How It Went Down (22 page)

“First you leave without a word last night and then you’re not picking up and now you’re down here with this chickenshit punk?” Tyrell is small and getting smaller, backing away. “What gives?” I say again.

“I want to break up,” she says. “I can’t be with you anymore. We’re breaking up.” She throws the words at me, each time. Like a fistfight, one punch after the other.

I just look at her. The tears are ugly, but she is still beautiful and there is no way I’m letting her go. My fists clench around her biceps, tight and tighter, until she turns her head away and the cries become cries of pain.

“No,” I say. It won’t happen this way. I won’t let it. “No.”

“You can’t say no,” she tells me. “It’s done.”

JENNICA

My arms sting from the insistence in Noodle’s grip and I don’t know how many times I have to say it.
It’s done. We’re done. Let me go.

“That hurts,” I tell him finally, which I’ve never been able to tell him before, and I don’t know if it’s the way the people around us have pushed back their hoodies to look at us locked together or how everything’s out in the open.

He relaxes his fists.

“I didn’t mean to do this in front of people,” I tell him. “I’m sorry.” The people around us are strangers, except for Brick, who’s coming up now, and Kimberly and Tyrell, who are standing there, helpless.

Noodle drags me to the edge of the crowd, away from his friends and mine. The rest of the people flow past, indifferent to everything but Tariq.

I’m already drained to empty, but Noodle’s in front of me, and even though it’s over between us, the part where it actually
becomes
over isn’t finished. Not yet.

The hollow feeling in my gut isn’t hunger.

I don’t expect anything to change, really. I’ll get up in the morning, go to school, go to work. Quieter evenings, I guess. Just by myself at home. No Noodle. No girlfriends, because they all hook up with Kings and hang at King parties. But I won’t.

I don’t know who I’ll hang out with exactly. Kimberly, maybe, if tonight hasn’t made her think I’m a total spaz loser and scared her away. Auntie Anjelica will worry if I stop going out altogether, but I can’t think about that now.

“No one leaves a King,” Noodle thunders at me.

“You leave me, then,” I say. “I don’t care how you tell it.”

“Who is it,” he says. “There’s some other guy?”

“There’s no one. This is just what I want.”

I’m crying worse now. It’s been over a year. I’ve seen every kind of face he has to offer. Seen him mad. Seen him tender. Seen him sexy. Seen him puffed up. Seen him laughing. Seen him high.

Never seen him cry. Never heard “I’m sorry.”

Still don’t.

BRICK

Noodle comes back to us heated. “That bitch,” he says. “I’m better off.”

“What happened?”

“I cut her loose,” he goes.

My brow rises. “Yeah?” They were together a long time.

“Shit,” Noodle says. “She’s acting the fool. This Tariq thing screwed with her mind. I ain’t got time for that crap.”

“Sure, sure.” I crane my neck and look through the crowd, try to see after her. I want—I don’t know. I want to let her know she can still come around my place. I’ll keep Noodle off, if that’s the deal. Jennica’s the best girl we hang with. It’d suck to lose her. How could you not want that in front of you? That smile. Those eyes. Let alone the rest of her.

Noodle pounds a fist into his palm. “I wanna fuck someone up,” he goes. His eye falls on Tyrell. “You,” he goes, pointing. “What do you think you’re doing hanging with my girl?”

“Hey, hey.” I nudge Noodle off, because it looks like he’s about to jump the poor little guy, and if there was ever a recruitment killer it’s getting your face beat to a pulp by a so-called friend. “Ty’s okay. And she’s not your girl now, anyway,” I remind him. “You said so.”

“Chickenshit punk,” he spits, glaring at Tyrell over my shoulder. “You think you got what it takes? You think you wanna be a King? You ain’t got nothing!”

Noodle postures up against me, making for Tyrell. I push him off. “Fucking chill,” I order him. But he can’t and I can’t blame him, because I walk around with my eyes open, which means I saw it coming, and it means I know he lied, and nothing’s worse than when your girl walks off and ends it. That’s if you love her, and he does.

“
Fuck
,” he screams, in a rage against the sky. The hooded people turn and stare, in a wave, like a thousand grim reapers. This march is much too morbid, I realize, everyone clad in Tariq’s death shroud. Noodle’s fury is more right, more real. Losing Jennica rips him. Losing Tariq rips me even deeper. Because it’s definitely forever.

I could lay Noodle out in a second. But I don’t. Because my mind works smooth, which is why I’m in charge. Instead I tighten my arms around his chest. It ain’t gangster, but it’s necessary.

“There’s a lot of cameras here,” I whisper. “Let’s take a walk.” It’s a peaceful protest. Can’t go calling attention to ourselves like this.

Tyrell steps up behind me. I feel him move in close. Think to myself: maybe he’s got stones after all. By now I’d have figured he’d be long gone and running.

He speaks quiet, enough for my ears and Noodle’s alone. The fury that’s over all of us reflected in his voice. Not heated and flailing. Cold as ice.

“What?” I demand, not believing what I just heard him say.

“You wanna fuck someone up?” Tyrell says again. “How about Jack Franklin? I know where he is.”

TYRELL

Amid the surge of everything, Brick and Noodle whisk me out of the crowd, around the corner, and down the alley behind Rocky’s store. Sammy’s with us, too. I breathe a sigh to be out of the masses, but it is not a sigh of relief. There is no relief for anything I feel.

“You know where Franklin is?” Noodle asks. It’s just the four of us now, in the relative quiet. There is still the cobwebbing music from beyond and now also a musty cardboard stench in the alley and the frequent whiff of garbage.

I nod. It was rash, what I said. It just came out of me, under the pressure of the moment. And there’s no taking it back. “He’s right here. In Underhill.”

“That’s too easy,” Noodle hoots. “Idiot. What’s he doing down here?”

“Asking for it,” Sammy says.

“Straight up,” Brick says. “We’ll give it to him.”

“Just tell us where,” Noodle says. “We’ll go fuck him up together.” I’m grateful that the murderous light in his eyes is now directed at someone other than me.

“No,” Brick says, which surprises me. “Tyrell found him. Tyrell gets to fuck him up.”

They turn to me. Four eyes in two hulking bodies; they put me in a pressure cooker. I look to Sammy for help, but he’s looking straight through me, real intense, with his hand held up around his hip.

“This is your time, Tyrell.” Brick’s arm goes around my shoulders, heavy and sure. “You’re gonna show Jack Franklin who’s boss.”

The lid’s on, the heat is up and I can’t see a way out. I shake my head anyway. “I—”

Brick draws his knife. “You can use this. After tonight, you’ll earn a blade of your own. I got it waiting for you at my place.”

“I can’t—” I whisper.

“Sure you can,” Brick says. “All you gotta do is think about how this is the guy that took Tariq away. The guy that fucked up your best friend and got away with it. He’s gonna get away with it, Ty. Can’t you feel that? You’re smart. You watch the news. You know how it’s gonna go down.”

Brick leans in closer. “Think about his face on the news, and how no one in the goddamn world knows where he is to bring him justice—except you. You and this knife.” He arcs it in front of me, slowly, such that I see my reflection in its blade, even in the gathering dusk.

It plays out in my mind, as Brick is speaking. Franklin, down and bleeding. Me standing over him. The tight way Brick is pacing—I have that same tightness inside me, looking for a way to get out.

“You want me to kill him?” I gulp. I’ve heard you have to do something really bad to be initiated. Did Tariq have to kill a guy? Did he have blood on his hands, like Franklin? I can’t imagine it. I’m sure he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Didn’t.

Noodle laughs, high-pitched and dissonant with the eerie music from the march.

“I think he’s gonna die,” Brick says. “I think our blades are gonna do it, but not tonight.”

“Tonight is just a warning,” Noodle says. “Mess with the Kings, you get cut.”

That’s probably what Sciss told Junior, wasn’t it? Just a cut. I shiver, but it doesn’t shake away the rush I feel underneath.

“The police aren’t coming for him,” Brick tells me. “They love a guy like Franklin. Someone down in city hall’s probably making him up a passport right now. He’s gonna fly to Buenos Aires and live in paradise forever. So it’s up to us to bring him justice…” He draws the knife through the air across my throat, too close for comfort.

“I’ll fuck him up,” Noodle says, pounding his fist as a demonstration. “Then all you got to do is cut him.” He draws a switchblade quick as a flash and slices it through the air in front of me, three short fast strokes. Down, angle, angle. The shape of a K.

Brick extends the knife to me again. “As soon as the crowd breaks up,” he says. “You’re on.”

SAMMY

Brick’s forgetting the fact that Tyrell hasn’t told us yet where to find Franklin. I’m betting, in the end, he won’t. It’s written in his eyes, how scared he is. I don’t think he has the heart to cut a guy.

We go back to Brick’s place to wait it out, but the crowds don’t break up. The hoodie march has a life of its own, and eventually Noodle is too wasted to fuck anybody up and though Brick is impatient, it seems like the marchers will be at it until dawn.

Deep inside me, I’m grateful. Ty won’t have to cut anybody tonight, and maybe I can get the chance to change things. Maybe Noodle’s high will dampen the memory of how enraged and hurt he is and maybe Brick won’t press the issue in the light of day … but these are just things I’m telling myself. I want this shot. I deserve it. What has Ty ever done to step up into this place?

When I catch him slipping out the door in the middle of the night, I follow.

“Just let me go, please,” he says. “I’m really tired.”

“I’m not out here to make you come back in,” I promise. “I just wanted to see if you’re okay.”

He sighs, deflates. “Not really. I can’t—I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m not even a hundred percent sure of what I know.”

He’s lying about that, I can tell.

“Look, you can use the information however you want,” I tell him, realizing this is the answer to all of my problems.

He brightens. “I’ve been thinking about trying to make a deal. You think Brick’ll leave me alone after this, if I tell him?” he says.

Brick would never go for that.

“You don’t have to tell them at all,” I suggest. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

DAY
NINE

17.
KNIFE

EDWIN “ROCKY” FRY

I did good business last night. More than double my usual sales in the last week, overall. I should be ecstatic, but the headlines still pain me.

10,000 TURN OUT TO MARCH FOR TARIQ

I couldn’t keep enough bottled water cold in the fridge. People bought it warm. Snacks flew off the shelf. They marched their hearts out. I’m not sure it did anyone but my cash register any good.

LEGISLATURE VOTES DOWN GUN REFORM BILL

The timing is strange on that one. They had it in committee for months. All the pressure around Tariq brought it forward this week. If they were going to vote it down, why did they even bother? It’s like they went out of the way to say: no, what happened here is fine.

SLOAN RISES IN POLLS

I guess I wasn’t the only one to benefit in a significant way from what’s been going on. I have to make peace, somehow, with my place in all of this. Peach Street is still my home; I can’t keep thinking of it as a war zone, or a protest platform, or a deathbed. Put one foot in front of the other, go to work. Read the news; sprinkle liberally with salt. Ring up. Make change. Smile. Chit-chat.

Thanks. Have a nice day.

KIMBERLY

First thing in the morning I hurry over to the hotel. I’m practically bouncing with energy after last night’s march. To think, I helped put it together. Some of the media people I emailed and called actually showed! It was so exciting.

Joy bubbles up through my veins. When we were saying goodnight, Al said to me, “I couldn’t have pulled it off without you.” It’s the best thing anyone has ever told me. I could tell he meant it, too, because he kissed my cheek and looked at me all soft. My heart may explode, just thinking about it. I can barely stand to imagine what we might do next.

I have a key to the hotel suite now, but it doesn’t feel quite right to barge in. The door opens right as I’m about to knock.

Al fills the doorway, dressed in casual slacks and a polo shirt under a leather jacket. At the sight of him, my effervescence fades. My eyes drop to the rolling suitcase in his hand.

“Oh, good,” he says, smiling. “You came in time. I wanted to get a chance to say goodbye.”

TINA

Tariq’s bad knife is all I think about.

At bedtime now I cannot sleep.

If there are monsters under the bed,

it doesn’t matter anymore.

There is a monster in the room already.

On TV, some people call Tariq a bad boy.

But they have no evidence.

Evidence means proof.

Some people are looking for evidence now.

Policemen who come inside Tariq’s room

Investigators who took pictures of the sidewalk

Doctors who studied Tariq before he went into the ground.

On TV, they tell the whole story.

Those policemen came into my room, too.

They looked at all my toys.

I stood very still

In exactly the right place.

They did not find any evidence.

BRICK