How It Went Down (23 page)

Ty is scared shitless of what’s about to happen. It’s painted on his face. We all start out that way, though. Sciss scared it out of me and now I’m tough, and all the better for it. A weak little guy like Ty, going solo without a powerhouse like Tariq to back him up? Not possible. It’s in his best interest to oath in and be done with it. He can’t make it in this hood without us. He thinks he’s got it tough now, but he has no idea what’s ahead of him without us.

To go to his dad may be fighting dirty, but I know what cards to play. That’s why I’m in charge. This is one thing I can do for Tariq. I can take care of Tyrell, like Tariq always tried to. He woulda done anything for this little punk, and I feel like I owe him one.

“Thanks for the coffee,” I say. I’ve been sitting here telling Tyrell’s dad all about my plans for Tyrell, and how useful he’s going to be, and what a great addition to my organization, and so on. A load of bull, but I want Ty and I want Franklin. “I’ll be on my way now.”

“Sure thing.” Ty’s father shifts in his seat. His slouch tells me he is cowed by me.

I sit straight and tall and as broad as I can and say, “Let’s go, Ty. We’ve got some business, don’t we?”

Tyrell looks to his father—for help, I imagine. For a way out. But there is no way out. And no help coming, either. This guy’s a bigger weakling than his son.

“You ready?” I say. “Bring your bag. I’ll drop you off at school after.”

Tyrell’s father lifts his head and finally returns his son’s desperate glance. He clears his throat. “Well, go on, then,” he says. “It’s about time you start to man up. It’ll be good for you.”

Tyrell’s features flatten. Is it anguish? Shame?

Right then, I know. We have him. He sees the whole truth now—there’s no one else who will protect him. I tip my head toward the door. “Let’s go.” He stands up from the table and follows me. I notice he leaves his school books behind.

“That’s good,” I say, draping an arm around his shoulders. “You’re going to be okay now,” I promise him.

Ty can act as reluctant as he wants, but in the end he needs us. It’s time he understood.

TYRELL

The knife in Brick’s palm is the easy way. The wrong way. I know this, so why is it drawing me?

Maybe I want to turn back the clock. Maybe that’s why I wake up every single day thinking about the old days.

Maybe I don’t want to think about that afternoon last week, and how everything could have been different. Maybe if I wasn’t so scared of the street I woulda been down there with Tariq. Maybe I woulda been shot instead of him. Maybe no one woulda been shot and everything would be normal.

Probably not, though. And if Franklin showed up, I probably would have been long gone and running.

Some kind of friend I am.

Maybe I can set it straight now. Maybe this is how I make it up to Tariq.

“We’re not going to kill him,” Noodle reminds me. “We’re just gonna cut him. So every time he looks in the mirror, he never forgets what he did.” He leans against the stoop of a building across the street and down the block from Tom Arlen’s place. To hear Noodle tell it, it’s the same stoop he was sitting on when Tariq was shot. Synergy, he says. Things coming full circle.

I stare over at the stone building that houses Tariq’s murderer. Opposite us, I can’t help but also study the larger-than-life mural portrait of Tariq that cropped up on the wall behind where he died. The debris from the vigil has been cleared away, but he isn’t erased. The gray and white portrait makes sure of that. It won’t last forever, of course, but nothing does.

“You can forget what they say on TV, Brick says. “Your boy T stood with us. I gave him a knife, you know. He was coming over.”

“I never saw him with a knife,” I insist. I’m sure I would have noticed. Wouldn’t I?

“You weren’t ready to see,” Brick tells me. With his arm across my shoulder, God forgive me, I believe it. I can see T the way Brick wants me to, and it looks like it might have been the way he says. To just believe it lets me fill in all the blanks. There are so many blanks. I see that now.

I have to admit, here and now, that I’m probably going to do this thing. I don’t take it lightly. Like Tariq always said, I’m a thinking kind of guy. I’m not the type to be rash, like Noodle, or to do it out of pride or some sense of street justice, like Brick. I do it for my own reasons, which are weird and mixed up in my mind, but it comes down to this: Tariq always stood in front of me, tried to protect me. He’s gone now, and so is the wall he put up that might have saved me. It’s terrible and sad, but inevitable. Jack Franklin killed more than Tariq that day. He killed me, too. Numbers don’t lie, and no matter how I crunch them, I end up where Brick wants me: in a plain red T-shirt and black jeans, with a chain at my belt and a knife in my hand.

Brick still has the knife, but he’s about to give it to me. He keeps putting it in front of me. I haven’t taken it yet, but I’m going to. I have to.

In a minute, we’re going to knock on that door, and when Arlen answers, Brick and Noodle will bust inside. They’ll find Franklin, hold him down. Maybe he’ll be unarmed. Unsuspecting. More likely, he’ll be the sort of prick who sleeps with a gun under his pillow and he’ll shoot us all dead and that will be that. We don’t know, and isn’t that the great and terrible thing about it? The risk and the energy and the danger and the possibility of death, even when what we’re doing is a kind of death all in itself. It speeds my pulse and terrifies me, and I look at the painting of Tariq and it’s such a good likeness that I feel as if I’m really looking at him.

There are so many things I wish I could ask my best friend. So many secrets untold. So many promises we never got to live into. He was supposed to be my best man, for crying out loud, because he always believed I’d get a girl someday. He believed in me. No one else does.

Franklin took that away from me. Franklin put me here. If I cut him—I mean
when
I cut him—it’ll be because he earned it. He wronged me and I have to stand up to that. I’ve never stood up to anything. I’ve always been afraid.

Man up
, Dad says. Well, here I am. I can do it. I can stand up for Tariq.

Brick speaks into my ear, hyping me up. “Everyone has a moment. Every King. A moment where you step up or step back and then that’s who you are. Forever.” He leans in. “Someday, if you’re lucky, I’ll tell you about Tariq’s moment. You think you knew every side of him? You didn’t know the half.”

I can’t—I
won’t
—believe Brick when he says that kind of thing. I knew T, better than anyone. He would never …

My heart flutters, unexpectedly flooding me with doubt.

He would, though. T always stepped up, never back. If it was me who had died, Tariq would lead the charge for revenge, I know that much. He looked out for me. No boundaries to that devotion, at least none I ever saw. So, would he want me to do the same? It’s the least I can do, isn’t it?

Brick holds out the knife.

I imagine it slitting my throat. Severing my spine. Stabbing through my heart. But I move anyway.

I don’t know who Tariq really was—if he was the way I see him, or the way Brick does. But I know who he would want me to be.

TINA

Tariq’s knife is very heavy

But no one can see it

Backpacks are good for hiding things

People look at me walking, though

Maybe they guess

Maybe they know

Faces are not good for hiding things

TYRELL

Brick lays the knife across my palm. Heavy and sharp. Unforgiving.

I regret it already, but there’s no turning back now. No way out of this. I grip the knife and trace the shape of a K into my palm with the back edge of its tip. Firm enough to feel, but not enough to draw blood.

“That’s it,” Brick urges me.

The entire focus of my being zeroes in on that metal tip. This is where I live now.

A small figure across the street catches my attention. My gaze flicks up, involuntary. My focus shatters. I recognize this tiny person.

I lower the knife. Brick follows my gaze, which lands on Tariq’s sister darting down the street as fast as her little legs can carry her. Head low, backpack straps clutched in both fists.

“That’s Tina,” I say. “She’s not supposed to be out by herself,”

“I’ll get her,” Brick says.

“She knows me,” I protest.

Brick’s expression hardens. His mouth twitches, as if he’s swallowing the words:
She knows me too
. Because she does. Tariq and Brick used to take care of their sisters together—Tariq even used to try to tell me Brick wasn’t so bad when you got to know him. But that was before. Right now Brick’s busy, being a King. This is who he really is.

“She’ll be fine,” Brick says. “You go on.”

But Tina has become a beacon in my dark room. My focus shifts, and crystallizes. The thing is, I know who who Tariq was. Of course I do. Why couldn’t I see it until now?

Tariq always stood in front of me. If I had been on the street that day, with bullets flying toward me, he would have stepped into their path. That’s Tariq. Maybe he was a King. I don’t know that piece of it. But I do know who he was. I know what he would have died for.

Tariq always stood in front of me. And he always stood in front of Tina.

Brick tells me, have courage. Brick tells me, stand up. Brick tells me, become the man Tariq never has the chance to be. Brick tells me, cut Jack Franklin; he deserves it. He does. I could do it. Maybe I could even live with it.

If I have to use all the courage in my body today, I want to use it for Tariq. Not to avenge him, but to carry him forward.

“She’s not supposed to be out,” I tell Brick. “Something’s wrong.”

“Forget about it,” he says. “You have a job to do. Let’s go.”

“No,” I blurt, extending the knife back to him. For the first time ever, I’m standing up to Brick. I feel nine stories tall. Almost as tall as Tariq always seemed in the moments he said no on my behalf.

“Tyrell,” Brick groans. “We’ve talked about this.”

“You’re the one telling me to do what Tariq would do.” I drop the knife. Just drop it straight onto the street, when it’s clear Brick isn’t going to take it back. He flinches in surprise.

“I’m sorry,” I say, although I’m not the least bit sorry. I’m relieved. “I’ll never be a King. Even if it means you have to kill me now, or whatever.”

Brick stares at me, his expression a flashing mix of things I can’t interpret. I think perhaps I’m seeing the part of him that glanced at Tina and immediately said
“I’ll get her.”
The gentle part underneath that brought him and Tariq together. I never saw it before in Brick, no matter what Tariq said about how they used to be friends.

I back away. Brick says nothing to try and keep me. Noodle, from his lounging place, says, “You crazy motherfucker. You wanna cross us?”

But I’m halfway across the street.

“Tina,” I call. “Tina, where are you going?” I run to catch up to her and she stops. Turns. Sighs. She appears to be looking at my shoes.

“Tina?” I think about touching her shoulder, but I’m afraid she’ll flinch away.

She lifts up her head. She’s so tiny in front of me. “Hi, Tyrell.”

TINA

Caught.

When I go outside by myself I get in big trouble.

Where are you going
? Tyrell asks me.

“It’s a secret.”

A secret from whom
?

I think about that.

“
Tyrell keeps good secrets,
” Tariq used to say.

Best friends are secret keepers.

Tariq knows my secrets.

Tariq is my best friend.

I’m supposed to say “was” now.

Tariq
was
my best friend.

Tariq isn’t anything anymore.

Now I know his secrets too.

Tyrell says:
I’m going to take you home now.

But I can’t go home until the hiding is done.

I open my backpack.

Tyrell looks inside and sees the bad knife.

Where did you get this?

“Tariq’s room.”

Tyrell looks across the street at the bad boys, all dressed in red.

They are loud.

They are angry.

Tariq,
Tyrell whispers. Then he says a BAD WORD.

Sorry
, he says.

I don’t mind the BAD WORDS. I’m just not supposed to say them.

“I have to hide it,” I tell him. “It’s a bad knife.”

It’s a bad knife,
Tyrell agrees.

Tyrell knows Tariq’s secrets now.

Maybe he knew before.

Tyrell is Tariq’s best friend.

Maybe I am supposed to say “was.”

Tyrell
was
Tariq’s best friend.

Tyrell is still lots of things, just not that. I guess.

This is what we’re gonna do. You and me together.

“What?” I want to know.

He takes the whole backpack away from me, not just the bad knife.

He zips it closed and puts it on his shoulder.

Come on. I’ll show you.

“Is it a secret?” I ask.

Yes, our secret.

JENNICA

The daze of solitude swirls around me like a cloud. My phone doesn’t ring. Noodle doesn’t even come by or try to win me back. Maybe he knows I’m not worth it. Maybe he’s already moved on.

Brick sent me a text that says, come by some time. I’m smart enough to read between the lines. He wants me to know there’s always a place for me. With the Kings. Not with Noodle, maybe, but with him. I’ve seen the way Brick always looks at me. His message is clear: I could walk back in, and it would be better. I could stand by the side of a real man. The man in charge. Be queen.

Two weeks ago, it might have sounded good to me. There’s just no appeal in that life anymore.

Pacing the aisles at the drug store, I run into Kimberly. She looks like I do—tired. Subdued. Eyes a little red. We are in the aisle of feminine products and she’s standing there with an empty basket, unlike mine, which overflows with items I’ve collected but cannot buy. It just feels good to shop around and pretend. I set it down and we look for a while at the packages of pink and purple and neon. Neither of us pick anything up.