Something thuds at my feet. I look down expecting to see my heart, but it’s my books instead. The fick. The fick? Kenny is dead? Kenny is DEAD. How is Kenny dead? He’s supposed to be off somewhere frolicking with Nic, stealing kisses in some car with the top down like they do in music videos. Kenny is dead?
Wait.
Wait.
Nic left with Kenny. If Kenny is dead, like really dead, then did that mean . . . ?
I run over to one of the trash bins in the hall, but nothing comes up. Just snot and air. Once again, I forgot to grab breakfast this morning, but my stomach doesn’t care. It clenches over and over, trying to push anything out. Every time I think it’s done, it socks me again. It won’t be satisfied until Nic’s completely out of my system.
“Are you okay, son?” A teacher’s hand is on my back. I stumble away from the trash bin, away from the teacher. I need to find answers. I need to find out what happened to Kenny.
“Do you need me to take you to the nurse?” the teacher asks again. I ignore him and charge down the hall. Don’t even know who I’m looking for, but I have to find someone. People talk way too much to not know what went down. Maybe someone tall. Tall usually means basketball player and everyone knows that Kenny played basketball.
Wait—the basketball team.
I book it toward the gym. The coaches’ offices are located in the same hall. The team’s probably congregating around Coach Dunn. They have to be. My sneakers squeak as I reach the gym’s corridor—the faster I get there, the faster I’ll get answers. Just as expected, most of the basketball team are in a sad huddle outside of Dunn’s office. There’s too many of them to fit all the way inside. Dunn is in the doorway, red-faced and sober. Saying something to his team. Probably something sweet about Kenny. Probably something to keep up their morale. It’s a tough balance and I certainly don’t envy him at the moment.
I crack my knuckles, wait for a way in to get information but don’t want to come across as a complete asshole. I needed to find Nic more than anything, but I give them the same respect that I’d hope someone would give me if this was Nic.
I squeeze my eyes shut: please don’t let this be Nic.
There’s weeping away from the huddle. I open my eyes and spot DeMarcus folded up on the staircase, digging his fist into his open palm. I sneak over to him.
“DeMarcus, man,” I force out, throat so tight it’s like I’m learning to speak again. “I’m really sorry—”
DeMarcus climbs to his feet and before I can back up, pulls me toward him. My face slams against his chest as DeMarcus weeps again. He wraps his arm around me and weeps, as hiccupy and raw as a child leaving his mom on the first day of school. You could hear the pain in every sob. DeMarcus put on a good show on the court the other day, but it’s clear as day now. Kenny meant something to him. Kenny was his boy. All I can do is wrap my arms around him and give him that moment.
Finally, he pulls away from me, wipes his face on his forearm. “It’s all just so jacked up, bruh,” he says.
I nod. He’s totally right. I wish I could be the guy he needed right now. Give him my shoulder and ear as he told me all his memories about Kenny. And I want to be, but first: “What happened to him?”
DeMarcus blows out breath through his mouth. “They’re not even sure yet. The cops found his body down at Deer Park last night. But from what I heard, he’s been dead for a while. They took forever to identify him. His parents had to . . . his parents had to . . .” Something guttural leaves DeMarcus’s mouth and he strikes at the air. I reach over, pat his back as he tries to get himself together. But I get it. No parent should have to see their child like that.
“We told him,” DeMarcus continues. “We told him to keep away from Javon, but that nigga’s always been stubborn as hell.”
My hand drops. “Javon did this?”
DeMarcus smirks at me. “Like we’d ever know.”
I grit my teeth. He’s right. About both things. I saw the rage in Javon when Kenny and Nic first took off. I felt what he wanted to do to them if he ever got his hands on them. What if he finally did? But if Kenny’s dead then what did that mean for Nic?
My feet take off running. I had to pay another visit to someone. The only person who could probably make sure Nic is okay.
“Didn’t see you at church yesterday.” Officer Rick Ross didn’t even bat an eyelash when he spotted me waiting for him in the lobby of his precinct. But after that bomb dropped about Kenny, of course I’d be here.
“I think you and I both know that I have a lot going on right now,” I say.
Officer Hunter gives me a nod: Fair enough. He then hitches his head toward the back, beckoning me to follow him. But my feet stay planted.
“I don’t want a snack,” I say. “I want some answers.”
“We’re in a station, kid. Everyone wants answers.” He raises his eyebrows and motions at all the business of the precinct. I had been too laser-focused to scope out anything or anyone else. But now? I spot the nosy officer at the front desk. I spot the guy waiting to be booked on the bench, leaning forward for intel so he could cop a deal. Too many ears out here. And those ears are attached to mouths that might spill wax to Javon.
I give in and follow Hunter back to his break room. “Don’t you have school?” he asks. He doesn’t ask if I want to take a seat and he doesn’t take one, either. He and I both know that there’s too much going on for pleasantries.
“Free period,” I lie. “So, you weren’t going to tell me about Kenny?”
Hunter blinks at me. “I don’t believe you have a badge, son. That’s the only people I need to bump gums with.”
I huff, full of irritation. “Yeah, but you know my sister is missing. You know Kenny used to live in the same neighborhood. And you know who they both have in common. Plus . . .” I brace myself for what I need to say next. “. . . Nic took off with Kenny. They were . . . together.”
I can’t read Hunter’s face. His mouth just quirks to one side as he leans against a vending machine, crosses his arms over his chest.
I throw my hands up as if I can use the force to hitch him into action. “Do I need to spell it out? Javon obviously popped Kenny! He could do the same to my sister unless you guys stop him! I know Nic’s not high on the priority list, but someone’s dead now. Aren’t you guys supposed to stop that from happening again?”
Hunter looks at me as if he’s waiting for me to say more. When he realizes I won’t, he pushes himself off the vending machine. “We’re questioning Javon now.”
The words ring so loudly in my ears that I almost think I imagined them. Javon Hockaday is at the station the same time as me. The guy who I know deaded Kenny. The guy who might try to do the same to Nic. “Where is he?” I scan around the breakroom as if he’ll magically appear. “He’s a pretty slippery guy. He got away with all his crap for this long, you can’t let him do the same for this.”
“Jay.” He clasps a heavy hand on my shoulder. “We have guys in this precinct that’ve been on the force since before you were born. We’ve questioned guys even slicker than Javon Hockaday. Now . . . are you going to keep telling me how to do my job, or are you going to let me go do my job?”
I step away from his hand. “If you and your guys were doing your jobs, Kenny wouldn’t be dead in the first place.” I almost wince. Almost. After all, I need him to get Nic back. But because of their casualness about Nic in the first place, another brother is a statistic. Kenny could’ve been something great. Not anymore. How many Kennys do there have to be in Bad News?
Hunter’s jaw clenches as my words sink in. I expect to see his hand flying down to the back of my neck, pushing my face down against the card table to slap some cuffs on me. All because I talked smack. All because he can.
Instead, he opens the door for the breakroom. Motions for me to leave. “Get to school. Your grandmother has enough going on without worrying about your grades.”
I pry my feet off the floor, make them move toward the ex
it even though there’s so much more I want to say. To do. I pause at the threshold, turn back to Rick Ross.
“We got this,” he reassures before nodding me out of the station.
I don’t return the nod. I can’t force my head to agree with something when my heart doesn’t.
Seventeen
RETURNING TO SCHOOL TODAY WAS A BIG MISTAKE. IT’S hard to concentrate on sonnets and solution sets when Kenny’s no longer breathing and Nic’s . . . I don’t even know. And it’s the not knowing that leaves me edgy, that makes me nod along in class when I can’t hear the words coming out of my teachers’ mouths. That makes me bump into classmates in the hall because I can’t see what’s two feet ahead of me. But what the hell else was I supposed to do? Officer Hunter made it clear that I wasn’t wanted at the station, and one of the ladies from the church was supposed to bring MiMi home from the hospital at any moment. Last thing she needed to do was catch me cutting class and all up in my feelings. So, school it was.
I at least try to avoid the tears and grief during lunchtime. I don’t go to my usual stairwell—Camila had already busted me, so I’m sure others could find me there too. Instead, I retreat to the media center. The counselors had moved their grieving circle to one of the rooms closer to the cafeteria, which meant the people who were here were the usual nobodies that didn’t want anyone else to see them sitting alone. My people.
I grab a pack of Doritos out of one of the vending machines to munch on but get so wrapped up on the computer that I barely remember to eat them, pulling up every article I can find about Kenny. Some of them only call him “a body.” At least two of them give Kenny’s full name and an old yearbook picture of him. Those are the ones that provide more details. The articles describe how some white woman playing Frisbee with her dog found Kenny’s body. She had tripped over what she thought was a tree root but was actually Kenny’s hand poking out of the ground. Sounds like one of those horror movies. A guy buried alive and tries to crawl his way back to the surface but loses air right at the last moment.
But this isn’t the movies. According to the police, it’s believed that Kenny had been dead for a few days, but an autopsy would confirm it. Even before the autopsy, though, foul play is suspected. No shit. I highly doubt that Kenny would take a stroll in Deer Park to off himself, but somehow managed to dig his own gravesite, too. I wonder if Riley heard the news. She’d know just what to say to ease my mind before it got too uneasy. I wanted to text her as soon as I left the precinct, but figured she was in class. I already got her into enough trouble with her parents—and I didn’t want her teachers to look at her any differently.
I scroll back up one of the articles, stare at Kenny’s yearbook picture. It had to be a couple of years ago—maybe when he was in tenth grade. He shows all his teeth with his smile. His eyes don’t focus in on the camera lens. Instead, he’s looking somewhere up. As if he’s thinking about all the things he can’t wait to do after taking that picture. Now, he won’t be able to do most of them. It’s not fair.
“Hey, Jay.” A hand clamps down on my shoulder and I yelp, swivel in my chair with my fists raised. Bowie raises both hands, lets me see they’re empty, as he takes a step back. “Relax . . . it’s just me,” he says.
I breathe out through my mouth, try to get my pulse to slow down, then turn back to the computer. “How’d you know that I’d be in here?” I close out the browser, hope Bowie didn’t scope out what I was scoping.
“Missy Johnston spotted you.”
I smirk. “She’s forever in somebody’s business.”
“And she’s forever trying to pull somebody in hers. Remember how she made that whole dance last year about her missing handbag?”
“But it’s FEND-I,” Bowie and I both mock, giving our best valley girl impression. The guilt sets in before I can even laugh. Kenny’s dead, Nic’s God knows where, and I’m throwing jabs at an entitled classmate.
Bowie gets the guilt memo, too. He lets out a laugh through his nose that’s about five notches below his usual volume and pulls up a chair next to me. Great. Somehow our Missy bashing turned into an invite for him to join me. “Messed up about Kenny, huh?”
Dammit. Maybe he did catch my snooping. I shrug, play it off. “Just another day in Bad News.”
“Still, it has to be weird for you. Wasn’t he tight with Nic?”
I almost forgot how aware he is about everything. Even though he’s never been in my crib, he knows my family like they’re his own. Guess all those late nights playing videogames, he actually listened to my bitching. He leans forward in his seat now to do more of the same, ready to be an open ear for me. But we don’t have a videogame to distract us. And Nic has done more than just leave her dirty dishes in the sink overnight. She’s gotten herself missing. The more I tell Bowie, the more he’d stack me up as another hood horror story. Plus, now that I know Kenny’s wound up dead, I have to keep Bowie an extra arm’s length away.
“Yeah.” I open up the internet browser on the computer again, click on one of the bookmarked pages to keep myself busy. TMZ? Sure, I’ll roll with it. “But the police are on it. It’s all good.”
Bowie blinks at me. “All good? Jay, she’s been gone over a week, right? What if she’s seen what happened to Kenny? What if she—”
“They’re on it, Bowie.” If I could say the period aloud, I would. He needs to drop it, and he needs to drop it now.
Bowie slinks back in his seat, finally catching my drift. “Well, I want to help out. Maybe we can put something up on The Gram. People do it all the time. I saw one up there the other day about this old dude that wandered off. He had dementia or something. Anyways, I think they found him like twelve hours after posting his pic. He was chilling in a Hardee’s. What’s up with old people and Hardee’s?”
Bowie laughs but it sounds like static to me. He wants to put Nic’s business all up on social media? Like anybody’s going to pay attention to some missing black girl in between posts of someone’s dog napping on their lap and a sepia-toned pic of a homemade cheeseburger.
“I don’t know, man,” I say. “We got enough going on as it is. Last thing I need is hundreds of fake comments on every black chick with braids. You know how some people can’t tell us apart.” I wince as soon as I say it. Bowie’s in my grill so much that it’s hard not to group him with “us”—even when I try to keep him at a safe distance.
But Bowie shrugs like he’s helping water roll off his back. “A false lead is more than you got now, though, right?”
I sigh. Bowie’s the type of guy who needs to feel needed. Always the first to volunteer to pass out papers for teachers. Always the last to get back to class after a fire drill for helping out the students with special needs. It’s like he dyes his hair all these crazy-ass colors to remind us he isn’t a saint. So yeah, he won’t let this social media thing go. And maybe he has a point. Even though he doesn’t have the most followers, there’ll still be more eyeballs on Nic than what the cops currently have.
“Okay. Sure,” I mumble. Don’t want to be too enthusiastic because I’m not a thousand percent in.
That’s good enough for Bowie, though. He claps his hands together like he finally killed a gnat that’s been bugging him. “Awesome. I’ll get right on it. Oh, and I know you have a lot going on right now, so take this.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out an envelope. I peek inside and find a couple of folded up twenties. “It’s our take over the week. I took care of all the transactions—even was able to knock out a paper on Napoleon. I never want to do that again.” He laughs again. “But yeah, I didn’t take my cut this week. It’s all yours.”
He taps me on the arm and I immediately flinch. I know Bowie means well. He always means well. But the last thing I need right now is to be his damn charity case. “Thanks,” I say through gritted teeth. If I open my mouth farther, something might slip out that I’ll regret later. “But now I really have to get back to this.” I nod to the computer.
Bowie glances over at
the screen and spots breaking news about some Hollywood A-list couple breaking up. He and I both know I could give a damn, but he catches my drift with both hands. “I’ll post something before the next bell.” He gives me one last look before leaving me with my celebrities. I think about dumping the money somewhere in the media center, but MiMi’s coming home today. And she needs to retire.
I barely get an hour home with MiMi before the Old Lady Gang from Providence Baptist steals her away. It’s for a good cause, though. They want to make her a home-cooked meal to celebrate her return. But while everyone’s stuffing their faces, the Old Lady Gang puts folks to work. Making more flyers for Nic, making phone calls for Nic. Anything they can do to find Nic. Plus, me and MiMi’s news clip is premiering tonight, so the gathering also triples as a viewing party. Since the congregation was rallying for the family this much, MiMi said I needed to tag along. Pay my respect. So here I am. Sitting on Sister Gladys’s plaid living room couch, poking at a plate of baked ham and mac and cheese. Any other time I would tear this plate up, but now? With Kenny lying on a slab and Nic still floating in the wind, this food looks about as appetizing as roasted roadkill.
My phone pokes at me inside my jeans pocket, begging me to go on and pull it out. Text Riley. I haven’t spotted her yet at Sister Gladys’s—not like I can blame her. I told her we needed to put whatever we were doing on ice, so I couldn’t just ask her to thaw and save me from the prying eyes of our congregation. Still, having her sit right next to me would make this whole meal—hell, this whole scene—way more appealing.
“Scoot on over.” MiMi taps my leg. I snap to my feet, hold MiMi’s arm to help her take a seat. “I got it, baby.” She adjusts the pillows behind her, sits all the way back. After catching her breath, she looks over at my plate. “I know Sister Kathy goes a little light on the pepper, but her mac and cheese isn’t that bad.”
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