His hands go up in surrender. “Sorry. I was . . .”
I wipe my eyes and walk into the classroom. Chris is right behind me. Hailey and Maya shoot him the dirtiest looks. I lower myself into the desk in front of Hailey.
She squeezes my shoulder. “That jackwad.”
Nobody mentioned Khalil at school today. I hate to admit it, because it’s like throwing him the middle finger, but I’m relieved.
Since basketball season is over, I leave when everybody else does. Probably for the first time in my life I wish it wasn’t the end of the day. I’m that much closer to talking to the cops.
Hailey and I trek across the parking lot, arm in arm. Maya has a driver to pick her up. Hailey has her own car, and I have a brother with a car; the two of us always end up walking out together.
“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me to kick Chris’s ass?” Hailey asks.
I told her and Maya about Condomgate, and as far as they’re concerned Chris is eternally banished to Asshole Land.
“Yes,” I say, for the hundredth time. “You’re violent, Hails.”
“When it comes to my friends, possibly. Seriously though, why would he even? God, boys and their fucking sex drive.”
I snort. “Is that why you and Luke haven’t gotten together?”
She lightly elbows me. “Shut up.”
I laugh. “Why won’t you admit you like him?”
“What makes you think I like him?”
“Really, Hailey?”
“Whatever, Starr. This isn’t about me. This is about you and your sex-driven boyfriend.”
“He’s not sex-driven,” I say.
“Then what do you call it?”
“He was horny at that moment.”
“Same thing!”
I try to keep a straight face and she does too, but soon we’re cracking up. God, it feels good to be normal Starr and Hailey. Has me wondering if I imagined a change.
We part at the halfway point to Hailey’s car and Seven’s. “The ass-kicking offer is still on the table,” she calls to me.
“Bye, Hailey!”
I walk off, rubbing my arms. Spring has decided to go through an identity crisis and get chilly on me. A few feet away, Seven keeps a hand on his car as he talks to his girlfriend, Layla. Him and that damn Mustang. He touches it more than he touches Layla. She obviously doesn’t care. She plays with the dreadlock near his face that isn’t pulled into his ponytail. Eye-roll worthy. Some girls do too much. Can’t she play with all them curls on her own head?
Honestly though, I don’t have a problem with Layla. She’s a geek like Seven, smart enough for Harvard but Howard bound, and real sweet. She’s one of the four black girls in the senior class, and if Seven just wants to date black girls, he picked a great one.
I walk up to them and go, “Hem-hem.”
Seven keeps his eyes on Layla. “Go sign Sekani out.”
“Can’t,” I lie. “Momma didn’t put me on the list.”
“Yeah, she did. Go.”
I fold my arms. “I am not walking halfway across campus to get him and halfway back. We can get him when we’re leaving.”
He side-eyes me, but I’m too tired for all that, and it’s cold. Seven kisses Layla and goes around to the driver’s side. “Acting like that’s a long walk,” he mumbles.
“Acting like we can’t get him when we’re leaving,” I say, and hop in.
He starts the car. This nice mix Chris made of Kanye and my other future husband J. Cole plays from Seven’s iPod dock. He maneuvers through the parking lot traffic to Sekani’s school. Seven signs him out of his after-school program, and we leave.
“I’m hungry,” Sekani whines not even five minutes out the parking lot.
“Didn’t they give you a snack in after-school?” Seven asks.
“So? I’m still hungry.”
“Greedy butt,” Seven says, and Sekani kicks the back of his seat. Seven laughs. “Okay, okay! Ma asked me to bring some food to the clinic anyway. I’ll get you something too.” He looks at Sekani in the rearview mirror. “Is that cool—”
Seven freezes. He turns Chris’s mix off and slows down.
“What you turn the music off for?” Sekani asks.
“Shut up,” Seven hisses.
We stop at a red light. A Riverton Hills patrol car pulls up beside us.
Seven straightens up and stares ahead, barely blinking and gripping the steering wheel. His eyes move a little like he wants to look at the cop car. He swallows hard.
“C’mon, light,” he prays. “C’mon.”
I stare ahead and pray for the light to change too.
It finally turns green, and Seven lets the patrol car go first. His shoulders don’t relax until we get on the freeway. Mine neither.
We stop at this Chinese restaurant Momma loves and get food for all of us. She wants me to eat before I talk to the detectives. In Garden Heights, kids play in the streets. Sekani presses his face against my window and watches them. He won’t play with them though. Last time he played with some neighborhood kids, they called him “white boy” ’cause he goes to Williamson.
Black Jesus greets us from a mural on the side of the clinic. He has locs like Seven. His arms stretch the width of the wall, and there are puffy white clouds behind him. Big letters above him remind us that Jesus Loves You.
Seven passes Black Jesus and goes into the parking lot behind the clinic. He punches in a code to open the gate and parks next to Momma’s Camry. I get the tray of sodas, Seven gets the food, and Sekani doesn’t take anything because he never takes anything.
I hit the buzzer for the back door and wave up at the camera. The door opens into a sterile-smelling hall with bright-white walls and white-tile floors that reflect us. The hall takes us to the waiting room. A handful of people watch the news on the old box TV in the ceiling or read magazines that have been there since I was little. When this shaggy-haired man sees that we have food, he straightens up and sniffs hard as if it’s for him.
“What y’all bringing up in here?” Ms. Felicia asks at the front desk, stretching her neck to see.
Momma comes from the other hallway in her plain yellow scrubs, following a teary-eyed boy and his mom. The boy sucks on a lollipop, a reward for surviving a shot.
“There go my babies,” Momma says when she sees us. “And they got my food too. C’mon. Let’s go in the back.”
“Save me some!” Ms. Felicia calls after us. Momma tells her to hush.
We set the food out on the break room table. Momma gets some paper plates and plastic utensils that she keeps in a cabinet for days like this. We say grace and dig in.
Momma sits on the countertop and eats. “Mmm-mm! This is hitting the spot. Thank you, Seven baby. I only had a bag of Cheetos today.”
“You didn’t have lunch?” Sekani asks, with a mouth full of fried rice.
Momma points her fork at him. “What did I tell you about talking with your mouth full? And for your information, no I did not. I had a meeting on my lunch break. Now, tell me about y’all. How was school?”
Sekani always talks the longest because he gives every single detail. Seven says his day was fine. I’m as short with my “It was all right.”
Momma sips her soda. “Anything happen?”
I freaked out when my boyfriend touched me, but—“Nope. Nothing.”
Ms. Felicia comes to the door. “Lisa, sorry to bother you, but we have an issue up front.”
“I’m on break, Felicia.”
“Don’t you think I know that? But she asking for you. It’s Brenda.”
Khalil’s momma.
My mom sets her plate down. She looks straight at me when she says, “Stay here.”
I’m hardheaded though. I follow her to the waiting room. Ms. Brenda sits with her face in her hands. Her hair is uncombed, and her white shirt is dingy, almost brown. She has sores and scabs on her arms and legs, and since she’s real light-skinned they show up even more.
Momma kneels in front o
f her. “Bren, hey.”
Ms. Brenda moves her hands. Her red eyes remind me of what Khalil said when we were little, that his momma had turned into a dragon. He claimed that one day he’d become a knight and turn her back.
It doesn’t make sense that he sold drugs. I would’ve thought his broken heart wouldn’t let him.
“My baby,” his momma cries. “Lisa, my baby.”
Momma sandwiches Ms. Brenda’s hands between hers and rubs them, not caring that they’re nasty looking. “I know, Bren.”
“They killed my baby.”
“I know.”
“They killed him.”
“I know.”
“Lord Jesus,” Ms. Felicia says from the doorway. Next to her, Seven puts his arm around Sekani. Some patients in the waiting room shake their heads.
“But Bren, you gotta get cleaned up,” Momma says. “That’s what he wanted.”
“I can’t. My baby ain’t here.”
“Yes, you can. You have Cameron, and he needs you. Your momma needs you.”
Khalil needed you, I wanna say. He waited for you and cried for you. But where were you? You don’t get to cry now. Nuh-uh. It’s too late.
But she keeps crying. Rocking and crying.
“Tammy and I can get you some help, Bren,” Momma says. “But you gotta really want it this time.”
“I don’t wanna live like this no more.”
“I know.” Momma waves Ms. Felicia over and hands Ms. Felicia her phone. “Look through my contacts and find Tammy Harris’s number. Call and tell her that her sister is here. Bren, when was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t know. I don’t—my baby.”
Momma straightens up and rubs Ms. Brenda’s shoulder. “I’m gonna get you some food.”
I follow Momma back. She walks kinda fast but passes the food and goes to the counter. She leans on it with her back to me and bows her head, not saying a word.
Everything I wanted to say in the waiting room comes bubbling out. “How come she gets to be upset? She wasn’t there for Khalil. You know how many times he cried about her? Birthdays, Christmas, all that. Why does she get to cry now?”
“Starr, please.”
“She hasn’t acted like a mom to him! Now all of a sudden, he’s her baby? It’s bullshit!”
Momma smacks the counter, and I jump. “Shut up!” she screams. She turns around, tears streaking her face. “That wasn’t some li’l friend of hers. That was her son, you hear me? Her son!” Her voice cracks. “She carried that boy, birthed that boy. And you have no right to judge her.”
I have cotton-mouth. “I—”
Momma closes her eyes. She massages her forehead. “I’m sorry. Fix her a plate, baby, okay? Fix her a plate.”
I do and put a little extra of everything on it. I take it to Ms. Brenda. She mumbles what sounds like “thank you” as she takes it.
When she looks at me through the red haze, Khalil’s eyes stare back at me, and I realize my mom’s right. Ms. Brenda is Khalil’s momma. Regardless.
SIX
My mom and I arrive at the police station at four thirty on the dot.
A handful of cops talk on phones, type on computers, or stand around. Normal stuff, like on Law & Order, but my breath catches. I count: One. Two. Three. Four. I lose count around twelve because the guns in their holsters are all I can see.
All of them. Two of us.
Momma squeezes my hand. “Breathe.”
I didn’t realize I had grabbed hers.
I take a deep breath and another, and she nods with each one, saying, “That’s it. You’re okay. We’re okay.”
Uncle Carlos comes over, and he and Momma lead me to his desk, where I sit down. I feel eyes on me from all around. The grip tightens around my lungs. Uncle Carlos hands me a sweating bottle of water. Momma puts it up to my lips.
I take slow sips and look around Uncle Carlos’s desk to avoid the curious eyes of the officers. He has almost as many pictures of me and Sekani on display as he has of his own kids.
“I’m taking her home,” Momma tells him. “I’m not putting her through this today. She’s not ready.”
“I understand, but she has to talk to them at some point, Lisa. She’s a vital part of this investigation.”
Momma sighs. “Carlos—”
“I get it,” he says, in a noticeably lower voice. “Believe me, I do. Unfortunately, if we want this investigation done right, she has to talk to them. If not today, then another day.”
Another day of waiting and wondering what’s gonna happen.
I can’t go through that.
“I wanna do it today,” I mumble. “I wanna get it over with.”
They look at me, like they just remembered I’m here.
Uncle Carlos kneels in front of me. “Are you sure, baby girl?”
I nod before I lose my nerve.
“All right,” Momma says. “But I’m going with her.”
“That’s totally fine,” Uncle Carlos says.
“I don’t care if it’s not fine.” She looks at me. “She’s not doing this alone.”
Those words feel as good as any hug I’ve ever gotten.
Uncle Carlos keeps an arm around me and leads us to a small room that has nothing in it but a table and some chairs. An unseen air conditioner hums loudly, blasting freezing air into the room.
“All right,” Uncle Carlos says. “I’ll be outside, okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
He kisses my forehead with his usual two pecks. Momma takes my hand, and her tight squeeze tells me what she doesn’t say out loud—I got your back.
We sit at the table. She’s still holding my hand when the two detectives come in—a young white guy with slick black hair and a Latina with lines around her mouth and a spiky haircut. Both of them wear guns on their waists.
Keep your hands visible.
No sudden moves.
Only speak when spoken to.
“Hi, Starr and Mrs. Carter,” the woman says, holding out her hand. “I’m Detective Gomez, and this is my partner, Detective Wilkes.”
I let go of my mom’s hand to shake the detectives’ hands. “Hello.” My voice is changing already. It always happens around “other” people, whether I’m at Williamson or not. I don’t talk like me or sound like me. I choose every word carefully and make sure I pronounce them well. I can never, ever let anyone think I’m ghetto.
“It’s so nice to meet you both,” Wilkes says.
“Considering the circumstances, I wouldn’t call it nice,” says Momma.
Wilkes’s face and neck get extremely red.
“What he means is we’ve heard so much about you both,” Gomez says. “Carlos always gushes about his wonderful family. We feel like we know you already.”
She’s laying it on extra thick.
“Please, have a seat.” Gomez points to a chair, and she and Wilkes sit across from us. “Just so you know, you’re being recorded, but it’s simply so we can have Starr’s statement on record.”
“Okay,” I say. There it is again, all perky and shit. I’m never perky.
Detective Gomez gives the date and time and the names of the people in the room and reminds us that we’re being recorded. Wilkes scribbles in his notebook. Momma rubs my back. For a moment there’s only the sound of pencil on paper.
“All right then.” Gomez adjusts herself in her chair and smiles, the lines around her mouth deepening. “Don’t be nervous, Starr. You haven’t done anything wrong. We just want to know what happened.”
I know I haven’t done anything wrong, I think, but it comes out as, “Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re sixteen, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How long did you know Khalil?”
“Since I was three. His grandmother used to babysit me.”
“Wow,” she says, all teacher-like, stretching out the word. “That’s a long time. Can you tell us what happened the night of the incident?”
&nb
sp; “You mean the night he was killed?”
Shit.
Gomez’s smile dims, the lines around her mouth aren’t as deep, but she says, “The night of the incident, yes. Start where you feel comfortable.”
I look at Momma. She nods.
“My friend Kenya and I went to a house party hosted by a guy named Darius,” I say.
Thump-thump-thump. I drum the table.
Stop. No sudden moves.
I lay my hands flat to keep them visible.
“He has one every spring break,” I say. “Khalil saw me, came over, and said hello.”
“Do you know why he was at the party?” Gomez asks.
Why does anybody go to a party? To party. “I assume it was for recreational purposes,” I say. “He and I talked about things going on in our lives.”
“What kind of things?” she questions.
“His grandmother has cancer. I didn’t know until he told me that evening.”
“I see,” Gomez says. “What happened after that?”
“A fight occurred at the party, so we left together in his car.”
“Khalil didn’t have anything to do with the fight?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Nah.”
Dammit. Proper English.
I sit up straight. “I mean, no, ma’am. We were talking when the fight occurred.”
“Okay, so you two left. Where were you going?”
“He offered to take me home or to my father’s grocery store. Before we could decide, One-Fifteen pulled us over.”
“Who?” she asks.
“The officer, that’s his badge number,” I say. “I remember it.”
Wilkes scribbles.
“I see,” Gomez says. “Can you describe what happened next?”
I don’t think I’ll ever forget what happened, but saying it out loud, that’s different. And hard.
My eyes prickle. I blink, staring at the table.
Momma rubs my back. “Look up, Starr.”
My parents have this thing where they never want me or my brothers to talk to somebody without looking them in their eyes. They claim that a person’s eyes say more than their mouth, and that it goes both ways—if we look someone in their eyes and mean what we say, they should have little reason to doubt us.
I look at Gomez.
“Khalil pulled over to the side of the road and turned the ignition off,” I say. “One-Fifteen put his brights on. He approached the window and asked Khalil for his license and registration.”