How It Went Down (17 page)

“There was only one man who hurt Tariq,” she says.

“That’s right.”

“He didn’t say sorry.”

“No,” I agree. “He certainly didn’t.”

TINA

Kimberly does not ask what I cut my hand on;

I don’t have to tell a lie.

I lied to Nana, like a bad girl:

“I tried to use the grown up scissors.”

Let’s go clean them and put them away.

“I was putting them away when I cut myself.”

Nana pulled the scissors out of the drawer and rinsed them.

They were already clean, but

She believed me anyway.

Hee hee

I am in trouble for touching sharp things now,

but I feel proud for coming up with such a good lie.

Tariq always said lies were bad,

but it turns out he was good at them too.

13.
RIDE-ALONG

TYRELL

All of a sudden it seems like everyone’s an 8-5 King. I sit on the steps out front of my building and I’m trying to think about who I can go to and ask them, how’d you stay out? You know, what did you say when the 8-5s rolled around? But there’s no one I can think of that I know well enough to lay it out for them and try to figure a way through this.

It’s just one party. Not a lifetime commitment. But every notch is a step closer to the whole ball of wax and what if someday I wake up all dressed in red with a knife under my pillow and I look back and go, if only I’d blown off Brick that night …

Crap.

It’s the beginning of the end already, isn’t it? But to blow off Brick means bringing down a rain of trouble. He’ll be on me every day. I know it.

T went to some of Brick’s parties; he’d get invited, kinda the same way it happened to me. He told me what it’s like. Dancing. Drinking. Girls. I think he started to enjoy it, after a while. I can’t pretend I’m not curious too.

One time, when we were kids, before he ever went to a Kings party, T came over to my house. He had this look on his face. Sneaky, like he was up to no good. Which usually meant something fun was about to happen.

“Check it.” Tariq pulled a six-pack of cans from behind his back. It was a four-pack, actually; he had it dangling by two empty rings. Miller Genuine Draft.

“Whoa,” I said. “Where’d you get that?”

Neither of us had ever tried beer before. Probably none of our friends had yet, either. Junior claimed his dad let him drink it at home, but not while anyone else was around, and so we had no evidence to back this up. I didn’t know about Sammy, but likely not. His mom had him up in the Baptist church on Sundays and Wednesdays just like mine. I’d never seen a drop of alcohol in our apartment.

“I found it,” Tariq said. He pulled one ring free and tossed the can to me.

“You found it?” The beer in my hand felt suddenly suspect. I wasn’t about to drink some mysterious street brew.

“My dad had buddies over last night,” he said. “These four cans just kinda walked away.” He made little walking motions with his fingers.

“You’re such a punk,” I told him.

“Come on.” Tariq grinned. “We gotta break your geek cherry sometime.”

“Cheers.” We clink the cans. It didn’t make much of a sound but I wanted to look over my shoulder anyway.

The beer was warm and foamy in my mouth. Pretty gross. It took an effort to swallow. We sat quiet for a while, sort of chewing it. We each took down a couple of sips.

“Are you drunk?” Tariq said.

“I think so,” I answered. So we put the rest of the six pack under my bed and hid it behind a pile of books.

We were such huge idiots back then. It’s funny. If Tariq was here, and I reminded him about that time, we would laugh for an hour. It’s hard to laugh over anything, without him.

We were the holdouts. For the longest time, it kept us together. We were a gang of two. And that was always enough.

SAMMY

Riding low in the back of Noodle’s Chevy is such a freaking rush. I’m running with the big dogs now. It’s headier than the sweet MJ that clogs my throat.

They come by my place, and Brick goes, “Come along with us.” Of course I go. No question.

I’m alone in the backseat. They’re piled in the front, Noodle, Jennica, and Brick. We drive a while, then the car slows. Brick lays his arm across the seat. His fingers pass through the curtain of Jennica’s hair as he turns toward me. “You know him, right?” Brick says. “Help him come around.”

Out the window I see where we are. The last person I’d expect to see comes walking toward the car. Slow, like a convict on the way to the electric chair. He slides in next to me, stiff as a wall with eyes round and shadowed as the moon.

My chest pulses with some deep energy.
No, no.
My heart beats.
No, no.

“Hey Ty,” we all say.

“Hey,” he says. Our eyes meet and for one dragging moment it’s just the two of us. I’ve looked into his eyes so many times over the years that I can read him. He’s beyond his depth and scared. But he’ll come around. Like we all do.

Bring him around
, Brick said.

Is this all Brick wants me for? To somehow get to Ty? I don’t know the first thing to say to him. I can’t even remember the last time we talked. Wait, I do remember. It was like a year ago. He was with Tariq, of course. It was outside Junior’s trial, and me and T was kinda sparring over T being pretty sure Junior didn’t do the murder he went down for. I told T,
shut up—Junior did it
, because it’s the last thing I wanted to think about—then or now: how people don’t usually get what they deserve.

Ty’s hand flips over, palm up, on the center seat between us. I think maybe he wants me to take hold of it. Like we used to when we were little.

But I don’t.

Nothing’s like it was. T gone and Junior locked up and Ty and me, just picking up the pieces. Our pact from the old days has been pounded into sand.

That’s the other thing I see when Ty looks at me. The sharp sting of blame. Isn’t that the pot now, calling the kettle black? We’re both in this car. Both rolling down the same dark road.

It was always going to be like this, wasn’t it?

No one ever keeps that kind of promise. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

JENNICA

It’s the same exact ride as every other time we’ve done this. Cruising the edge of King territory, pumping the volume with the bass on full, looking for Stingers who might be stepping out of line.

You have to drink or smoke a lot before it gets fun, and I’m sober after a long afternoon at the diner. I haven’t been eating much and I’ve learned my lesson about drinking on an empty stomach. I almost still feel sick from the last time. But I can’t make myself get hungry, so I’m going to be good, even though it
is
kind of nice to just check out and get wasted.

The guys smoke joints with the windows cracked and the fan on high to diffuse the smell in case we get pulled over. Except we never get pulled over, because no one, including the cops themselves, would put it past Brick to ice a cop to get himself out of a ticket.

Noodle brakes the car at a red light. Corner of Pear and Roosevelt.

“Whoa, what the hell, what the hell?” Brick says. Sammy leans forward to see and I feel his breath on the back of my neck. The hairs stand up there. Not because of him.

A block ahead, on Onerfin Avenue, a big group of Stingers is gathering across the street. Members of the rival gang, whose territory butts up against ours. I mean, against the Kings’.

Noodle slows the car.

“They’re about to step on our turf,” Sammy cries. “What the fuck is that?”

“If they cross the street, they’re asking for it,” Noodle says.

My heartbeat picks up and I’m more freaked out than I ought to be. I’ve seen them throw down with the Spears dozens of times. Usually it’s words. Sometimes they show their knives. No one actually crosses the line, unless it’s to start trouble.

We haven’t had an all-out war in a year. Now isn’t the time to start one, etiher. Not with me and Ty in the car. And not with all the press heat on us. On the Kings, I mean. But it might be a good time, from the Stingers’ perspective. I swallow hard.

The light turns green. “Are we getting into it?” Noodle asks.

“They’re on the borderline,” Brick says. “Gotta let ’em know we know.” He cranks the window handle. Noodle’s car is so old, it doesn’t have power windows. I don’t know why that bothers me—except, I guess, this whole cruising thing is so damn old.

“Yo, roll down my window,” Sammy says.

“Roll it yo damn self,” Noodle mutters.

Sammy laughs. “I forgot.” Then he and Brick both hang their arms out the windows, knives flipped open and showing.

“One more step, and we slice you,” Brick shouts. The Stingers rush to the edge of the sidewalk. They lift up their yellow jerseys and hoodies and show that they’ve all got holstered daggers tied at their waists. The infamous “Stingers.”

“Slice you up real nice,” Sammy calls. “Like bacon.”

Brick, Noodle, and Sammy howl with laughter. Noodle slams the gas, jerking my head back, flaring up the sore spot in my neck that I thought was healing.

“That shit was close,” Sammy hoots.

“Oh, God,” Tyrell whispers. In the rearview, I see him gripping the door handle with one fist, clutching his own thigh with the other.

“They’ve got a mess coming to them now,” Noodle answers. “What we gonna do?”

“Circle around,” Brick says. “And get ready to jump.”

My own voice screams in my head.
I don’t want to be here.

TYRELL

I’m gonna die tonight. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. One party? No commitment? My ass. My stupid, about-to-die ass.

At least it’ll all be over, and I won’t have to struggle anymore. I close my eyes, lean my head back against the car seat and wait for the bullets to get me.

But the next thing I hear is Brick and them laughing. “Punk-ass Stingers. Yellow to the core.”

I open my eyes. We’ve come around the corner again, and the cluster of Stingers is gone. Back around the buildings, safe on their own hallowed ground.

My fists are squeezed so tight it’s painful. I dry my palms on my thighs.

I guess I got lucky.

JUNIOR

I was proud the day I joined the Kings. Wore my colors. Got my knife. I feel a bit naked now without those things. After a year in the life, it’s hard to get comfortable in my bland gray prison clothes.

Most guys around here find ways of showing colors. King for life. No shaking it. Maybe I’ll start wearing colors again someday, if I feel like it.

There’s a lot of ifs in life, Mom used to say. She always had her head in the clouds. Saved a dollar every week for a lotto ticket, but we never won more than twenty. That was a banner week around the Collins household. We had Chips Ahoy for dessert every night and Pop Tarts after school. That’s what I remember.

That, and Mom always saying what else was going to happen,
if we win big this week.

Mom’s ifs were always about the future. Mine are all about the past.

If
I hadn’t joined the Kings.

If
I hadn’t trusted Brick and taken the rap. I believed him when he said,
“You’ll only do a few years. You’re a juvie. Easiest way to get made.”

If
the guy hadn’t died—he wasn’t supposed to. Brick beat him and cut him—it was supposed to be a warning.

If
my court-appointed lawyer had really listened. They showed pictures in court off my online profile—me with my knife. Where’s the knife now? They kept asking. You disposed of it after the fact, they insist. I didn’t, but my knife is the same as Brick’s. What was I supposed to do, put it forward as evidence against myself?

That’s why I gave my knife to T to keep. It’s ironic now, how everyone’s talking about him the exact same way:
Were you armed, Tariq Johnson? Where’s the gun, Tariq Johnson?
Even without it, they still find a way to convict.

TYRELL

After a near-death experience, it feels like anything’s possible. It feels like what happens next doesn’t matter because it was supposed to be over right then. The Stingers were supposed to rush the car and shoot us and I was supposed to follow Tariq into the easy quiet spaces of death. But I’m still here.

I breathe hard for a while and Sammy finally goes, “It’s okay, man. Calm down.”

“I can’t,” I whisper, because I’ve been scared down to my bones and it doesn’t wash off that fast.

Sammy hands me his joint, and I take it between my fingers. I could have died.

I don’t know what to do with it. “Just sip it in,” Sammy says. “Hold it in your lungs. You’re gonna feel better.”

I do it like he says, and I come up coughing.

“Again.”

I do.

We pile out of Noodle’s car in front of Brick’s place, and everyone is floating high. Except me, of course, although I breathed on Sammy’s joint a couple of times. A bunch of times, maybe. I don’t know anymore.

Two puffs, or three, or … I cover my mouth and laugh behind my hand.

Was it only a minute ago, or a while? It didn’t taste like it smells, and it needled my throat.
Needles in my throat? What does that mean?
I didn’t like it at first. But now I don’t care. Because I could have died, so it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

I laugh again. Brick puts his arm around me. “There you go,” he says. “You feel better, don’t you?”

“Yeah, kinda,” I admit. “It’s not so bad.”

“I knew you’d come around,” he says. “Next thing is, we gotta find you a girl.”

“Naw.” Girls never want anything to do with a nutball little numbers freak like me. They let me help them with their homework and that’s about all. I don’t mind, though. I get to smell them and sit real close to them and sometimes while they lean in and concentrate I can see right down their shirts. They smile at me a lot. It’s not nothing.

“It’s no problem. Yo, Shelley,” Brick calls, and this beautiful girl spins out of the mosh pit and glides toward us. “This is Tyrell.”