فصل 05

FIVE

On Monday, the day I’m supposed to talk to the detectives, I’m crying out of nowhere, hunched over my bed as the iron in my hand spits out steam. Momma takes it before I burn the Williamson crest on my polo.

She rubs my shoulder. “Let it out, Munch.”

We have a quiet breakfast at the kitchen table without Seven. He spent the night at his momma’s house. I pick at my waffles. Just thinking about going into that station with all those cops makes me wanna puke. Food would make it worse.

After breakfast, we join hands in the living room like we always do, under the framed poster of the Ten-Point Program, and Daddy leads us in prayer.

“Black Jesus, watch over my babies today,” he says. “Keep them safe, steer them from wrong, and help them recognize snakes from friends. Give them the wisdom they need to be their own people.

“Help Seven with this situation at his momma’s house, and let him know he can always come home. Thank you for Sekani’s miraculous, sudden healing that just so happened to come after he found out they’re having pizza at school today.” I peek out at Sekani, whose eyes and mouth are open wide. I smirk and close my eyes. “Be with Lisa at the clinic as she helps your people. Help my baby girl get through her situation, Lord. Give her peace of mind, and help her speak her truth this afternoon. And lastly, strengthen Ms. Rosalie, Cameron, Tammy, and Brenda as they go through this difficult time. In your precious name I pray, amen.”

“Amen,” the rest of us say.

“Daddy, why you put me on the spot like that with Black Jesus?” Sekani complains.

“He knows the truth,” Daddy says. He wipes crust from the corners of Sekani’s eyes and straightens the collar of his polo. “I’m trying to help you out. Get you some mercy or something, man.”

Daddy pulls me into a hug. “You gon’ be a’ight?”

I nod into his chest. “Yeah.”

I could stay like this all day—it’s one of the few places where One-Fifteen doesn’t exist and where I can forget about talking to detectives—but Momma says we need to leave before rush hour.

Now don’t get it wrong, I can drive. I got my license a week after my sixteenth birthday. But I can’t get a car unless I pay for it myself. I told my parents I don’t have time for a job with school and basketball. They said I don’t have time for a car then either. Messed up.

It takes forty-five minutes to get to school on a good day, and an hour on a slow one. Sekani doesn’t have to wear his headphones ’cause Momma doesn’t cuss anybody out on the freeway. She hums with gospel songs on the radio and says, “Give me strength, Lord. Give me strength.”

We get off the freeway into Riverton Hills and pass all these gated neighborhoods. Uncle Carlos lives in one of them. To me, it’s so weird to have a gate around a neighborhood. Seriously, are they trying to keep people out or keep people in? If somebody puts a gate around Garden Heights, it’ll be a little bit of both.

Our school is gated too, and the campus has new, modern buildings with lots of windows and marigolds blooming along the walkways.

Momma gets in the carpool lane for the lower school. “Sekani, you remembered your iPad?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lunch card?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Gym shorts? And you better have gotten the clean ones too.”

“Yes, Momma. I’m almost nine. Can’t you give me a little credit?”

She smiles. “All right, big man. Think you can give me some sugar?”

Sekani leans over the front seat and kisses her cheek. “Love you.”

“Love you too. And don’t forget, Seven’s bringing you home today.”

He runs over to some of his friends and blends in with all the other kids in khakis and polos. We get in the carpool lane for my school.

“All right, Munch,” Momma says. “Seven’s gonna bring you to the clinic after school, then you and I will go to the station. Are you absolutely sure you’re up for it?”

No. But Uncle Carlos promised it’ll be okay. “I’ll do it.”

“Okay. Call me if you don’t think you can make it the whole day at school.”

Hold up. I could’ve stayed home? “Why are you making me come in the first place?”

“’Cause you need to get out the house. Out that neighborhood. I want you to at least try, Starr. This will sound mean, but just because Khalil’s not living doesn’t mean you stop living. You understand, baby?”

“Yeah.” I know she’s right, but it feels wrong.

We get to the front of the carpool line. “Now I don’t have to ask if you brought some funky-ass gym shorts, do I?” she says.

I laugh. “No. Bye, Momma.”

“Bye, baby.”

I get out the car. For at least seven hours I don’t have to talk about One-Fifteen. I don’t have to think about Khalil. I just have to be normal Starr at normal Williamson and have a normal day. That means flipping the switch in my brain so I’m Williamson Starr. Williamson Starr doesn’t use slang—if a rapper would say it, she doesn’t say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her “hood.” Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she’s the “angry black girl.” Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, side-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is nonconfrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto.

I can’t stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway.

I sling my backpack over my shoulder. As usual it matches my J’s, the blue-and-black Elevens like Jordan wore in Space Jam. I worked at the store a month to buy them. I hate dressing like everybody else, but The Fresh Prince taught me something. See, Will always wore his school uniform jacket inside out so he could be different. I can’t wear my uniform inside out, but I can make sure my sneakers are always dope and my backpack always matches them.

I go inside and scan the atrium for Maya, Hailey, or Chris. I don’t see them, but I see that half the kids have tans from spring break. Luckily I was born with one. Someone covers my eyes.

“Maya, I know that’s you.”

She snickers and moves her hands. I’m not tall at all, but Maya has to stand on her tiptoes to cover my eyes. And the chick actually wants to play center on the varsity basketball team. She wears her hair in a high bun because she probably thinks it makes her look taller, but nope.

“What’s up, Ms. I Can’t Text Anyone Back?” she says, and we do our little handshake. It’s not complicated like Daddy and King’s, but it works for us. “I was starting to wonder if you were abducted by aliens.”

“Huh?”

She holds up her phone. The screen has a brand-new crack stretching from corner to corner. Maya’s always dropping it. “You haven’t texted me in two days, Starr,” she says. “Not cool.”

“Oh.” I’ve barely looked at my phone since Khalil got . . . since the incident. “Sorry. I was working at the store. You know how crazy that can get. How was your spring break?”

“Okay, I guess.” She munches on some Sour Patch Kids. “We visited my great-grandparents in Taipei. I ended up taking a bunch of snapbacks and basketball shorts, so all week long I heard, ‘Why do you dress like a boy?’ ‘Why do you play a boy sport?’ Blah, blah, blah. And it was awful when they saw a picture of Ryan. They asked if he was a rapper!”

I laugh and steal some of her candy. Maya’s boyfriend, Ryan, happens to be the only other black kid in eleventh grade, and everybody expects us to be together. Because apparently when it’s two of us, we have to be on some Noah’s Ark type shit and pair up to preserve the blackness of our grade. Lately I’m super aware of BS like that.

We head for the cafeteria. Our table near the vending machines is almost full. There’s Hailey, sitting on top of it, having a heated discussion with curly-haired, dimpled Luke. I think that’s foreplay for them. They’ve liked each other since sixth grade, and if your feelings can survive the awkwardness of middle school you should stop playing around and go out.

Some of the other girls from the team are there too: Jess the co-captain and Britt the center who makes Maya look like an ant. It’s kinda stereotypical that we all sit together, but it worked out that way. I mean, who else will listen to us bitch about swollen knees and understand inside jokes born on the bus after a game?

Chris’s boys from the basketball team are at the table next to ours, egging Hailey and Luke on. Chris isn’t there yet. Unfortunately and fortunately.

Luke sees me and Maya and reaches his arms toward us. “Thank you! Two sensible people who can end this discussion.”

I slide onto the bench beside Jess. She rests her head on my shoulder. “They’ve been at it for fifteen minutes.”

Poor girl. I pat her hair. I have a secret crush on Jess’s pixie cut. My neck’s not long enough for one, but her hair is perfect. Every strand is where it should be. If I were into girls, I would totally date her for her hair, and she would date me for my shoulder.

“What’s it about this time?” I ask.

“Pop Tarts,” Britt says.

Hailey turns to us and points at Luke. “This jerk actually said they’re better warmed up in the microwave.”

“Eww,” I say, instead of my usual “Ill,” and Maya goes, “Are you serious?”

“I know, right?” says Hailey.

“Jesus Christ!” Luke says. “I only asked for a dollar to buy one from the machine!”

“You’re not wasting my money to destroy a perfectly good Pop Tart in a microwave.”

“They’re supposed to be heated up!” he argues.

“I actually agree with Luke,” Jess says. “Pop Tarts are ten times better heated up.”

I move my shoulder so her head isn’t resting on it. “We can’t be friends anymore.”

Her mouth drops open, and she pouts.

“Fine, fine,” I say, and she rests her head on my shoulder with a wide grin. Total weirdo. I don’t know how she’ll survive without my shoulder when she graduates in a few months.

“Anyone who heats up a Pop Tart should be charged,” Hailey says.

“And imprisoned,” I say.

“And forced to eat uncooked Pop Tarts until they accept how good they are,” Maya adds.

“It is law,” Hailey finishes, smacking the table like that settles it.

“You guys have issues,” Luke says, hopping off the table. He picks at Hailey’s hair. “I think all that dye seeped into your brain.”

She swats at him as he leaves. She’s added blue streaks to her honey-blond hair and cut it shoulder-length. In fifth grade, she trimmed it with some scissors during a math test because she felt like it. That was the moment I knew she didn’t give a shit.

“I like the blue, Hails,” I say. “And the cut.”

“Yeah.” Maya grins. “It’s very Joe Jonas of you.”

Hailey whips her head around so fast, her eyes flashing. Maya and I snicker.

So there’s a video deep in the depths of YouTube of the three of us lip-syncing to the Jonas Brothers and pretending to play guitars and drums in Hailey’s bedroom. She decided she was Joe, I was Nick, and Maya was Kevin. I really wanted to be Joe—I secretly loved him the most, but Hailey said she should have him, so I let her.

I let her have her way a lot. Still do. That’s part of being Williamson Starr, I guess.

“I so have to find that video,” Jess says.

“Nooo,” Hailey goes, sliding off the tabletop. “It must never be found.” She sits across from us. “Never. Ne-ver. If I remembered that account’s password, I’d delete it.”

“Ooh, what was the account’s name?” Jess asks. “JoBro Lover or something? Wait, no, JoBro Lova. Everybody liked to misspell shit in middle school.”

I smirk and mumble, “Close.”

Hailey looks at me. “Starr!”

Maya and Britt crack up.

It’s moments like this that I feel normal at Williamson. Despite the guidelines I put on myself, I’ve still found my group, my table.

“Okay then,” Hailey says. “I see how it is, Maya Jonas and Nick’s Starry Girl 2000—”

“So, Hails,” I say before she can finish my old screen name. She grins. “How was your spring break?”

Hailey loses her grin and rolls her eyes. “Oh, it was wonderful. Dad and Stepmother Dearest dragged me and Remy to the house in the Bahamas for ‘family bonding.’”

And bam. That normal feeling? Gone. I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas—we’d swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend.

“Sounds like my parents,” says Britt. “Took us to fucking Harry Potter World for the third year in a row. I’m sick of Butter Beer and corny family photos with wands.”

Holy shit. Who the fuck complains about going to Harry Potter World? Or Butter Beer? Or wands?

I hope none of them ask about my spring break. They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill my friend.

“I guess the Bahamas wasn’t so bad,” Hailey says. “They wanted us to do family stuff, but we ended up doing our own thing the entire time.”

“You mean you texted me the entire time,” Maya says.

“It was still my own thing.”

“All day, every day,” Maya adds. “Ignoring the time difference.”

“Whatever, Shorty. You know you liked talking to me.”

“Oh,” I say. “That’s cool.”

Really though, it’s not. Hailey never texted me during spring break. She barely texts me at all lately. Maybe once a week now, and it used to be every day. Something’s changed between us, and neither one of us acknowledges it. We’re normal when we’re at Williamson, like now. Beyond here though, we’re no longer best friends, just . . . I don’t know.

Plus she unfollowed my Tumblr.

She has no clue that I know. I once posted a picture of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy who was murdered for whistling at a white woman in 1955. His mutilated body didn’t look human. Hailey texted me immediately after, freaking out. I thought it was because she couldn’t believe someone would do that to a kid. No. She couldn’t believe I would reblog such an awful picture.

Not long after that, she stopped liking and reblogging my other posts. I looked through my followers list. Aww, Hails was no longer following me. With me living forty-five minutes away, Tumblr is supposed to be sacred ground where our friendship is cemented. Unfollowing me is the same as saying “I don’t like you anymore.”

Maybe I’m being sensitive. Or maybe things have changed, maybe I’ve changed. For now I guess we’ll keep pretending everything is fine.

The first bell rings. On Mondays AP English is first for me, Hailey, and Maya. On the way they get into this big discussion-turned-argument about NCAA brackets and the Final Four. Hailey was born a Notre Dame fan. Maya hates them almost unhealthily. I stay out that discussion. The NBA is more my thing anyway.

We turn down the hall, and Chris is standing in the doorway of our class, his hands stuffed in pockets and a pair of headphones draped around his neck. He looks straight at me and stretches his arm across the doorway.

Hailey glances from him to me. Back and forth, back and forth. “Did something happen with you guys?”

My pursed lips probably give me away. “Yeah. Sort of.”

“That douche,” Hailey says, reminding me why we’re friends—she doesn’t need details. If someone hurts me in any way, they’re automatically on her shit list. It started in fifth grade, two years before Maya came along. We were those “crybaby” kids who bust out crying at the smallest shit. Me because of Natasha, and Hailey because she lost her mom to cancer. We rode the waves of grief together.

That’s why this weirdness between us doesn’t make sense. “What do you want to do, Starr?” she asks.

I don’t know. Before Khalil, I planned to cold-shoulder Chris with a sting more powerful than a nineties R&B breakup song. But after Khalil I’m more like a Taylor Swift song. (No shade, I fucks with Tay-Tay, but she doesn’t serve like nineties R&B on the angry-girlfriend scale.) I’m not happy with Chris, yet I miss him. I miss us. I need him so much that I’m willing to forget what he did. That’s scary as fuck too. Someone I’ve only been with for a year means that much to me? But Chris . . . he’s different.

You know what? I’ll Beyoncé him. Not as powerful as a nineties R&B breakup song, but stronger than a Taylor Swift. Yeah. That’ll work. I tell Hailey and Maya, “I’ll handle him.”

They move so I’m between them like they’re my bodyguards, and we go to the door together.

Chris bows to us. “Ladies.”

“Move!” Maya orders. Funny considering how much Chris towers over her.

He looks at me with those baby blues. He got a tan over break. I used to tell him he was so pale he looked like a marshmallow. He hated that I compared him to food. I told him that’s what he got for calling me caramel. It shut him up.

Dammit though. He’s wearing the Space Jam Elevens too. I forgot we decided to wear them the first day back. They look good on him. Jordans are my weakness. Can’t help it.

“I just wanna talk to my girl,” he claims.

“I don’t know who that is,” I say, Beyoncé’ing him like a pro.

He sighs through his nose. “Please, Starr? Can we at least talk about it?”

I’m back to Taylor Swift because the please does it. I nod at Hailey and Maya.

“You hurt her, and I’ll kill you,” Hailey warns, and she and Maya go in to class without me.

Chris and I move away from the door. I lean against a locker and fold my arms. “I’m listening,” I say.

A bass-heavy instrumental plays in his headphones. Probably one of his beats. “I’m sorry for what happened. I should’ve talked to you first.”

I cock my head. “We did talk about it. A week before. Remember?”

“I know, I know. And I heard you. I just wanted to be prepared in case—”

“You could push the right buttons and convince me to change my mind?”

“No!” His hands go up in surrender. “Starr, you know I wouldn’t—that’s not—I’m sorry, okay? I took it too far.”

Understatement. The day before Big D’s party, Chris and I were in Chris’s ridiculously large room. The third floor of his parents’ mansion is a suite for him, a perk of being the last born to empty-nesters. I try to forget that he has an entire floor as big as my house and hired help that looks like me.

Fooling around isn’t new for us, and when Chris slipped his hand in my shorts, I didn’t think anything of it. Then he got me going, and I really wasn’t thinking. At all. For real, my thought process went out the door. And right as I was at that moment, he stopped, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a condom. He raised his eyebrows at me, silently asking for an invitation to go all the way.

All I could think about was those girls I see walking around Garden Heights, babies propped on their hips. Condom or no condom, shit happens.

I went off on Chris. He knew I wasn’t ready for that, we already talked about it, and yet he had a condom? He said he wanted to be responsible, but if I said I’m not ready, I’m not ready.

I left his house pissed and horny, the absolute worst way to leave.

My mom may have been right though. She once said that after you go there with a guy, it activates all these feelings, and you wanna do it all the time. Chris and I went far enough that I notice every single detail about his body now. His cute nostrils that flare when he sighs. His soft brown hair that my fingers love to explore. His gentle lips, and his tongue that wets them every so often. The five freckles on his neck that are in the perfect spots for kissing.

More than that, I remember the guy who spends almost every night on the phone with me talking about nothing and everything. The one who loves to make me smile. Yeah, he pisses me off sometimes, and I’m sure I piss him off, but we mean something. We actually mean a lot.

Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m crumbling. “Chris . . .”

He goes for a low blow and beatboxes an all-too-familiar, “Boomp . . . boomp, boomp, boomp.”

I point at him. “Don’t you dare!”

“‘Now, this is a story all about how, my life got flipped—turned upside down. And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air.’”

He beat-boxes the instrumental and pops his chest and booty to the rhythm. People pass by us, laughing. A guy whistles suggestively. Someone shouts, “Shake that ass, Bryant!”

My smile grows before I can stop it.

The Fresh Prince isn’t just my show, it’s our show. Sophomore year he followed my Tumblr, and I followed him back. We knew of each other from school, but we didn’t know each other. One Saturday, I reblogged a bunch of Fresh Prince GIFs and clips. He liked and reblogged every single one. That Monday morning in the cafeteria, he paid for my Pop Tarts and grape juice and said, “The first Aunt Viv was the best Aunt Viv.”

It was the beginning of us.

Chris gets The Fresh Prince, which helps him get me. We once talked about how cool it was that Will remained himself in his new world. I slipped up and said I wish I could be like that at school. Chris said, “Why can’t you, Fresh Princess?”

Ever since, I don’t have to decide which Starr I have to be with him. He likes both. Well, the parts I’ve shown him. Some things I can’t reveal, like Natasha. Once you’ve seen how broken someone is it’s like seeing them naked—you can’t look at them the same anymore.

I like the way he looks at me now, as if I’m one of the best things in his life. He’s one of the best things in mine too.

I can’t lie, we get the “why is he dating her” stare that usually comes from rich white girls. Sometimes I wonder the same thing. Chris acts like those looks don’t exist. When he does stuff like this, rapping and beatboxing in the middle of a busy hall just to make me smile, I forget about those looks too.

He starts the second verse, swaying his shoulders and looking at me. The worst part? His silly butt knows it’s working. “‘In West Philadelphia, born and raised’—c’mon, babe. Join in.”

He grabs my hands.

One-Fifteen follows Khalil’s hands with the flashlight.

He orders Khalil to get out with his hands up.

He barks at me to put my hands on the dashboard.

I kneel beside my dead friend in the middle of the street with my hands raised. A cop as white as Chris points a gun at me.

As white as Chris.

I flinch and snatch away.

Chris frowns. “Starr, you okay?”

Khalil opens the door. “You okay, Starr—”

Pow!

There’s blood. Too much blood.

The second bell rings, jolting me back to normal Williamson, where I’m not normal Starr.

Chris leans down, his face in front of mine. My tears blur him. “Starr?”

It’s a few tears, yeah, but I feel exposed. I turn to go to class, and Chris grabs my arm. I yank away and whirl on him.

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 of 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.