by Lamar Giles
I said, “The police wanted to ask me more questions?”
“I know. It’s ridiculous.” He spun his chair toward his workstation and scrolled through the various Better Businessman–type podcasts he’d become obsessed with in recent years. “They’re trying to get children to do their jobs for them. Or find scapegoats. If their seemingly nonexistent evidence compelled them to consider you a person of interest, we’d take a different course. As it stands, you were a good citizen who notified them of a crime and shouldn’t have your time wasted for such community service.”
The police were preferable to the Dark Nation. Maybe if I’d been cooperating with them—I mean, I got nothing to hide, so why not?—I would’ve seemed like a less viable target for the Masked Maniacs. Maybe the cops could’ve found some actual clues and found the killer and I wouldn’t be pushing down terror that somebody else was going to throw me in a van and never bring me back.
“Fatima, I expected a more enthusiastic response here.”
“Our expectations often differ, Dad.”
He craned his neck, flashed his patented Dad-eye, similar to side-eye, but much more annoying. “You know what would’ve happened if I spoke to my father in that tone you love to use with me?”
“You would’ve left home and gotten rich and been totally fine?”
He faced me full on, heated. I was skating a line; just couldn’t help it sometimes. I’d expected an argument to keep all of my driving and phone privileges even though I’d come home late, and my impulsiveness might have me handing them over for unnecessary sass. Guess I was heated too.
He said, “We didn’t raise you to mouth off. I’m cutting you some slack because I don’t know what it’s like to have gone through what you did. But, understand this, as sorry as I am about that girl’s passing, my concern—my duty—is to protect you. I won’t apologize to anyone for that, especially a child.”
Thing was, he didn’t sound sorry about anything. I don’t know, I didn’t like how he’d used his lawyer and his money to dismiss the police. And ParSec.
Then he dismissed me too. “I’ve got work to do, Fatima. Don’t you?”
“Yes, the child does,” I grumbled.
My room felt too cold, and I swapped the day’s clothes for baggy sweats and a hoodie. Checked my phone. Several missed—no, ignored—texts from Shameik.
SHAMEIK
Kya Caine rolled through SP today. Crazy, right?
SHAMEIK
IDK if you heard but we helping plan a concert for ParSec.
SHAMEIK
You could help too if you wanted.
SHAMEIK
You ain’t got to ghost me like this, Fuse. I know I messed up.
SHAMEIK
She can’t forgive me, but I wish you would.
Sadness and fury and fear rolled up inside me, a big ol’ booger ball of ARGGHHH!
Don’t do this, a reasonable voice in my back-brain warned.
But I was still my daddy’s Little Short Fuse. Wasn’t so much with the tantrums these days, but a spark could set me off in other ways. That was the truth, right? Since I wasn’t going to be talking to the police, and I didn’t want Kya knowing all my business, I could admit it to myself … there was a spark between Shameik and me. That was the problem.
Screw the plan.
ME
What were you doing that night?
SHAMEIK
I told you, my head was in a bad place. I shot my shot, and you shot back, right? That kiss was both of us.
ME
Not THAT night. The night Kya and I found her. Where were YOU?
The dancing dots did their thing, kept doing their thing for a solid two minutes. How long was his answer to my should-be-simple question?
Dot-dot-dot
dot-DOT-dot
dot-dot-DOT
The text bubble vanished.
I sat up on my bed, clutched my pillow in my lap. What?
I started tapping out a new message. A demand. Answer my questions, or … OR—
SHAMEIK
You’re unbelievable. I mean, you trying to ask if I had something to do with what happened to Paris?
SHAMEIK
I can’t with you right now.
ME
You still haven’t answered my question.
SHAMEIK
Here!
The next thing through was a photo. Shameik was in it with what had to be his family—mother, father, younger brother—given the strong resemblances. They posed before a river, at night, with city lights reflecting off the wavering surface. Joyous and a bit goofy. What was I supposed to get from this?
SHAMEIK
My mom and pops been married 22 years. Their anniversary was that Saturday. We went to Richmond to eat at the spot where they had their first date.
SHAMEIK
Pops said he wanted my brother and me to see how real love can start so we recognize it when it’s our turn.
Oh.
I mean, sure, that’s what he said, but how did I know the picture was taken on that night?
That reasonable voice again, Because you do.
Winston told us the police talked to Shameik. Given that he was still among the civilized populace of the city, it stood to reason he provided an alibi they found agreeable. Like an anniversary dinner with his picture-perfect family two hours away from the crime scene.
I started a response, then deleted it. Same with the next, and the one after that. With each failed attempt, I imagined him watching those dots dance on his screen, knowing I was inadequate in every way this time. So I stopped. A few minutes passed, before one last message.
SHAMEIK
You know what, I get it. You don’t want nothing to do with me. That’s mostly my fault. Mostly. Whatever you’re feeling about all this, I hope you’re able to get right. I’m not gonna bother you again. Peace, yo.
Nothing peaceful about it. I felt at war on the inside, no victory in sight.
My hands shook. I separated my house key from the rest on my keychain. Detective Barker kept his distance while I fumbled with the lock.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Without looking back, steadily scraping the copper plating around the keyhole with a key I couldn’t quite control, I said, “Fine.”
“Kya. I want to be extra clear here. You don’t have to talk to me, and you’re under no obligation to let me in. I will not cause you any trouble if you send me away right now.”
Finally got the door unlocked, imagined a platoon of white masks hovering in the dark on the other side. “I’d—I’d like for you to come inside. For a little while anyway.”
I flipped the switch by the door, aware of how tiny our downstairs space was in a way that only hit when outsiders came here. That wasn’t a frequent thing.
I always wondered how it looked to them. The thin carpet with tracks worn in it from years of footfalls. The ancient tile in the kitchen that looked dingy despite me mopping it three times a week. What did the detective smell? Mama’s lingering body spray? The fried onions from last night’s dinner?
“Um, can I get you some water?”
“That would be great. Thank you.” He sat on our couch and was semi-swallowed by the distressed cushions. Mama called where he sat the Sunken Place.
I grabbed a glass, poured from a pitcher in the fridge, handed the glass over, then sat in the recliner Mama sometimes flopped on after a late night.
Barker said, “I don’t know if you’re aware that I’ve been trying to reach you.”
I shook my head.
“I called your mother. She referred me to an attorney like she said she would.”
My eyebrows pinched together. “Mama got a lawyer?”
“Not exactly. It was that Vito ‘the Sledgehammer’ guy on TV. The one always yelling about getting you the most from your insurance company after an accident. I think she was just being mean.”
Possible. “What do you want to ask me?”
“It’s
more what I want to tell you. I’m not supposed to be here, this is actually my dinner break.”
“I can make you a sandwich.”
He stopped me halfway out of my seat. “No, that’s not what I meant. There are several cases backlogged with better leads than what we have on your friend. There were two shootings last night that we have a greater chance of clearing than the DJ case. If someone doesn’t help us with some real information …” He shrugged, sipped from his glass.
“I don’t know anything else.” Lie. I knew about the music vigilantes extorting Fuse and me. Knew better than to let that slip.
“Are you scared?”
The tremor ran through my hands, hands he watched.
“That’s what I thought. Who are you scared of, Kya? I can’t help if you don’t tell me.”
He initiated a staring contest, sincerity in that gaze. A silent promise that he did mean to do right. So I considered telling everything—about the masks, us looking at Shameik, Winston Bell’s article—while my phone shimmied in my pocket. Habit had me grab it and glance at the message.
UNKNOWN
Kya, you’re going to want to stay quiet here. I hope you know that.
UNKNOWN
We already told you the cops don’t care.
UNKNOWN
It would be very bad for you if you involved him in our arrangement.
UNKNOWN
Cough if you understand.
“Kya?”
Terror hit like a thousand invisible spiders skittering along my arms, and back, and legs. Spiders in white masks. I coughed loud enough for the Dark Nation to hear. Then, “Detective, you should probably leave before Mama gets here.”
Detective Barker drove away. My pulse was a bass drum in my ears, allowing nearly no sound through. The Dark Nation owned my phone. I’d been tempted to hurl it on the asphalt, stomp it with both feet, but they’d warned me about that moments before, while the disappointed detective walked to his car, shaking his head.
UNKNOWN
Don’t think of destroying this phone, taking out the battery, or anything else you’ve seen in the movies.
UNKNOWN
We’ll just bring you a new one.
Who did these psychos think they were? Did they treat Paris like this? Was this what came with being a star?
Stomping into my home, I slammed the door behind me. Almost wishing one of them was here.
Rage felt way better than fear.
The house was empty, truly, I felt it. Didn’t mean I was alone. I held the phone like I’d taken a call on speaker, the mic angled toward my mouth. “Hey, creeps? Have you been listening twenty-four hours a day? You got someone monitoring my snores?”
UNKNOWN
You should calm down. You’ll bust a blood vessel.
“I’ll bust your blood vessels! Hello?”
The clapback didn’t come. I waited. Thirty minutes passed. Nothing. I paced around the house, phone in hand, not talking and still watching for a return message.
Early evening became late night. Mama arrived home around eleven, smelling of grilled meats. She barely mumbled hello before trudging upstairs. Fatigue hit me by then too. Though my skin crawled thinking the Dark Nation could listen in on me anytime, I mustered a minor rebellion. I left my phone downstairs. In the couch cushions. With a pile of clean towels from the dryer piled on top. All that to manage restless sleep, because there was still the matter of Paris’s apartment key, and the mild relief I felt from the Dark Nation exposing themselves when they did. If they hadn’t, I would’ve told Fuse via my phone, meaning I would’ve told them too. Now that I knew they were up on my devices, I knew how to keep our secrets.
Tomorrow, then.
Shameik wouldn’t even look at me when we were in class. Which, I guess, I expected. What I didn’t expect was it bothering me so much.
We were a complicated mess when ParSec was alive. How’s it messier now?
At class change, I played his game, strolled right past the newly invisible man. Made a show of not caring.
Instead, I texted Kya. Again.
ME
Where are you?
ME
Why aren’t you hitting me back?
ME
You’re scaring me, K.
I’d heard nothing, not a word, since I dropped her off. All fifteen messages had the “delivered” confirmation beneath them. All were unanswered. I even tried actually calling her. With my vocal cords. Nothing. We didn’t have the same class schedule, so I couldn’t catch her in the halls. Didn’t know where her locker was, or I would’ve staked out there. I seriously considered going to the office and asking Principal Corgis to page her over the PA system.
Radio-silent Kya bothered me way more than Shameik.
Did they get her?
Between classes, I checked #ParSecNation mentions for any word on the #MadScientist, but chatter about us had died down in the public channels. Who knew what was happening on that dark website they maintained?
Terrifying visions of Kya tied to a chair flitted through my head, but I pushed those away. If I didn’t hear from her by end of day, I’d try Winston. He had a line on the Dark Nation creepy website. Maybe he’d know something. That was third period.
By lunch, I was freaking.
In the ISS room, my tray on my solitary corner desk, I rearranged the fries and made unintentional art in the ketchup while convincing myself that Kya hadn’t disappeared because of a group I’d helped form.
“Ms. Fallon,” Mr. Deaver, the room monitor said, “you’re being summoned.”
A twitchy Kya was in the doorway. A familiar pink carbon copy of a Cooke High hall pass fluttered in her fingers.
Mr. Deaver dismissed me with a wave. I fast-stepped to her, thinking, Prison break!
Kya didn’t wait, moving down the hall like a ghost leading me somewhere I wouldn’t like. We turned a corner, and I jogged to catch her. Grabbed her by the elbow. “Kya.”
Mute Kya shoved me into the boys’ room and plucked my phone from my back pocket.
Facing her, I said, “Hey!”
She shushed me. Dropped our phones into an insulated lunch bag, then dragged me along. We left the boys’ room, rounded a narrow cinder-block divider, and entered the girls’ room, our phones left behind. I said, “Am I un-shushed now?”
She nodded.
“Where’d you get a hall pass?”
Finally she spoke. “I work in the guidance office during my free period. There are privileges. Let’s not waste time on that right now. We gotta be careful talking around the phones. The Dark Nation hacked them.”
“What you mean ‘hacked them’?” I pointed in the direction from which we’d come.
“The microphones. Maybe the cameras too. I don’t think they have our texts, otherwise …” She shivered.
“They’re … what?” Shameik’s messages came to mind. “How do you know that?”
She told me about Detective Barker’s visit. How the Dark Nation listened and interrupted. The way they threatened her. Me. Us.
My knees felt watery from the revelation of walking around tagged and monitored like a Nature Channel wolverine. A heart-freezing notion occurred to me. “What about our meeting with Winston? Why haven’t they come down on us for that?”
“I thought about it too. Best I can figure, it was loud in the café and neither of us took a phone out until the end. Ambient noise plus being sealed in our bags probably masked anything notable.”
“So, luck.”
“I’m not taking chances,” she said. “They want us near our phones at all times. Monitor our progress. Only, there’s some stuff we need to keep close to our chest. Look what I found.”
She produced some kind of swipe card and a thick key.
“What are those?”
“Not sure about the card, but the key is for Paris’s place.” Kya unfolded a squared piece of paper and passed that to me. “I knew she moved a while ago but never thought much about the address.
I got this from Miss Elsie’s.”
“I don’t want to know how you got this from her grandmother, do I?”
Her lips pressed into a line. Okay, then.
Kya said, “I checked the case file the Dark Nation gave us. The police have already been there. Maybe there’s nothing left to see, but I’m thinking we should look there anyway.”
I tilted my head, rereading the paper she gave me. Not the handwritten note to Paris’s grandma. The stationery it was written on. “The file said they’d been to this address?”
“It said—” She looked again. “No, the address was different. It said they’d searched her home.”
“Except her home, the one I knew about anyway, wasn’t this apartment.” I pointed to the “14-D” mentioned in the note. “It was a shabby rental near where Paula Klein lives. She wanted ParSec close at all times, like a therapy animal. I don’t know what this is, Kya.”
“Shouldn’t we find out?”
Yes. Yes, we should.
To quote the GOAT, the Notorious B.I.G., “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.” Right?
The government’s been messing with my grandma. I don’t know what kind of Big Brother Is Watching stuff they got going, but somehow, someway, they got word that DJ ParSec was her granddaughter and making money, and there were questions for her, sent in certified letters. Like, Dear Miss Secord, is all that cheese being reported to the Internal Revenue Service and applicable state agencies? Or, Dear Miss Secord, why are you getting an assistance check from the state if DJ ParSec was a rich and famous producer?
Never mind that Grandma’s assistance check had more to do with all those years she spent putting together carburetors for a stupid car company that didn’t take time to invest in asbestos removal. Or that I’m not actually “rich”—I learned real quick that black-folks rich, and rich-rich aren’t the same thing. That’s where my new manager, Paula, came in. She’d taken on a lot of that stupid paperwork for me, so I could focus on the music.
Neither of us saw this thing with Grandma coming. Not the government messing with her, and not Grandma’s reaction to the solution I threw out there.