“Tyler?” I asked as I walked up to him.
He looked over his shoulder like he expected to see someone standing behind him. He turned back to me and nodded.
“You got Darius’s money?”
Tyler reached into his pocket and pulled out a clean white envelope. It was full to bursting. I took the brick that Darius had given me from my backpack, keeping my sweater wrapped around it, and stared at the cash that peeked through the poorly sealed flap. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t thought about taking that money. I could hop on the next Greyhound back to Mississippi. See the country. But what would I be going back to? My ex was long gone, and we weren’t together anymore. He hadn’t even lasted a month in LA. Said it was nothing but fake people living above their means and broke up with me before catching a one-way flight to Jackson. It wasn’t until later that I realized that he’d taken all the money we had saved. I’d called him over a hundred times, and he hadn’t sent back so much as a text.
Plus, I’d dropped out, so there was no more drama class with Ms. Priscilla. I missed her, I guess, but she had a real family. A whole baby. She would forget about me soon enough.
No. I was better off staying here.
“Put your hands up!”
Shit. Of course I’d get caught on my first day working for this man. Why had I believed that hiding in plain sight would work?
Tyler didn’t waste a second. One moment he was standing in front of me, and the next he’d grabbed the package and was racing down the street.
The money!
Getting robbed by Tyler was almost worse than potentially getting caught by 5-0. How the hell was I going to explain this to Darius?
I started to run after Tyler, but I was too slow and got winded fast. He was already long gone, his stupid yellow sweater lost in the crowd of protestors. Even with him dressed in the brightest piece of clothing to have ever been worn by anyone on earth, I was the one who stood out to the cops.
The next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the concrete. I had to protect my face. I wouldn’t win any roles with a busted grill. The casting directors would think I was some junkie off the street.
“Stop resisting!”
They jammed me into a van, placing me in the middle of two women. The one to my right looked to be around my age. She sat with her back ramrod-straight, like she was trying to retain all her dignity in this tiny prison. The one on my left, who seemed older, looked pissed.
There was only one guy in the truck, sitting behind a metal divider. He was thanking the younger girl for standing up for him at the rally and spitting some bullshit about heroes. If I hadn’t been too busy freaking out, I would’ve rolled my eyes.
Bam!
The pressure weighing upon my chest got heavier and heavier as the officers sharply turned corners, carelessly slamming us against all sides of the vehicle. Over and over again. I didn’t need these handcuffs or this van; I was already a prisoner of this body. My lungs constricted with each breath that I took.
The golden girl turned to me. Gasped. Released the breath that I couldn’t.
My head spun relentlessly, but then I heard—
“Let’s breathe together, okay? In and out, real easy.”
Maybe karma was real.
Hours later, I was sitting in a cell by myself. The police had allowed me my one phone call, and the regret I felt for not having Ms. Sienna’s number on me ate me up from the inside out. A social worker who worked for the county would come in really handy right now. Of course I wouldn’t tell her or Ms. Priscilla what I had gotten myself into, but I would’ve taken her look of disappointment when she came to get me from the police station over my sole other option. I called Darius. His number was the only one saved in the phone he’d given me, and I had it memorized. He picked up after a few rings and listened as I explained what had happened. Silence. And then he was laughing into the receiver like we were old friends and I had just told him the funniest joke.
“Jaz, you fucked up with this one!”
That was the last thing I heard before he hung up on me.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. LA was supposed to be my new beginning. I was supposed to hit it big. I knew other people came here thinking the same thing, but I was different. Why would I have gone through all this shit in life if I wasn’t supposed to make it out on top? The underdog who rose to victory. Everyone was supposed to know my name.
My thoughts swirled into a tornado of panic and my chest clenched. Again. Breathing in was okay at first, but it was impossible to exhale. I just kept getting more and more full until I might as well have been breathing through a straw. My damn asthma was acting up, and I didn’t have my inhaler. They’d taken everything in my bag when they’d processed me.
I tried my hardest to get the attention of the officer who stood no more than five feet from my cell. Her head was turned away, shouting. Something about smoke. I smelled it too. That explained the sting in my eyes and the river of tears waiting to flood from them.
I was wheezing by then, waving my hands through the cell to get her to turn around.
“Please.” My voice was a gravelly whisper, and I could barely hear myself. “Please.”
Right when I was about to give up hope, the officer turned around. She walked to my cell and stared at me, now half-sitting, half-spread across the floor.
“Officer,” I wheezed. “I can’t breathe.”
“Stop being so dramatic,” she said with disapproval. “The smoke isn’t that bad.”
But the sudden blaring of a fire alarm told me that she was wrong. The same thought must have dawned on the policewoman, because she pulled out her walkie talkie just as a panicked voice crackled to life, every other word cutting out.
“...fire started... bathroom... spreading fast.”
The officer outside of my cell cursed and sprinted away without even a last glance in my direction. Her words to me echoed in my head.
Stop being so dramatic.
Stop being so dramatic.
Stop being so dramatic.
Maybe I could act like this was one of the roles that I loved to audition for.
My grand finale.
But then—someone else was walking with purpose toward my cell. A man—the one I’d seen earlier? With the balloons and cake? I had no more air left in me to speak, my precious breath wasted on an unheeded call for help. He was bending down now, reaching through the bars. Stroking my hair. Looking into my eyes like he knew me. Like he needed to be there for these final moments.
And that’s how I go out. On the cold floor of a Los Angeles jail cell.
Who’s going to remember me now?
PART III
“Travel is fatal to prejudice...”
—MARK TWAIN
QUOTE FEATURED IN THE NEGRO MOTORIST GREEN BOOK 1949 EDITION
28
KEZI
TUESDAY, APRIL 17—
THE DAY OF THE ARREST
LOCATION, UNKNOWN
I open my eyes.
At least, I think I do.
Everything is still dark and if I tilt my head just so, my eyelashes graze a blindfold. The straps around my head are not tight enough for me to bruise, but they are still decidedly knotted. The same goes with the ropes trapping my wrists and feet.
I am tied down in what I think is a back seat, and shielded from my surroundings, but the steady ride and the intermittent flashes of perhaps streetlights tell me we are on an open road. We are driving. Far. I pretend to still be knocked out to give myself time to figure out what to do.
He is speaking to me. Pauses as if listening politely to my response before continuing his monologue.
“I’m so glad that your forehead isn’t ruined, Kezi,” he says. “How’s the pain?”
Nothing.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got somethi
ng to help you in a bit, but I can’t give you too much at a time. Boy. Of course it would be a cop to hurt you like that...but you don’t have to worry anymore.”
I keep my breathing level, inhale, exhale, while my heart beats wildly, and sweat pools in the glands of my fingers and palms. My mouth is as dry as dust from the tight, balled-up fabric stuffed inside it.
“We may be young but we are bold. We will inherit this earth so we must speak up and act when we see injustice.”
My mind is a soupy mess of pain, heaviness, and confusion, but I know those words. They’re my words. Who is this man?
“I had just rewatched that video, you know. It’s one of my favorites,” he says. “It was kismet. Kismet. I get notifications on all your social media activity and caught the tail end of your arrest.”
He pauses.
“You need better friends.” He laughs, bordering on a cackle. “Maybe she should’ve watched your video on being a good ally. But anyway. I’m freaking out, right, because you’re in the lion’s den. The screen went black! Who knows what they were up to? I bet their body cams were probably conveniently turned off. I was thinking of the worst possible scenarios. You okay back there?”
The car slows until it comes to a stop, and I hear a deep creak as the man leans over his seat. Tips of cold fingers graze my body and I involuntarily tense. No. I slow my breathing and force my shoulders to relax as I exhale slowly, to distract myself from the overwhelming desire to jerk away from his strangely light touch. Layers of what feels like thin cotton move up on my chest and I understand: he’s adjusting my blankets. Thunder erupts in the sky, and then the incessant tapping of rain crashing against glass begins.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, by the way. It’s just me and you, Kezi,” he whispers, the little hairs in my ears surely standing on end from his warm breath. “Just in case you were...wondering.”
My unknown captor pulls away from me, but I am still on edge. The redundant click of an already locked door being relocked tells me he is back at the wheel. The car rumbles to life again and the bumps on the street resume.
“So, where was I... This is where the kismet comes in. It was my last day on the job, and they were throwing me a going-away party. But let me tell you, it wasn’t much of a party, just some cake from Ralphs and a pair of measly balloons. And I know the balloons were an afterthought, because the cake said ‘Happy Birthday Mark.’ Which I mean, I know I’m not the most social guy in the precinct but, come on, do your job right, Kathy—”
He laughs so hard he chokes.
“Anyway, I was feeling a little disappointed, surrounded by all these strangers, feeling so alone. I am—was—the best medicolegal death investigator on the team. Everyone came to me if they needed help with a body. But the whole time, I was thinking about you, wondering if you were okay, since your livestream cut off. And then, out of nowhere, there you were, being led into the jailhouse! A gift from the heavens. I think we even made eye contact. But that’s when I know. Remember. I’m not alone anymore. I have you.”
The sensation of my heart sinking down, down, down as I realize who he is takes everything within me not to scream. He’s the person behind the emails. The one who was supposed to be harmless.
“I had to think fast,” he continues urgently. “It was a sign. What were the odds you would be right there where I was, on the last day we would share Los Angeles as a city? I was moving back home to take care of my sick dad and run the family business. And the idea comes to me as soon as I see her walking in right after you. I take those stupid birthday candles and then I go to the bathroom to escape any cameras and well, let’s just say toilet paper rolls are very flammable.”
I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here.
“Things heat up fast... It’s a mess. You can’t see much through the smoke, but I am on a mission. There are prisoners being escorted from the holding cells, some run but don’t get far. I’m trying to listen for your screams in the midst of all the ruckus, but you’re mysteriously silent. And anyway, I have to make sure that our girl is going to die in this fire—sorry to be so callous, you just get so desensitized in my field of work—and bam, there’s another moment of kismet, because when I get to her cell, it is very clear that our girl is going, going, gone.”
His pace quickens with each progressive sentence; he’s almost tripping over his words in his desperation to get them out. To me, a person he thinks is asleep or unconscious.
“I will preface what I’m about to say with this: I’m not like those cartoons that make the Black characters the same color. Or those white people who think all Black people look the same. But she really was the same complexion as you—it was uncanny. She had the same short, thin build. By the time I got close enough, she was almost dead, so I couldn’t tell if she had the same brightness in her eyes. I supposed that was a small mercy, because it meant she didn’t feel any pain once the flames reached the cell.”
The strangled gasp of horror that pushes its way out through my cloth muzzle reveals me. Even as my mind races to understand what’s happened, information shifts into place. He watched someone die instead of trying to help because it was...convenient for him. Because he knew he could get away with using this person’s body as if it was nothing. Because that someone looked liked me.
“Don’t be scared, Kezi. There’s nothing to worry about,” he says. “I’m Mark, by the way.”
This time I feel the car ease to the right, my bent legs pressing into the door as my trapped body slides slightly down the wide back seat. Memories of being in the police van overtake my mind. I am yet again in a vehicle, being shuffled this way and that against my will. A gentle rough ride. He pulls over to the side of the road.
“It’s surprisingly easy to fake someone’s death when you’ve got a body to switch it out with,” he chuckles. “Especially when everything’s on fire and one of the people involved is, hate to say, a bit disposable. There was a quick moment when I thought I had missed my window of opportunity. There was a policewoman standing by her cell. But she didn’t stick around long since things were really starting to heat up. And when she passed by me, I knew that everything might go my way for once. Even pushed the limits a bit when I asked the officer what our girl was in for. Distribution of narcotics. Let me tell you, she was not one of the good ones, like you. Once I knew she was gone, I scooped her up and took her right over to where they were holding you and made the swap. Everything was pure pandemonium then, so I didn’t even have to hide you until it came time to walk out of the precinct. And I let the fire do the rest. Knowing my old bosses, the last thing they’d admit to is losing some girl that no one is even missing.”
I hear him shift and then his fingers are on my face, lifting my blindfold. He pulls the gag from my mouth. I spit, but nothing comes out. The pain from my sore throat is overtaken by the sharp stabs of streetlights assailing my hazy vision. As my eyes slowly adjust to this new reality, darkness slowly engulfs me from every angle. It is night. Who knows how long we’ve been driving.
“It’s funny. In another life, I thought I’d be an anesthesiologist—in that line of work, you want your patients nearly dead but not completely. Even though life took me somewhere else, I’ve kept an avid interest in atropine, ketamine, and all the other chemical-ines that make you fall asleep, stay still, and eventually wake up again. I expected you to come to about fifteen minutes ago, so we’re right on schedule.”
I whimper.
He smiles. “Hi, Kezi. Isn’t it great to be alive? Don’t feel bad about what happened—”
“Why would you do this?” My words are barely audible over the pounding of rain on the windshield.
“Hmm. The lidocaine is wearing off,” he says to himself. He rummages in a large black bag that I can just see in the passenger seat and pulls out a plastic mask. “Please don’t move. It’ll be much easier if you stay still.”
&nb
sp; I squirm as much as I can, but it’s no use as he gets closer and places the mask over my face. My eyelids droop and my breathing slows. I am surrounded by darkness once again.
29
HAPPI
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1—
3 MONTHS, 15 DAYS SINCE THE ARREST
EDMOND, OKLAHOMA, TO AMARILLO, TEXAS
“Uh, hello, Happi. This is your father. Malcolm. Please return this call when you get a chance.”
Beep.
Genny and I are sitting on her bed staring at my cell phone in awe. This is perhaps the fourth time in my entire life that I can remember my father calling me. Definitely the first voice mail.
“What do you think he’s going to say?” Genny breathes.
“I...have no idea.”
We are certain that this involves the revelations from church on Sunday. But the fact that it was our dad who called, and at eleven thirty at night to boot is...mystifying. Since our last phone call, the check-in-every-day, twice-a-day rule had been modified on our end to become a quick once-a-day text message. The parents hadn’t tried to reach out any more than that either. Did this message mean they had done enough “thinking and praying” to finally speak with us? We weren’t exactly eager to find out. And after our bad experience at the saloon in a former sundown town and the major moment of vulnerability we had commemorating Great-Grandpa Joseph on the bridge, we had been more than ready to get to bed as quickly as possible and start over fresh in the morning.
But it’s been months and months since I’ve slept soundly through the night. I’m grateful when I get any rest at all. And I was unsurprised when I found myself awake at 3:00 a.m. but flabbergasted, no, gobsmacked, at the voice mail notification from Dad (Malcolm Smith) Obvi.
One of the Good Ones Page 20