Mark turns to me. I can see him taking in my features. “You won’t look the same at the end of this,” Mark says sadly. “But I promise it won’t hurt at all. It’ll be just like taking a nap.”
My palms are sweating, clumps of dirt adhering to my hands as I dig my fingers into the earth to ground me. I thought I had more time. But I see now that the perfect moment will never come.
I must live.
So I act. It takes seconds for me to pull the shank from my bra. I created it from the plastic applicators of the tampons Mark purchased for me. The pointed, contoured tips of the long barrels that I had smashed to reveal ragged edges are bundled together by the string of the cotton cylinders. I dragged them along the grout of the tiles in the shower that morning to make them razor-sharp. Deadly. In this moment, Mark sees his life bared before him, realizing too late that I’m more alert than I’ve been letting on. But he recovers quickly, hisses as the back of his right hand strikes me so hard across the face that I fall. He meets me on the ground, landing roughly on his knees beside where I am crouched on all fours. He uses his shoulder to knock me onto my back, leans in to close his hands around my neck.
“I’m going to miss you, Kezi,” Mark breathes. “I wish you were more grateful. But know that you’ve done more in death than you ever could in life. That’s noble. You’re already a martyr. Maybe they’ll make you a saint.”
My mind floats to so many others who have died, the ones who have been attacked and forgotten, the ones whose time on earth was noted by just their families, and to the monsters who ripped their souls away. I pause at the ones who have made their marks in our society through the grave, through their ashes drifting in the wind, through their bodies in the rivers, necks on the line. Something was taken from them. Life was stolen from them. I want to learn the name of the girl whose life mattered just as much as mine. She wanted to live.
I want to live.
No.
This is not the end.
Even as my throat burns in its collapse, I trust the surge of adrenaline devouring my exhaustion and urging me forward. I refuse to die like this, or any way. I shouldn’t have to sacrifice my existence so that my—no—any people are treated with respect. I can’t have gotten this far to die alone in the Grand Canyon. Mark is still on top of me, squeezing harder on my neck. I use my right hand to hold him off, pushing against him as my other hand fumbles frantically in the dark. A sharp prick reaches the tip of my index finger. Yes.
I scream, finding strength that I didn’t know still lay within me. Mark’s eyes are saucers, bulging when he realizes the ball of makeshift knives is now lodged deep into the side of his neck. He opens his mouth to speak, but a wheeze escapes instead. He battles against my hand, but I do not relent, twisting my weapon farther, deeper, so that death will not come for me instead. A fountain of blood erupts from his skin and showers me in sticky red until I’m blind, but I’ve already seen my target. His body collapses on top of me, and I shout, relief, anguish, and grief rolled into one.
It is not my time to go.
40
HAPPI
TUESDAY, AUGUST 7—
3 MONTHS, 21 DAYS SINCE THE ARREST
GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA
It’s just after midnight when we gather around the campfire again. We’d taken showers earlier and set up our sleeping bags only to find that none of us were ready to call it a night. The campground is silent and Ximena’s chuckle at me and Derek sitting closer to each other than we need to rings out just a little too loudly. We settle down and listen as the flames crackle and spit, the smell of burnt wood wafting over us. We don’t say it, but I can tell we are savoring these final hours together.
Genny heads to the car for a moment and returns with a few mugs and passes them around. We sit silently, introspective. Genny gets up and stokes the flames, placing a kettle of oat milk over the heat long enough to boil. She fills each of our cups with the warmed drink and carefully hands them back with a packet of cocoa mix. We sip slowly, the moon watching over us like a guardian. Leaves rustle from a breeze as crickets play their songs. I finally feel like I have my own song to sing, with Genny, Derek, and Ximena there to join the chorus.
“We should do HLLs for our trip,” I say, breaking the peaceful silence.
“You’ve both been to dinner at our place enough times,” Genny declares to our companions. “Highs, Lows, and Lessons. Let’s hear them.”
Ximena is contemplative and then, “Okay. I’ll go first.” We all nod for her to continue.
“My high has been feeling Kezi’s presence throughout this entire trip. She took such care putting this together and it was so her. The low has definitely been going through this without her. I miss Kezi every day. Sometimes it feels like I’ve come to terms with her being gone and then—wham—I’m punched right in the gut with so much sadness. But I guess that leads me to my lesson. I’ve learned that I don’t have to feel so alone with my grief. We have each other.”
“That was beautiful, Ximena.” I say. “I’ll go—”
The words are snatched from my lips, because beyond Ximena I see a figure in the forest, walking toward us. But it can’t be. I stand up, and the others turn to see what it is that has captured my attention.
I step forward and a wail erupts from deep within my spirit. That bit of hope that I had suppressed even just today races through every fiber of me, manifesting before my eyes.
It’s Kezi. Coming toward us.
Each step makes her more real.
She glistens in the moonlight. And then she’s close enough for me to see why.
Kezi is covered in blood.
Filthy.
Shaken.
Alive.
EPILOGUE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17—1 YEAR SINCE THE ARREST
8 MONTHS, 10 DAYS SINCE THE REUNION
1 YEAR SINCE SHAQUERIA’S DEATH
KEZI’S 19TH BIRTHDAY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Dear Self,
Therapy is rough.
Like, you better rub some extra strength lotion and avocado oil on your elbows rough.
Like, kissing Ximena one last time in the airport security line before she starts her new collegiate life and then I walk back to my parents’ waiting arms rough.
Like, the noise my brand-new emotional support dog Jubilee makes ruff (ruff!).
Dr. Opal calls what I just did “deflecting,” which is “totally understandable” and something we’ll keep “working on.” Because we have much to sift through as we unpack the months that felt like years, where the histories of two families intertwined, stretching across generations, culminating in a final reckoning brought down by my own hand. Dr. Opal told me to write a letter to myself for my birthday. To examine how I’m feeling one year since my arrest. My death. My resurrection.
I know in an objective, cerebral way that I have a lot of work ahead of me in order to get to a place where I don’t wake up in the dead of night screaming. Or feel the nauseating urge to vomit whenever I look at rotisserie chicken and golden raisins. Or want to fight, take flight, or freeze at just the sight of a white guy with sandy brown hair.
I haven’t sought pain since being discharged from the hospital, but I appreciate its sharpness nonetheless. A wisdom tooth growing in. A menstrual cramp from the period that has finally come back. I relish these aches because it means that I am here. Alive. Aware. I never want the dullness of being drugged, trapped in my own body, to return. But I’ve relented some in recent weeks. We aren’t built for eternal suffering after all. So I take over-the-counter pain relievers for the migraines that I get from time to time. It’s progress.
I’ve found that it takes constant work to make peace. Especially since the monsters will still show up, unaware or indifferent that they’ve long overstayed their welcome. Sharp fangs in pointy heads hiding just around the corners of my soul.
If there is a way to release the guilt of surviving when others have died, I have not found it yet. But I try. And feel ashamed for doing so. The cycle repeats.
Some days I want to hide away in my bed, surrounded by all the posters and trophies my parents hadn’t had the strength to throw away. There’s comfort in knowing they weren’t ready to let me go just yet. When I arrived home, my room looked the same as the day I was arrested. Untouched. But I am not the same girl who stacked up those piles of notes, curated that collection of books, set up a DIY YouTube studio.
I haven’t turned those bright lights on since I’ve been back. I haven’t looked into the little red dot to share my thoughts on where the world is going. Where it should be going. I’m not over the sensation of being stared at and discussed and debated to the point of no longer being a real person. Sometimes by the media I avoid. Sometimes by my sisters at our weekly lunch when they think I’m not paying attention. Sometimes by Derek, who just wants to talk and make sure I’m okay. I don’t know that I’m ready to look into a camera just yet. But I’m working on it. I’m almost there.
Because I do still have thoughts, even though I don’t broadcast them. I am so close to regaining my voice. And when I do, I will speak up. For Shaqueria Jenkins, who died senselessly. Who was commemorated at a funeral of her own. Who is missed. Who is loved. Who is remembered. Whose life mattered. Whose name I will make sure everyone knows. I will stand for her, and all the others like her, and unlike her, when I testify on Capitol Hill in a few weeks’ time. I’ll be ready when I stand before our country’s elected officials, discussing the treatment of Black women by the police. I’ll make them listen at this congressional hearing.
I know that existing as a human being on this earth should be enough to deserve respect and justice. But it isn’t. Instead, we focus on those we deem worthy, for whom we allow ourselves to feel the weight of their loss. We mention potential not reached or promise of greatness gone unfulfilled, while others are erased from existence all together.
But we are more than the good ones.
We are the bad ones.
We are the okay ones.
We are the amazing ones.
We are the nothing-to-write-home-about ones.
We are the beautiful ones.
We are just...ones.
Love,
Me
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika and Martiza Moulite.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
In 2013, our family laid to rest our great-aunt Tant Moul. She was our grandmother’s best friend and older sister. Grieving was as hard and painful as expected. But, because she was an older woman with chronic illnesses, we knew what to expect. After her casket was pushed into the crypt, we paid our final respects and said goodbye. As we walked away, our eyes swept over the countless other plaques and names of the departed on that mausoleum wall and one name stopped us where we were.
Trayvon Martin.
We had never known him, but we grew up with boys just like him. He was only four months older than our youngest sister, and at different points in their journeys, they had even attended the same middle school. Miami is a big place, full of everything from glamorous beaches and nightclubs to ignored and under-resourced neighborhoods. But his Miami was our Miami. He had gone to the schools that were our “home” institutions, the ones we would’ve attended if we hadn’t been bussed away to magnet programs. His high school was less than two miles from our house in an ethnically diverse community not unlike The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida. The place where he died.
There on that wall was another reminder of a stolen young Black life, a life not in our orbit but a part of it all the same. We have shed countless, heavy tears for the verdict of that case and for the other Black boys and men who shared his fate in some form or another: Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Tony McDade, and Freddie Gray. We saw irrelevant details about their lives brought up and dissected as if in explanation for what happened to them.
And we were scared. For ourselves as Black women, and even more so as older siblings of two younger sisters. We wrote this book because enmeshed in our shared memories are Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Charleena Lyles, Rekia Boyd, Layleen Cubilette-Polanco, and Aiyana Stanley-Jones. There are countless individuals we haven’t listed but we lift them up too. They aren’t as well-known as others perhaps, but they were here just the same.
A report by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality found that “adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adultlike than their white peers” and these Black girls are more likely to be disciplined and suspended. Let’s not forget the young people who do end up growing up too fast when they are left behind. The teens who lose weight and miss one hundred days’ worth of school after their twelve-year-old brothers are killed. The toddlers who comfort their mothers as they mourn the death of their loved ones in real time.
We chose the title One of the Good Ones because it’s something that “well-intentioned” people say all the time without realizing how harmful it is. “One of the good ones” is usually code for a person our country deems worthy. That importance is usually tied to level of education, income, class, zip code, gender identity, sexual orientation. If most or all of those acceptable boxes are checked, then we care. Mark was an aggrandizement of those people who believe they are doing good when they elevate a Black person with Kezi’s background, in lieu of Shaqueria’s. But there is no competition. There is no allotment for who deserves justice and who does not.
All this really serves to do is divide and dehumanize us. Too often, when police brutality is discussed, the world asks the wrong questions. Did the victim smoke weed? Had they ever been arrested? Did they get into trouble while they were in school? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then they were not one of the good ones. There is the implied justification for the brutalizing of their bodies.
We also use “one of the good ones” a few times throughout the story to depict how it all depends on who is looking through the lens. Kezi and Happi each internalized what it means to be “good” in different ways. Kezi was working on casting aside the bigoted teachings of her parents and church while learning to fully embrace herself, sexuality included. Happi was consumed by the brightness of her sister’s future and the strong relationships Kezi had with their family—two things she believed she lacked. We hope that by the end of our book, readers leave reminded that being human is more than enough to deserve life and love.
Kezi was just about perfect by our society’s eyes, and her Black skin still made her a threat, dangerous. If we’re honest, a tiny worm of a thought has stayed with us (and, before that, our immigrant parents), our whole lives: if we were respectful—respectable—and soft-spoken and polite and good-natured and yes, ma’am and no, sir and smiling, perhaps we would be safe. But the truth is, that can’t save us. It takes a systematic disruption of how the world views us. Unfortunately, it takes books like this to humanize Black people and show that, like everyone else, we deserve to have peace. And because this was our story, we decided to let someone our society expects to die, live. To breathe. To thrive. And to have the chance to help her sisters do the same.
FAMILY TREES
EVELYN HAYES CERNY + MALCOM WALKER SMITH
NAOMI SMITH + RILEY PALMER
MARK COLLINS
MAP
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Getting a book published is an amazing dream that feels nearly impossible to accomplish. So many things have to go right and so many people have to say yes. To have the opportunity to do it twice is absolutely mind-blowing and we wouldn’t have gotten here without a few remarkable people.
First, we’d like to thank our fabulous agent, JL Stermer, for navigating us through the twisty-turny road that is the publishing journey.
We are two of the luckiest girls in the world to have you on our team and to call you a friend. You are so much cooler than us. You are also da MVP! JL, you get us in such a perfect way and we are forever grateful to you!!! #SmartyPantsLadies. And of course a very special shout-out to Veronica Grijalva, Victoria Hendersen, and the entire New Leaf Literary team for their support. We love being Leaves.
We’d also like to thank our thoughtful editor, Natashya Wilson, for being a champion of One of the Good Ones. Thank you for asking questions. Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for helping us make this novel everything we wanted it to be. You push us to keep growing.
Thank you to publishing director extraordinaire Bess Braswell, hardest-working publicists in the game Laura Gianino and Justine Sha, unparalleled library marketer Linette Kim, and ultimate marketing maven Brittany Mitchell. Thank you for your passion and kindness and our meetings and for listening to us gush about whatever our latest obsessions are (cosmetic refrigerators, procrastibaking, the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice, etc.).
We’d also like to thank Gigi Lau and Rachelle Baker for the beautiful cover of our dreams, and the wonderful team at Inkyard Press/Harlequin/HarperCollins. We literally couldn’t have done it without you, and we are eternally grateful.
We are especially appreciative of Laura Ruby. First, for being hilarious and sincere. Listening to you speak at Children’s Institute was a major highlight for us because we are such huge admirers of your work. So your beautiful words about OOTGO mean the universe to us.
Damon Young, you’ve already perfectly described the process of soliciting blurbs: “It feels like asking the finest girl in school to your prom, except if A) you go to different schools and B) she’s never met you before and C) your ask has to be a haiku and D) if she says ‘no’ you’re not going to college.”
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