They leave Khalil's body in the street like it's an exhibit. Police cars and ambulances flash all along Carnation Street. People stand off to the side, trying to see what happened.
"Damn, bruh," some guy says. "They killed him!" The police tell the crowd to leave. Nobody listens.
The paramedics can't do shit for Khalil, so they put me in the back of an ambulance like I need help. The bright lights spotlight me, and people crane their necks to get a peek.
I don't feel special. I feel sick.
The cops rummage through Khalil's car. I try to tell them to stop. Please, cover his body. Please, close his eyes. Please, close his mouth. Get away from his car. Don't pick up his hairbrush.
But the words never come out.
One-Fifteen sits on the sidewalk with his face buried in his hands. Other officers pat his shoulder and tell him it'll be okay.
They finally put a sheet over Khalil. He can't breathe under it. I can't breathe.
I can't.
Breathe.
I gasp.
And gasp.
And gasp.
"Starr?"
Brown eyes with long eyelashes appear in front of me.
They're like mine.
I couldn't say much to the cops, but I did manage to give them my parents' names and phone numbers.
"Hey," Daddy says. "C'mon, let's go."
I open my mouth to respond. A sob comes out.
Daddy is moved aside, and Momma wraps her arms around me. She rubs my back and speaks in hushed tones that tell lies.
"It's all right, baby. It's all right."
We stay this way for a long time. Eventually, Daddy helps us out the ambulance. He wraps his arm around me like a shield against curious eyes and guides me to his Tahoe down the street.
He drives. A streetlight flashes across his face, revealing how tight his jaw is set. His veins bulge along his bald head.
Momma's wearing her scrubs, the ones with the rubber
ducks on them. She did an extra shift at the emergeney room tonight. She wipes her eyes a few times, probably thinking about Khalil or how that could've been me lying in the street.
My stomach twists. All of that blood, and it came out of him. Some of it is on my hands, on Seven's hoodie, on my sneak-ers. An hour ago we were laughing and catching up. Now his blood..•
Hot spit pools in my mouth. My stomach twists tighter. I
gag•
Momma glances at me in the rearview mirror. "Maverick, pull over!"
I throw myself across the backseat and push the door open before the truck comes to a complete stop. It feels like everything in me is coming out, and all I can do is let it.
Momma hops out and runs around to me. She holds my hair out the way and rubs my back.
"I'm so sorry, baby," she says.
When we get home, she helps me undress. Seven's hoodie and my Jordans disappear into a black trash bag, and I never see them again.
I sit in a tub of steaming water and scrub my hands raw to get Khalil's blood off. Daddy carries me to bed, and Momma brushes her fingers through my hair until I fall asleep.
Nightmares wake me over and over again. Momma reminds me to breathe, the same way she did before I outgrew asthma.
think she stays in my room the whole night, 'cause every time I wake up, she's sitting on my bed.
But this time, she's gone. My eyes strain against the brightness of my neon-blue walls. The clock says it's five in the morning. My body's so used to waking up at five, it doesn't care if it's Saturday morning or not.
I stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, trying to recap the night before. The party flashes in my mind, the fight, One-Fifteen pulling me and Khalil over. The first shot rings in my ears. The second. The third.
I'm lying in bed. Khalil is lying in the county morgue.
That's where Natasha ended up too. It happened six years ago, but I still remember everything from that day. I was sweeping floors at our grocery store, saving up for my first pair of J's, when Natasha ran in. She was chunky (her momma told her it was baby fat), dark-skinned, and wore her hair in braids that always looked freshly done. I wanted braids like hers so bad.
"Starr, the hydrant on Elm Street busted!" she said.
That was like saying we had a free water park. I remember looking at Daddy and pleading silently. He said I could go, as long as I promised to be back in an hour.
I don't think I ever saw the water shoot as high as it did that day. Almost everybody in the neighborhood was there too. Just having fun. I was the only one who noticed the car at first.
A tattooed arm stretched out the back window, holding a Glock. People ran. Not me though. My feet became part of the
sidewalk. Natasha was splashing in the water, all happy and stuff. Then—
Pow! Pow! Pow!
I dove into a rosebush. By the time I got up, somebody was yelling, "Call nine-one-one!" At first I thought it was me, 'cause I had blood on my shirt. The thorns on the rosebush got me, that's all. It was Natasha though. Her blood mixed in with the water, and all you could see was a red river flowing down the street.
She looked scared. We were ten, we didn't know what happened after you died. Hell, I still don't know, and she was forced to find out, even if she didn't wanna find out.
I know she didn't. Just like Khalil didn't.
My door creaks open, and Momma peeks in. She tries to smile. "Look who's up."
She sinks onto her spot on the bed and touches my forehead, even though I don't have a fever. She takes care of sick kids so much that it's her first instinct. "How you feeling, Munch?" That nickname. My parents claim I was always munching on something from the moment I got off the bottle. I've lost my big appetite, but I can't lose that nickname. "Tired," I say. My voice has extra bass in it. "I wanna stay in bed."
"I know, baby, but I don't want you here by yourself." That's all I wanna be, by myself. She stares at me, but it feels like she's looking at who I used to be, her little girl with ponytails and a snaggletooth who swore she was a Powerpuff Girl.
It's weird but also kinda like a blanket I wanna get wrapped up in.
"I love you," she says.
"I love you too."
She stands and holds her hand out. "C'mon. Let's get you something to eat."
We walk slowly to the kitchen. Black Jesus hangs from the cross in a painting on the hallway wall, and Malcolm X holds a shotgun in a photograph next to him. Nana still complains about those pictures hanging next to each other.
We live in her old house. She gave it to my parents after my uncle, Carlos, moved her into his humongous house in the suburbs. Uncle Carlos was always uneasy about Nana living by herself in Garden Heights, especially since break-ins and robberies seem to happen more to older folks than anybody.
Nana doesn't think she's old though. She refused to leave, talking about how it was her home and no thugs were gonna run her out, not even when somebody broke in and stole her televi-sion. About a month after that, Uncle Carlos claimed that he and Aunt Pam needed her help with their kids. Since, according to Nana, Aunt Pam "can't cook worth a damn for those poor babies" she finally agreed to move. Our house hasn't lost its Nana-ness though, with its permanent odor of potpourri, flowered wallpaper, and hints of pink in almost every room.
Daddy and Seven are talking before we get to the kitchen.
They go silent as soon as we walk in.
"Morning, baby girl." Daddy gets up from the table and kisses my forehead. "You sleep okay?"
"Yeah," I lie as he guides me to a seat. Seven just stares.
Momma opens the fridge, the door crowded with takeout menus and fruit-shaped magnets. "All right, Munch," she says,
"you want turkey bacon or regular?"
"Regular." I'm surprised I have an option. We never have pork. We aren't Muslims. More like "Christlims." Momma became a member of Christ Temple Church when she was in Nana's belly. Daddy believes in Black Jesus but follows the Black Panthers' Ten-Point Program more than the Ten Com-mandments. He agrees with the Nation of Islam on some stuff, but he can't get over the fact that they may have killed Malcolm X.
"Pig in my house," Daddy grumbles and sits next to me.
Seven smirks across from him. Seven and Daddy look like one of those age-progression pictures they show when somebody's been missing a long time. Throw my little brother, Sekani, in there and you have the same person at eight, seventeen, and thirty-six. They're dark brown, slender, and have thick eyebrows and long eyelashes that almost look feminine. Seven's dreads are long enough to give both bald-headed Daddy and short-haired Sekani each a head full of hair.
As for me, it's as if God mixed my parents' skin tones in a paint bucket to get my medium-brown complexion. I did inherit Daddy's eyelashes—and I'm cursed with his eyebrows too. Otherwise I'm mostly my mom, with big brown eyes and a little too much forehead.
Momma passes behind Seven with the bacon and squeezes his shoulder. "Thank you for staying with your brother last night so we could—" Her voice catches, but the reminder of what happened hangs in the air. She clears her throat. "We appreciate it."
"No problem. I needed to get out the house."
"King spent the night?" Daddy asks.
"More like moved in. lesha talking about they can be a family—"
"Ay," Daddy says. "That's your momma, boy. Don't be calling her by her name like you grown."
"Somebody in that house needs to be grown," Momma says.
She takes a skillet out and hollers toward the hall, "Sekani, I'm not telling you again. If you wanna go to Carlos's for the week-end, you better get up! You're not gonna have me late for work." I guess she's gotta work a day shift to make up for last night.
"Pops, you know what's gonna happen," Seven says. "He'll beat her, she'll put him out. Then he'll come back, saying he changed. Only difference is this time, I'm not letting him put his hands on me."
"You can always move in with us," says Daddy.
"I know, but I can't leave Kenya and Lyric. That fool's crazy enough to hit them too. He don't care that they're his daughters."
"A'ight," Daddy says. "Don't say anything to him. If he puts his hands on you, let me handle that."
Seven nods then looks at me. He opens his mouth and keeps it open a while before saying, "I'm sorry about last night, Starr." Somebody finally acknowledges the cloud hanging over the kitchen, which for some reason is like acknowledging me.
"Thanks," I say, even though it's weird saying that. I don't deserve the sympathy. Khalil's family does.
There's just the sound of bacon crackling and popping in the skillet. It's like a "Fragile" sticker's on my forehead, and instead of taking a chance and saying something that might break me, they'd rather say nothing at all.
But the silence is the worst.
"I borrowed your hoodie, Seven," I mumble. It's random, but it's better than nothing. "The blue one. Momma had to throw it away. Khalil's blood ..." I swallow. "His blood got on it."
"Oh..."
That's all anybody says for a minute.
Momma turns around to the skillet. "Don't make any sense.
That baby—" she says thickly. "He was just a baby."
Daddy shakes his head. "That boy never hurt anybody. He didn't deserve that shit."
"Why did they shoot him?" Seven asks. "Was he a threat or something?"
"No," I say quietly.