by Barry Lyga
He hadn’t been speeding.
Without thinking, Elayah said, “I can get the registration,” and leaned forward toward the glove compartment.
“NO!” Dad shouted, turning to her. The deputy took a step back and put his hand on the butt of his gun.
“No one move!” he shouted. “No one move!”
Elayah froze in place, halfway to the dashboard. Dad had twisted in her direction, a veil of barely throttled fear and rage fallen over his face.
“Sir, I’m going to ask you to get out of the car.”
“She was just getting the registration.”
“Sir, this is now the second time I’m asking you to get out of the car.”
Her father’s fuming face was a wonder and a horror to behold. In that moment, she knew that if it were possible to kill someone with a thought, the cop would already be twitching his last moments of life on the road.
But Dad tamped it down. “Of course,” he said. “I’m turning and coming out.”
To Elayah, he whispered, “Don’t move a muscle. It’ll all be okay.”
Keeping his hands in view at all times, he turned, took a deep breath, and opened the door. “I’m coming out now.”
He stepped out of the car. She wanted to reach for her phone, to record what was happening. That was what you were supposed to do.
But her phone was in her back pocket. If she reached for it, would he shoot? Or would he see the phone and change his attitude, knowing he was being recorded?
Don’t move a muscle, Dad had told her.
Dad drove in a cold fury, his eyes laser-focused on the road ahead.
It had been about fifteen humiliating minutes before the deputy allowed her dad back into the car with a stern warning to check his brake light, which was busted.
“A taillight,” Dad mumbled. “All that over a goddamn taillight.”
She’d been too afraid to move. Too afraid to speak up. Too aware of the deputy’s gun at his hip, of the unwarranted but very manifest fear in his eyes, of the string of dead Black bodies punctured by police bullets that stretched so long and so wasted in her memory and beyond.
At the house, he immediately called the sheriff. A little while later, headlights sliced themselves into glowing ribbons through the slats in her blinds. Peering out, she saw a sheriff’s department cruiser pulling into her driveway. A bump of fear knocked her heart off-kilter for an instant, and then Liam’s dad heaved himself out of the driver’s side, stood for a moment. Arched his back with a grimace. When he thought no one was looking, he allowed himself frailty, weakness. Haggard and haunted, he mounted the steps to the house and rapped on the door.
She left her room and stood in the shadows of the hallway as her father harangued and hollered at Liam’s dad for a solid five minutes before even letting him speak.
“Marcus, I know you’re pissed and you’re not inclined to cut me any slack these days, but you know—you know—that this isn’t how I run my department. You know that.”
“I want his badge,” Dad demanded. “At the very least, he needs to be on suspension or something. Right now. Right the hell now, Dean.”
“I can’t do that. I need all hands on deck. It’s crazy right now. You know that better than anyone.”
“So he gets to treat me like that, he gets to scare the living hell out of my daughter, and you’re just going to let him get away with it?”
“Of course not. I’m going to talk to him—”
“Oh, you’ll talk to him! Well, that’s all right, then!”
The two men eventually not so much arrived at an armistice as wore each other out to the point of enervation, unwilling to surrender but unable to swing another punch.
She found Dad at the small dining room table, tapping away on her mom’s laptop. A glance at the screen told her he was writing to the governor.
She sat across from him. He kept pounding at the keyboard, then abruptly stopped, turning to her. His body vibrated. Anger and impotence rolled off him in thick waves.
“Dad,” she said, and the words began rolling out before she was entirely certain what she was doing.
But it was clear in an instant, in the space between her own heartbeats. He was angry. Outraged. Powerless. Full of self-loathing and no self-worth in this moment, berating himself for his failure to protect his daughter in so many recent circumstances.
And she knew that now was her chance, her chance to learn. His thoughts were brittle, his resistance weak. She hated herself for doing it, for exploiting his pain and frangibility.
But she had to do it.
To learn.
To know.
“Dad,” she said, “what really happened back then?”
His sigh deflated him, his shoulders slumping, his chest caving in. He looked so much like her grandfather in that moment. He’d died of “respiratory complications” a year ago, a lingering remnant of the coronavirus. The sudden resemblance poleaxed her and she almost excused herself.
“Nothing happened back then that would have explained any of this,” Dad told her. He closed the laptop and folded his hands over it as though praying to the gods of processors and RAM to bring him wisdom. “Everything was kids’ stuff. Nothing serious.”
“What did you guys really do in the school? When you broke in?”
He stuttered a laugh. “I told you, baby girl—it was nothing. Dumb stuff. We stole hall passes. We were gonna change our grades in the computer.…” He groaned. “That was… that was the really dumb thing. We all sort of slacked off because we knew we’d end up with the grades we needed. And then that all came crashing down around us.”
“Is that why you went to Howard instead of University of Houston? It was on your yearbook page. University of Houston–bound. But you went to Howard.”
Stroking his jawline, he nodded, staring absently into the air. Present with her no longer, he was elsewhere. Elsewhen.
“Dad?”
“We were supposed to go to Houston. Together. Our heroes were Kirk Baptiste and Carl Lewis.”
She knew that. The part about Baptiste and Lewis, at least. Her dad had told her tales of them when she was young, spinning them out as folk heroes. Other kids had princesses and knights and superheroes—she had Kirk and Carl, the runners.
“And then things changed,” he told her. “That’s what happens. In life. Things change and you change with them.”
He seemed to think he was finished, that she was satisfied.
Are you Marcus or are you Antoine? she yearned to ask. To demand. But that would put him on the defensive. He would clam up.
“Because…,” she prompted.
With a groan in the back of his throat, he went on, dragging the words out slowly at first. “Howard wasn’t even on my radar. Antoine brought it up, told me all about it. And when he left, I guess… We ran relay, sweetheart. We were a matched set. Houston was interested in the twins, you know? That ol’ Black Lightning bolt had two forks in it, and they weren’t as interested in just one. We were more valuable together.
“So I changed my mind. Long after the yearbook deadline. I went to Howard because ’Toine had… Anyway, he was in Mexico, so I decided to…”
He broke off. She licked her lips, ready to goad him on again, but he was in his own zone now, spooling out the past.
“No, that’s not true,” he admitted. “That makes it sound like I thought it out, like I had a good sit and went through all the pluses and minuses and decided. It wasn’t like that. It was from my gut, not my brain.
“I went there, and I learned more about what ’Toine had been telling me. I learned what it really meant to be Black in America.” Here he paused. “I guess that’s not true, either. I knew already. But growing up here, back then, I didn’t know that there was a community. I didn’t know about the great Black intellectuals, about the histories and traditions that came over on the slave ships. I just didn’t know, because no one here taught it and my parents were too busy surviving. But then I went t
o Howard and…” His eyes widened, seeing something long gone. His tone became almost awestruck. “There were words and phrases to describe it all, an entire science and history to it. And for the first time, I really understood—in my head and in my heart—that I wasn’t alone, that other people had had the same questions, the same rages, the same fears and wonderings. There was a way to put it all together, and I’d been trying to figure that out my whole life, but then I went to Howard and found out that other people had made a map for me. I just had to follow it.”
“Did you?” she asked.
He inclined his head a bit, pursing his lips, his eyes growing larger for a moment, then smaller. “Best I could, baby girl. But this place kept calling back to me. There was your mom. And there was Antoine.”
“But… he wasn’t here any longer.”
“No, but he had been. This was where I saw him last. And this was where I knew he’d come back. If he came back.”
“Are you still waiting?” she asked, her voice smaller than she’d ever heard it.
“I told myself to stop waiting a long time ago. But I don’t think I listened very well.”
Suddenly, he grinned. A big, broad, happy grin that flabbergasted her with its joy and its presence.
“Hot chocolate?” he asked. “There’s marshmallows, too.”
“Yeah,” she said, and then stopped because her phone was buzzing.
can we meet? asked Indira.
1986: DEAN
Jay’s obsession with the Steingard Trophy had only grown since he’d first mentioned it that day in Brian’s garage. He insisted on putting it in the time capsule. “We’ll be legends,” he promised. “We’ll go down in history. When we dig this thing up fifteen years from now, we’ll be in every newspaper and on every TV channel you can imagine.”
Brian snorted derisively. “No one will care about this thing except for us.”
“They’ll care if it contains the Cup, missing for fifteen years!” Jay pointed out.
And there was something seductively authentic in his claim, a certainty that convinced them.
They had agreed to bury the time capsule the week after homecoming. That was the absolute latest they figured they could do it before the ground got too hard for digging. And they had to steal the Cup on a weekend, otherwise someone would notice immediately that it was gone.
The problem, Dean pointed out, was that homecoming itself was coming up this very weekend. In three days.
At the lunch table on Wednesday, they huddled together—even Kim, who had become more invested in this than Dean would have imagined—and discussed.
“We need to do it during homecoming,” Jay said.
“Are you nuts?” Marcus asked. “The dance is here. The school will be full of people.”
“It won’t be that full,” Brian said with vexation. “Not everyone is going to homecoming.”
“Can’t get a date, huh?” Marcus cracked. “Pour a beer in your hand; get your girlfriend drunk.”
“Bite me.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A little nibble around the head?”
Brian cracked his knuckles and shot a fierce glare at Marcus, who pointedly ignored it.
“Knock it off,” Dean said. “Shouldn’t we wait until after the dance? Go in on Sunday?”
Jay shook his head fiercely. “They display the thing in the case during football season. And then it goes out to be polished and all that crap when the season’s over. Last year, they took it right after homecoming, when they were cleaning up the school. We have to go during the dance.”
“That’s too dangerous,” Kim protested.
Jay snorted. “Look, the dance is in the gym, right? So they close off the rest of the building, except for that little hallway from the gym to the bathrooms near shop. No one can get into the rest of the building.”
“But we can,” Marcus said, grinning.
“You guys are going to the dance.” Jay pointed to Marcus, Kim, and Dean. “So it’ll be me and Bri and ’Toine.”
Dean bit his bottom lip and risked a glance over at Antoine, who studiously did not return the look, instead focusing on Jay.
“Are you sure you need all three of you?” Dean asked. “The more of you there are, the better the chance of being caught.”
“I need lookouts.” Jay clearly could only barely be bothered to explain himself. “Sound good?”
Marcus and Brian agreed immediately and enthusiastically. Kim said, “Sure.” Because why not—she wouldn’t be at risk.
Antoine, silent as always, simply put his hands on the table and nodded.
Which left Dean. He nodded, too, but by then no one really cared.
That night, he and Antoine met at their hideaway. They’d stocked it as well as they could. As the autumn nights grew colder, Dean wondered if he could sneak a kerosene heater in here.
“You don’t have to go along with Jay’s crazy plan,” he told Antoine as they lay on their pile of sleeping bags, tangled together.
“It’s not like I have a date for homecoming.” Antoine’s voice was light. Almost too light. As though he was trying too hard.
“Come on.” Dean turned and leaned over to kiss his forehead. “It’s not like—”
“I’m not saying we should go together.” Antoine didn’t pull away, but he didn’t seem to acknowledge or even notice the kiss. “I’m just saying: I have nothing else to do.”
Dean sighed and rolled onto his back. “Don’t you think I’d rather be with you?”
“This isn’t an argument,” Antoine said mildly. “I’m just telling you how I feel and how it is.”
“I want to fix it.”
Antoine shrugged. “Remember the first time we broke into the school? You and I went off together, and we didn’t even look for that damn pool. We were making out in the hallway, and we heard someone coming.…”
Dean looked away. He remembered. He’d pulled away from Antoine so fast that, in disentangling himself, he’d knocked over Antoine, sending him sprawling to the floor.
His fear of discovery. He knew it lay between them sometimes. A third, unwelcome body. He understood.
Laying his head back, Dean stared up at the ceiling joists. This place would be knocked down, come the end of winter. Where would they meet then? Where would Daylight Dean have his moments of nighttime sunshine?
“Have you given it any more thought?” Antoine asked into the silence.
He knew what Antoine meant: running away together. San Francisco. New York. Mexico.
“I don’t get how you can be so blasé about it,” Dean said. “We wouldn’t just be… it wouldn’t just be putting distance between us and our families. We’d basically have to shut them out entirely. They would never accept this.” He traveled a finger back and forth between them.
“I know.” Antoine leaned up on one elbow and rested a hand on Dean’s chest. “If my family can’t tolerate who I am—who I really am—then I don’t need them. Or want them.”
Dean shivered.
“It’s getting cold here these days,” Antoine said.
“That one window is drafty.” Dean pointed. Where would he get a heater, anyway? And kerosene in an enclosed space was a bad idea. “I’ll fix it. But that’s not why… I can’t believe you could just turn your back on your family.”
“They’ve turned their back on me. Every Sunday in church. Every time Pops yells at a gay guy on TV. ‘Get that queer crap off my TV!’”
Maybe…
Maybe Antoine was right. Maybe running away…
Maybe it would make their families reassess.
Maybe.
“I love you,” Dean said.
“I love you, too.” Antoine kissed his cheek. “We’ll work it out. We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
THE PRESENT: ELAYAH
One thing Elayah knew for certain was this: They were at an impasse. She was up for whatever Indira could offer at this point.
They all met the next day, right b
efore school. It was two-shots-of-espresso in the morning, and Elayah was buzzed. Indira pulled up to the school in a rented minivan and let them all in.
Clustered around Indira’s iPad, they again watched video of the campaign event that served as Martin Chisholm’s alibi. Sure enough, there he was, glad-handing diners at a local restaurant, offering up an Aw, shucks! handshake here and there. Peter McKenzie was at his father’s elbow the whole time. Where Chisholm’s smile had the practiced sincerity of a politician, Peter’s was strained and bad-CGI-fake.
“Are you absolutely sure?” Indira asked.
“I’d be more sure if I could see the bottom of his shoe,” Liam cracked. The swelling had gone down, but he still had a slight red crescent that crooked down from his eyebrow. “But, yeah, that’s him.”
“Okay, I just wanted to be positive,” Indira said, and slept the iPad.
“You think he knew his dad was a rapist?” Marcie asked.
“More relevant to our interests: Do we think he knew his dad slit El’s throat?” Jorja continued.
As she did every time someone mentioned that night, Elayah touched her cut. She wondered if it would ever feel normal again.
“Okay, so…” Indira clapped her hands together once. “Just wanted to double-check that and also give you guys an update. We still haven’t found Douglas Rumson. At least, not the right one. There’s a bunch of them online, but so far not the right one.”
“Maybe because he’s dead?” Jorja posed.
“Or maybe he’s just not on social media,” Marcie said. “Some old people aren’t.”
“Look,” Indira said pointedly, gazing at Elayah, “do you have a better image of the note? Something higher res?”
Indira had come up empty this time, but at least she’d tried. Elayah thumbed through her phone until she found the best picture of the I’m sorry note.
Indira studied it, pursing her lips. “Don’t text it—upload it to my Dropbox. I want full resolution. I have a handwriting analyst I can use. They’ll expedite it.”