward.”
Kenya leaves. Tim and Mr. Lewis aren’t far behind her. Tim gives me the black power fist on his way out. I don’t deserve it though.
I head to Daddy’s office. Seven’s standing in the doorway, and Daddy’s sitting on his desk. Sekani’s next to him, nodding along to whatever Daddy’s saying but looking sad. Reminds me of the time Daddy and Momma had the talk with me. Guess Daddy decided not to wait until Sekani’s twelve.
Daddy sees me. “Sev, go cover the cash register. Take Sekani with you. ’Bout time he learned.”
“Aww, man,” Sekani groans. Don’t blame him. The more you learn to do at the store, the more you’re expected to do at the store.
Daddy pats the now-empty spot beside him on the desk. I hop up on it. His office has just enough space for the desk and a file cabinet. Framed photographs crowd the walls, like the one of him and Momma at the courthouse the day they got married, her belly (a.k.a. me) big and round; pictures of me and my brothers as babies, and this one picture from about seven years ago when my parents took the three of us to the mall for one of those J. C. Penney family portraits. They dressed alike in baseball jerseys, baggy jeans, and Timberlands. Tacky.
“You a’ight?” Daddy asks.
“Are you?”
“I will be,” he says. “Just hate that you and your brothers had to see that shit.”
“They only did it ’cause of me.”
“Nah, baby. They started that before they knew ’bout you.”
“But that didn’t help.” I stare at my J’s as I kick my feet back and forth. “Kenya called me a coward for not speaking out.”
“She didn’t mean it. She going through a lot, that’s all. King throwing Iesha around like a rag doll every single night.”
“But she’s right.” My voice cracks. I’m this close to crying. “I am a coward. After seeing what they did to you, I don’t wanna say shit now.”
“Hey.” Daddy takes my chin so I have no choice but to look at him. “Don’t fall for that trap. That’s what they want. If you don’t wanna speak out, that’s up to you, but don’t let it be because you’re scared of them. Who do I tell you that you have to fear?”
“Nobody but God. And you and Momma. Especially Momma when she’s extremely pissed.”
He chuckles. “Yeah. The list ends there. You ain’t got nothing or nobody else to fear. You see this?” He rolls up his shirt sleeve, revealing the tattoo of my baby picture on his upper arm. “What it say at the bottom?”
“Something to live for, something to die for,” I say, without really looking. I’ve seen it my whole life.
“Exactly. You and your brothers are something to live for, and something to die for, and I’ll do whatever I gotta do to protect you.” He kisses my forehead. “If you’re ready to talk, baby, talk. I got your back.”
TWELVE
I’m luring Brickz inside when it passes out front.
I watch it crawl down the street for the longest time till I get the sense to alert somebody. “Daddy!”
He looks up from pulling weeds around his bell peppers. “Are they for real with that?”
The tank resembles the ones they show on the news when talking about war in the Middle East. It’s the size of two Hummers. The blue-and-white lights on the front make the street almost as bright as it is in daytime. An officer is positioned on top, wearing a vest and a helmet. He points his rifle ahead.
A voice booms from the armored vehicle, “All persons found violating the curfew will be subject to arrest.”
Daddy pulls more weeds. “Some bullshit.”
Brickz follows the piece of bologna I dangle in front of him all the way to his spot in the kitchen. He sits there all content, chomping on it and the rest of his food. Brickz won’t act crazy as long as Daddy’s home.
All of us are kinda like Brickz, really. Daddy being home means Momma won’t sit up all night, Sekani won’t flinch all the time, and Seven won’t have to be the man of the house. I’ll sleep better too.
Daddy comes in, dusting caked dirt off his hands. “Them roses dying. Brickz, you been pissing on my roses?”
Brickz’s head perks up. He locks his eyes with Daddy’s but eventually lowers his head.
“I bet’ not catch you doing it,” Daddy says. “Or we gon’ have a problem.”
Brickz lowers his eyes too.
I grab a paper towel and a slice of pizza from the box on the counter. This is like my fourth slice tonight. Momma bought two huge pies from Sal’s on the other side of the freeway. Italians own it, so the pizza is thin, herby (is that a word?), and good.
“You finished your homework?” Daddy asks.
“Yep.” A lie.
He washes his hands at the kitchen sink. “Got any tests this week?”
“Trig on Friday.”
“You studied for it?”
“Yep.” Another lie.
“Good.” He gets the grapes out the refrigerator. “You still got that old laptop? The one you had before we bought you that expensive-ass fruit one?”
I laugh. “It’s an Apple MacBook, Daddy.”
“It damn sure wasn’t the price of an apple. Anyway, you got the old one?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Give it to Seven. Tell him to look over it and make sure it’s a’ight. I want DeVante to have it.”
“Why?”
“You pay bills?”
“No.”
“Then I ain’t gotta answer that.”
&n
bsp; That’s how he gets out of almost every argument with me. I should buy one of those cheap magazine subscriptions and say, “Yeah, I pay a bill, and what?” It won’t matter though.
I head to my room after I finish my pizza. Daddy’s already gone to his and Momma’s room. Their TV’s on, and they’re both lying on their stomachs on the bed, one of her legs on his as she types on her laptop. It’s oddly adorable. Sometimes I watch them to get an idea of what I want one day.
“You still mad at me ’bout DeVante?” Daddy asks her. She doesn’t answer, keeping her eyes on her laptop. He scrunches up his nose and gets all in her face. “You still mad at me? Huh? You still mad at me?”
She laughs and playfully pushes at him. “Move, boy. No, I’m not mad at you. Now give me a grape.”
He grins and feeds her a grape, and I just can’t. The cuteness is too much. Yeah, they’re my parents, but they’re my OTP. Seriously.
Daddy watches whatever she’s doing on the computer, feeding her a grape every time he eats one. She’s probably uploading the latest family snapshots on Facebook for our out-of-town relatives. With everything that’s going on, what can she say? “Sekani saw cops harass his daddy, but he’s doing so well in school. #ProudMom.” Or, “Starr saw her best friend die, keep her in your prayers, but my baby made the honor roll again. #Blessed.” Or even, “Tanks are rolling by outside, but Seven’s been accepted into six colleges so far. #HeIsGoingPlaces.”
I go to my room. Both my old and new laptops are on my desk, which is a mess. There’s a huge pair of Daddy’s Jordans next to my old laptop. The yellowed bottoms of the sneakers face the lamp, and a layer of Saran Wrap protects my concoction of detergent and toothpaste that’ll eventually clean them. Watching yellowed soles turn icy again is as satisfying as squeezing a blackhead and getting all the gunk out. Ah-maz-ing.
According to the lie I told Daddy, my homework is supposed to be done, but I’ve been on a “Tumblr break,” a.k.a. I haven’t started my homework and have spent the last two hours on Tumblr. I started a new blog—The Khalil I Know. It doesn’t have my name on it, just pictures of Khalil. In the first one he’s thirteen with an Afro. Uncle Carlos took us to a ranch so we could “get a taste of country life,” and Khalil’s looking side-eyed at a horse that’s beside him. I remember him saying, “If this thing makes a wrong move, I’m running!”
On Tumblr, I captioned the picture: “The Khalil I know was afraid of animals.” I tagged it with his name. One person liked it and reblogged it. Then another and another.
That made me post more pictures, like one of us in a bathtub when we were four. You can’t see our private parts because of all the suds, and I’m looking away from the camera. Ms. Rosalie’s sitting on the side of the tub, beaming at us, and Khalil’s beaming right back at her. I wrote, “The Khalil I know loved bubble baths almost as much as he loved his grandma.”
In just two hours, hundreds of people have liked and reblogged the pictures. I know it’s not the same as getting on the news like Kenya said, but I hope it helps. It’s helping me at least.
Other people posted about Khalil, uploaded artwork of him, posted pictures of him that they show on the news. I think I’ve reblogged every single one.
Funny though: somebody posted a video clip of Tupac from back in the day. Okay, so every video clip of Tupac is from back in the day. He’s got a little kid on his lap and is wearing a backwards snapback that would be fly now. He explains Thug Life like Khalil said he did—The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody. ’Pac spells out “Fucks” because that kid is looking dead in his face. When Khalil told me what it meant I kinda understood it. I really understand it now.
I grab my old laptop when my phone buzzes on my desk. Momma returned it earlier—hallelujah, thank you, Black Jesus. She said it’s only in case there’s another situation at school. I got it back though, don’t really care why. I’m hoping it’s a text from Kenya. I sent her the link to my new Tumblr earlier. Thought she’d like to see it since she kinda pushed me to do it.
But it’s Chris. He took note from Seven with his all-caps texts:
OMG!
THIS FRESH PRINCE EPISODE
WILL’S DAD DIDN’T TAKE HIM WITH HIM
THE ASSHOLE CAME BACK AND LEFT HIM AGAIN
NOW HE’S HAVING A BREAKDOWN WITH UNCLE PHIL
MY EYES ARE SWEATING
Understandable. That’s seriously the saddest episode ever. I text Chris back:
Sorry :(. And your eyes aren’t sweating. You’re crying, babe.
He replies:
LIES!
I say:
You ain’t gotta lie, Craig. You ain’t gotta lie.
He responds:
DID YOU REALLY USE A LINE FROM FRIDAY ON ME???
So watching nineties movies is kinda our thing too. I text back:
Yep ;)
He replies:
BYE, FELICIA!
I take the laptop to Seven’s room, phone in hand in case Chris has another Fresh Prince breakdown. Some reggae chants meet me in the hall, followed by Kendrick Lamar rapping about being a hypocrite. Seven sits on the side of the lower bunk, an open computer tower at his feet. With his head down, his dreads hang loosely and make a curtain in front of his face. DeVante sits cross-legged on the floor. His Afro bobs to the song.
A zombie version of Steve Jobs watches them from a poster on the wall along with all these superheroes and Star Wars characters. There’s a Slytherin comforter on the bottom bunk that I swear I’ll steal one day. Seven and I are reverse HP fans—we liked the movies first, then the books. I got Khalil and Natasha hooked on them too. Momma found the first movie for a dollar at a thrift store back when we lived in the Cedar Grove projects. Seven and I said we were Slytherins since almost all Slytherins were rich. When you’re a kid in a one-bedroom in the projects, rich is the best thing anybody can be.
Seven removes a silver box from the computer and examines it. “It’s not even that old.”
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Big D asked me to fix his computer. It needs some new DVD drives. He burnt his out making all them bootlegs.”
My brother is the unofficial Garden Heights tech guy. Old ladies, hustlers, and everybody in between pay him to fix their computers and phones. He makes good money like that too.
A black garbage bag leans against the foot of the bunk bed with some clothes sticking out the top of it. Somebody put it over the fence and left it in our front yard. Seven, Sekani, and I found it when we came home from the store. We thought it may have been DeVante’s, but Seven looked inside and everything in it belonged to him. The stuff he had at his momma’s house.
He called Iesha. She said she was putting him out. King told her to.
“Seven, I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay, Starr.”
“But she shouldn’t have—”
“I said it’s okay.” He glances up at me. “All right? Don’t sweat it.”
“All right,” I say as my phone vibrates. I hand DeVante the laptop and look. Still no response from Kenya. Instead it’s a text from Maya.
Are u mad @ us?
“What’s this for?” DeVante asks, staring at the laptop.
“Daddy wants you to have it. But he said let Seven check it out first,” I tell him as I reply to Maya.
What do u think?
“What he want me to have it for?” DeVante asks.
“Maybe he wants to see if you actually know how to operate one,” I tell DeVante.
“I know how to use a computer,” DeVante says. He hits Seven, who’s snickering.
My phone buzzes three times. Maya has responded.
Definitely mad.
Can the 3 of us talk?
Things have been awkward lately.
Typical Maya. If Hailey and I have any kind of disagreement, she tries to fix it. She has to know this won’t be a “Kumbaya” moment. I reply:
Okay. Will let u know when I’m @ my uncle’s.
Gunshots
fire at rapid speed in the distance. I flinch.
“Goddamn machine guns,” Daddy says. “Folks acting like this Iran or some shit.”
“No cussing, Daddy!” Sekani says from the den.
“Sorry, man. I’ll add a dollar to the jar.”
“Two! You said the ‘g-d’ word.”
“A’ight, two. Starr, come to the kitchen for a second.”
In the kitchen, Momma speaks in her “other voice” on the phone. “Yes, ma’am. We want the same thing.” She sees me. “And here’s my lovely daughter now. Could you hold, please?” She covers the receiver. “It’s the DA. She would like to talk to you this week.”
Definitely not what I expected. “Oh . . .”
“Yeah,” Momma says. “Look, baby, if you’re not comfortable with it—”
“I am.” I glance at Daddy. He nods. “I can do it.”
“Oh,” she says, looking from me to Daddy and back. “Okay. As long as you’re sure. I think we should meet with Ms. Ofrah first though. Possibly take her up on her offer to represent you.”
“Definitely,” Daddy says. “I don’t trust them folks at the DA office.”
“So how about we see her tomorrow and meet with the DA later on this week?” Momma asks.
I grab another slice of pizza and take a bite. It’s cold now, but cold pizza is the best pizza. “So two days of no school?”
“Oh, you’re going to school,” she says. “And did you eat any salad while you’re eating all that pizza?”
“I’ve had veggies. These little bitty peppers.”
“They don’t count when they’re that little.”
“Yeah, they do. If babies can count as humans when they’re little, veggies can count as veggies when they’re little.”
“That logic ain’t working with me. So, we’ll meet with Ms. Ofrah tomorrow and the DA on Wednesday. Sound like a plan?”
“Yeah, except the school part.”
Momma uncovers the phone. “Sorry for the delay. We can come in on Wednesday morning.”
“In the meantime tell your boys the mayor and the police chief to get them fucking tanks out my neighborhood,” Daddy says loudly. Momma swats at him, but he’s going down the hall. “Claim folks need to act peaceful, but rolling through here like we in a goddamn war.”