How It Went Down (21 page)

I’m ashamed of the rush I got hearing that. Maybe it’s time I admit it: all along some part of me was rooting for T to go down just so I could stay afloat.

Seventy-five percent of black men in Underhill join up. If Tariq was in, then it gives me that much more chance to stay out. If Tariq wasn’t, then he’s still the guy I thought he was, but it makes it that much more likely that I’m gonna cave, now that he’s gone.

TINA

The policemen took away a lot of Tariq’s things,

but they did not find the big red knife.

I am good at hiding things.

Tariq’s bad knife lives in my room now.

I can’t forget that it is there,

But I can remember not to touch it anymore.

It was only a mistake, the first time.

Tariq says if I find something dangerous,

Don’t touch it.

Just tell him.

I will always protect you
, Tariq promised.

I can keep promises too.

DAY
EIGHT

16.
DEATH SHROUD

KIMBERLY

As I’m hurrying back toward Mollie’s, I see Jennica. She steps out the door of the salon, shoulders slumped. But her face brightens when she sees me coming.

“Hi.” She’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt. “I was looking for you. They told me you weren’t working today.”

“I’m not. I came to drop these off,” I raise the bags in my arms, “and put on my hoodie.”

“You headed down to the march?” Along Peach Street here, small knots of hooded people roll toward Roosevelt Park.

“Yeah.” I hike the heavy bags up on my shoulder. She’s lingering, though, waiting as if she has more to say. “You okay?”

She shifts her sandaled feet, flicking the toe of one sandal with the toe of the other. “This is weird, but do you want to go down together, maybe?” she says.

“I’m working with Reverend Sloan,” I tell her. “I have some responsibilities at the march.”

“Oh.” She looks smaller now, disappointed.

“You don’t want to go with your boyfriend?” I’ve seen her around enough to know she hangs with Brick’s close guy. Noodle. I don’t want to get anywhere near that mess.

“I don’t think they’re going,” she says. “And I don’t want to go by myself.”

“All right, then.”

Jennica perks up. I feel good about that. These past few days with Al have shown me that sometimes all a person needs is a little jolt of support to feel more confident. I’m used to going places by myself, but I can see why it would make someone like her feel weird.

“I mean, it might be kind of boring, but you can come along with me.” It’s not like I’m going up on stage with him.

“How did you do it?” Jennica blurts.

“Do what?” I ask.

“Stay out of the Kings’ mess.”

She seems real serious, so I hold back my laugh. “They never wanted me,” I answer. Why would they?

“I want a different kind of life,” Jennica says. Everything she says comes out in a quick little blurt, like she thinks it shouldn’t be said.

“Who doesn’t?” I answer. My perfect little D.C. apartment is alive and well in my mind.

TINA

Hoodie

Hoodie

Mommy says

Put on your hoodie

I don’t like things

covering my head

Hoodie

Hoodie

Mommy says

To honor Tariq

No

No hoodie

Mommy says

Do it for Tariq

But

Tariq would not have made me

NOODLE

My hoodie that’s clean is the one that’s a little tight. But I ain’t doing laundry. Not for Tariq.

It’s bad enough that Brick’s ordering us all to go to this whacked-out march in the first place. Now I have to dress for it.

Tariq gets a vigil. Tariq gets a march. Can’t turn on the TV without hearing the latest in the Tariq Johnson case. Can’t get away from it.

I’m watching the coverage now, pretty regular. I’ve seen myself on TV, a couple of times now. I keep hoping to catch another glimpse. It was exciting for a while, being in it, but now it’s getting old.

The news is acting like Tariq was the first kid ever shot in Underhill. Well, he wasn’t. We’ve lost Kings before. We’ve put plenty of pain on the Stingers too. No one looks twice.

I don’t see the point. Tariq isn’t worth all this hoopla. Ain’t a damn thing special about him.

STEVE CONNERS

I catch Will heading out the door, wearing a hoodie. “I thought your Mom took those away.”

“Get off my back,” he snaps at me.

“I hope you’re not thinking of going down to that protest.”

“So what if I am?”

“I know they’re trying to make it a race relations issue on TV. I’m proud of you for wanting to support that, but it’s a bad neighborhood.”

“Bad ’cause it’s where the black people live?”

“Not all black people.”

He smirks at me. “Riiiiight.”

Everything I say is coming out wrong. “It’s about more than race—” I try.

Will smirks harder. “You got shelves and shelves of history books, Steve. Sociology. Race and politics. How come you still think racism’s in the past?” I’m vaguely surprised he knows what’s on my shelves. He’s never shown much interest in my library. He yo-yos between the kitchen and his bedroom, and that’s about it.

“Do you read my books? I ask him.

“What, now that’s off limits, too?”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant, I didn’t know you were interested in reading.”

“You think I can’t read now?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“You’re taking them out of mine.”

It’s heated between us. It never has been. This is new ground. Best to stand firm. “You can’t go down there.”

“I know guys like Tariq,” Will says. “I got a right to go down there.”

“Not anymore.”

“You saying I got no rights?”

“He was a lowlife gang member. That’s most likely, isn’t it?” I don’t like saying it. Not sure I mean it, but there it is.

“What if he wasn’t?” Will shouts. His hands tremble as he throws down his backpack. “What if I still lived down there? I like fucking Snickers.”

I don’t know why he has to use this gutter language, but I swallow any scolding words. Because I hear him. For the first time, I hear it, so loud and so strong. I hear him saying,
this could happen to me
.

WILL (AKA EMZEE)

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,”
Steve says, in response to my shouting. He steps up as if to take me by the shoulders, but I break free and race off to my room. It’s not up to him, is it? I can go out the window, like always. Instead I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling.

I don’t hear Steve coming; when I happen to glance over at the doorway, he’s standing there silently, looking at me. I don’t know for how long.

“Will you loan me a hoodie?” Steve says. Now, after all that, he wants to go with me to the march.

“Mom took them, remember?” I answer, thrusting the words at him. “This one isn’t even mine.” I glare at him, glad for once to show my defiance. He has to know—I can’t be held down by his rules, his world.

“Let’s find them,” he says. His throat sounds gruff.

Steve drives us, which takes much less time than the bus. He pays for parking in a crowded garage. I should have made him come to Underhill my way. Show him how the other half lives. Not that he could ever understand.

We head out of the garage, but I find myself turning the opposite direction from the park. Steve follows.

“I want to show you around the neighborhood first,” I tell him, which comes as a surprise to both of us.

“All right.”

We walk past our old apartment and my former schools. I point out some street murals I like, but I don’t mention I painted them. I show him the diner where Mom and I used go all the time. Steve buys us milkshakes to go and we keep walking.

It’s crowded at the park, where people have begun to gather. It’s not quite sundown, but there’s clearly going to be a big turnout. We are folded in among them and we look up at the stage, with all the speakers and microphones. The Reverend Sloan is up there, and Tariq’s mom, grandma, and little sister holding hands. The speeches start and finish, and then the march begins. We parade through the streets of Underhill, past the site of the shooting, making our way toward Police Headquarters and City Hall, downtown.

Steve puts his arm around my shoulders. If he has ever touched me before today, I can’t remember it. I don’t shrug away. It doesn’t have to mean anything, I realize. It’s just the feeling of the crowd, so easy to get caught up in. Among all the candles and the hoodies, and the low, eerie chant:
Justice for Tariq. We want justice for Tariq.

Steve squeezes my shoulder. I look up at him and his mouth is moving, along with the chant. His cheeks are streaked with tears.

My chest fills with a burst of feeling, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. I never knew my real dad. Mom says he wasn’t a fatherly type of guy, which always seemed like an obvious thing to say, since he wasn’t around. Steve’s arm tightens around me, and my eyes start going, too. He doesn’t say a word, but I just know, the way you know things sometimes. I am under his wing, and I am in his heart.

“I won’t try to be your father,”
he told me, the day we moved our things in to his house. I was grateful for him saying it, from that minute to this one, but I wonder now. Maybe that plan can’t last.

TOM ARLEN

I keep the curtains closed, but for a slit. So I can see out. Crowds gather slowly through the late afternoon, clad in hoodies, carrying posters and hand-painted signs.

Peach Street no longer streams with the quiet flow of the vigil. Voices now ring with whitewater fury; the air itself turns angry and intense and it pushes through the walls and sends my house guest to the liquor cabinet again and again.

“They’re going to get me,” he says. “I should have left town.”

“You’re all right,” I tell him, though I’m sure it’s a lie. I don’t know what Tyrell saw, or who he’ll tell.

Tyrell’s a good kid, though. Real responsible. Comes for my recycling every week, like clockwork, all on his own initiative. He’s saving for college, he told me. I highly doubt he hangs around with the likes of Tariq Johnson and the Kings.

I reassure Jack again. “No one’s trying to get you.”

Through the crack in the curtains it all seems less certain. We just sit and we drink and try not to listen.

JENNICA

“Okay, ready,” Kimberly says, popping back onto the sidewalk in jeans and a green hoodie. She carries a sleek black folder of papers and a cell phone in her hand, clicking away with her thumbs. I feel like I’m really intruding on her now, but I guess I’m desperate. I need her. There has to be someone, and without Noodle there’s no one and it’s like a freefall that hasn’t started yet but it’s about to, and maybe I will crash and maybe I’ll die, or maybe I’ll get lucky and find somewhere else to land, away from him. If I can be like Kimberly, so beautiful and strong, maybe it won’t hurt so bad if all that happens at the end of the fall is that I crash into the earth.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Thanks for letting me come along.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “Maybe it’ll be fun.” I suppose it’s a weird thing to say about an event like this, but I know what she means.

I don’t know if we’re exactly friends or what, or if she’s taking pity on me and how pathetic I must seem to her, being tethered to Noodle like I have been. He’s called three times in the past half hour and I just let it ring and ring.

“Are you ignoring him?” Kimberly asks.

“Maybe,” I admit.

It’s buzzing again now. I’ve turned off the sound, but the vibrations tremble out from my pocket, through my hips and stomach and up and down my limbs. Like a shiver.

Outside in the crowd, Kimberly links arms with me and I feel stronger. We walk amid the jostle and the darkening sky fills with sad music. It’s not clear who is singing. It isn’t us at first, but after a while it is. It’s all of us.

The little guy from the other night, Tyrell, weaves past us through the mobs, alone and hooded. A glimpse of his chin and cheek is all I get, but it’s enough to recognize. I touch his arm and he smiles at me. We link arms, too; a lot of people are linked, and there’s strength in that, there’s a river of hope in that.

There is a podium stage in the park and the Reverend Sloan is on it. Kimberly sucks in her breath when he starts to speak. We’re on the fringes of things and I don’t want to get any closer. I thought that to face this thing would help purge it, but each moment only pushes Tariq deeper into me. The flit of his hand on my skin or the taste of his breath in the air—it must have been his last breath that I tasted; I grow more and more certain—and it’s a part of my every breath and maybe that’s how it’ll always be. Maybe I can learn to breathe around it.

“Shh,” Kimberly says. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”

I’ve been stuck for a while in a place without tears. Not anymore. The swelling music, the soft hoodie, the linked arms bolstering me. It’s all too much.

“Shh,” she says.

“Oh, God,” Tyrell breathes. His arm snakes out of the loop in mine.

With my newly freed hand, I push back my hood to find Noodle steaming toward me.

NOODLE

Bitch has been ignoring my calls. I storm up to her. “What gives?”

“I thought you weren’t coming,” she blurts. Her face is a mess of tears. I’m getting tired of all this.

“So you thought you’d come without me?” I grab her and yank her away from the big girl she’s linked up with.

“Hey,” says the other girl.

“What are you doing here?” Jennica cries. “Let go.”

“Brick changed his mind. If you picked up your phone, you might know that.”

“You didn’t leave any messages,” she says.

“You could have just picked up.”

“Maybe I couldn’t.”

She always has before. No matter when I call. She makes time for me.