Light Unshaken (Unveiled #2) (9 page)

Smiling, he nodded to the building. “The center.”

Right.

A steady drizzle speckled my forehead and cooled my skin.

A. J. faced the sky. “Guess that’s our cue.”

A black and tan SUV rolled up to the curb. Some suit dressed to the hilt strutted out and jogged down the side of the building with a briefcase over his head. He probably didn’t even see us standing there. A. J. and I exchanged a glance and hustled behind him.

Shaking off the rain, we filed into the office in time to see the businessman extend a hand toward Trey. “Jim Brake from the Success Foundation. I believe we spoke on the phone.”

What? Why didn’t he tell me he’d heard back from them?

“Trey Williams.” He returned the guy’s handshake and tipped his head toward me. “And this is Emma Matthews. She sent in the proposal.”

Hiding the bucket behind my back, I scrambled to dry my wrinkly fingertips. A. J. eased beside me and snuck the bucket out of view.

“Thank you,” I mouthed to him right before Mr. Brake turned to face me.

“Of course. Miss Matthews.”

I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hope you don’t mind me popping in. We like to do things in person.” Mr. Brake set his briefcase on the nearest chair, wiped the water off, and snapped open the brackets.

Pulling out a folder, he straightened. “Here we are.” He handed Trey some kind of packet. “It’s only a provisional endorsement at this point. We’d like to monitor the center for a while before committing.”

Hadn’t the notes I included in my grant proposal convinced them they wouldn’t find a better investment?

Trey angled his glasses to read the document.

Mr. Brake waved a hand over the top page. “It gets a little heady. Legal jargon.” He peered across the office. “How about you show me around first?”

Expressionless, Trey didn’t miss a beat. “Why don’t we start in the classroom? Maybe the rain will taper off in a while, and A. J. can show you out back.”

“Perfect.” Mr. Brake grabbed his briefcase.

Trey motioned for me to follow.

While A. J. and I had been out front, Trey’d managed to transform the earlier group of rowdy teenagers into a composed classroom of students attending to their assignments.

From the front of the room, my gaze braced over Dee again. Trey must’ve convinced him to stay. At his seat, he alternated between the eraser and sharpened side of his pencil as many times as he alternated looking out the window and poring over the paper on his desk.

The second he caught me staring, the enjoyment on his face recoiled behind the same unsearchable expression he held that night on the street corner.

Trey nudged me forward. “Emma, why don’t you help Dee with the essay he’s writing?”

I knew that tone. He was up to something. And with Mr. Success there, I couldn’t turn him down. I fabricated a compliant smile and headed toward the last person in the room I wanted to approach.

Dee must’ve seconded my apprehension. Squirming in his chair, he jammed a paper into his textbook, shielded his eyes with his hand, and didn’t look up even after I reached his side.

I peered back at Trey. Following a quick nod at me, he turned to talk to Mr. Brake.

I faced Dee again and cleared my throat. “Mind if I take a look at your essay?”

Not a single movement. For a minute, he looked dead set on refusing but then flicked his wrist toward me.

I did a double take at the heading across the handwritten page. “‘An Endless Night.’ What class is this for?”

Dee sent a sharp glance around the room from one desk to the next. Tugging the bill of his cap down, he sank in his seat and mumbled, “Creative Writing.”

“Creative Writing?” I had to have misheard him.

“It was either that or band,” he said, as if he’d chosen the lesser of two evils.

“Right. Well, how about we take a look at what you’ve got so far.” I pointed to the empty chair beside him. “May I?”

He didn’t have to answer. The look on his face made it loud and clear he doubted he had a choice. I frowned at Trey.
Me neither, kid.

It didn’t take long to read the two pages Dee had written. Though short and choppy in a few areas, the essay demonstrated a strength I hadn’t expected to find. “You have a great imagination.” If he focused on word painting instead of vandalism, maybe he could actually go places.

Dee peeked up from under his hat. “You think so?”

The stoic tone in his response couldn’t compensate for the energy flowing back to his eyes with a glimmer of hope that few, I guessed, took the time to notice. And in an unguarded moment, I saw past the mask of a reputation. Past my own assumptions. Same as most of the kids here, Dee likely didn’t have anybody in his life to help him see his potential.

A pang of reproach for how I’d treated him clipped into my side. He probably came to the center looking for help, acceptance. And instead, I’d accused him. No wonder he said he was making a mistake being here. A mistake in hoping we’d be different from what he was used to.

My heart winced. I swallowed and reached for his textbook before my response showed. “Let’s just go over a few of these grammatical changes I made.”

Arms flailing, he scrambled to intercept the textbook. A piece of paper that looked like it’d been torn from a sketchpad tumbled out of the book’s cover. Dee snatched it, nearly crumbled it into a ball, and shoved it inside his book bag.

“Was that a picture of the basketball court out back?”

Dee tossed his bag underneath his desk and kicked it against the wall. “It’s nothing.”

“O-kay.”

Whatever minuscule opening I’d gained, I lost in a matter of seconds.

With a quick scan through the table of contents, I noted a handful of page numbers. “Here. Why don’t you review these sections and try revising a few of these sentences.” My chair legs scraped against the tile. “Let one of us know if you have any questions, okay?”

Dee’s head twitched in a nod.

Leaving him to it, I made my way to the door. Trey and Mr. Brake had already slipped out. I stopped over the threshold and peered behind me at the room full of kids who’d captured my heart and given me purpose these last several months. Seeing Dee seated among them took Trey’s maxim to a completely new level.
Perspective.
One that’d stretch me in ways Trey probably knew I needed.

Glad one of us had faith in me.

Still shaking my head, I returned to my work in the office. The guys weren’t there either. It sounded like the rain had stopped. Maybe they were out back.

In the quiet, I jotted down some voice messages I’d missed. Trey came through the front door right as I was leaving them on his desk.

“Is Mr. Brake still here?”

Trey pointed behind him. “Just walked him out.”

“Everything good?”

An ambivalent shrug answered for him. Probably too soon to tell. Not that it swayed Trey’s hope. Just like the kids’ backgrounds didn’t sway his belief in their futures. Good thing
he
ran the place instead of me. If I gained even half his power of perspective while working here, it’d change my life.

I pulled my lip to the side and stared at my feet. “I’m sorry for earlier. The way I acted with Dee.”

Trey leaned his shoulder into mine. “I know what you must be thinking, but I wouldn’t have let him in if I thought there were any chance he’d try to hurt you.”

He looked behind him toward the sound of kids stirring in the other room, each with a story as unique as the next. Seen through Trey’s eyes of unconditional acceptance, Dee was no exception. After the glimpse I caught a few minutes ago, he was probably right.

“What do you know about him?”

He released a sigh. “Diego Mendierez. Pops bailed on him when he was two. Mom’s a struggling single parent. Kid turned to the wrong crowd.” Trey shook his head. The pain of recurring circumstances creased his face.

“I can tell you one thing. That boy’s got some guts coming here. Tito ain’t gonna give up one of his crew members easily. First Dee dips on him, then shows up here. Not gonna go over so well.”

“And why exactly is he here again?”

My uncertainty didn’t faze Trey in the least. His smile held the same sense of fatherhood I’d seen guide his actions time and again. “I think he’s searching for something he’s been needing for a very long time. Hope.”

“He’s lucky you’re equipped for the task.”

Trey laughed a low, telling laugh. I didn’t want to ask what he was thinking.

A swarm of kids filtered through the office. Some raced toward the basketball court. Others headed home for the day. A. J. trailed at the end of the group. “I’ll meet you out front in two,” he called to me from above the clamor of conversations.

The screen door swung behind him and blew a look of exhaustion over Trey’s face.

I crossed the room. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“You and me both. I’ll tell you this much. I couldn’t do it without people like you.”

He’d likely change his mind about that once he saw the voicemail message from our landlord that I left on his desk along with this past month’s bank reconciliation.

Sure enough, after glancing over the note, Trey eased off his square-shaped glasses and squeezed his forehead.

I tugged on the door. Each
creak
clothes-pinned my heart in a squeeze of its own. Leaving the door halfway closed, I turned. “Do you think things went okay with Mr. Brake?”

Trey’s chair squeaked backward. He fit his glasses over an ear at a time. “Well, it was certainly . . . eventful.”

Eventful? “Does that mean we passed inspection?”

His gaze drifted to the basketball court. “There’s always hope, kid.”

Especially when it was all we had.

He nodded at the door. “I’ll fill you in later. But don’t worry. All they’ll have to do is take one look at the difference you’re making here, and they’ll sign on.”

“The difference
we’re
making.”

One of our seven-year-old girls snuck in the back door and ran across the office, beaded braids flapping as she went. “I forgot to give Miss E a hug goodbye.” She whirled her skinny arms around my neck.

Trey shot me a pointed look. “You were saying?”

I kissed her cheek and sent her off. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Mm hmm. Now, go on and get outta here before you get sick of this place and stop coming.”

“Never.” I winked at him on my way out.

At the end of the walkway, someone stepped in front of me from around the corner. I jumped backward. My pulse jackhammered, then slowed. “Dee? What are you still doing here?”

“Aw . . . I didn’t mean to scare you.” He scuffed his Nikes against the sidewalk, keeping his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes on the pavement.

I dragged the pearl along my necklace, not sure what to say.

The same SUV from earlier zipped up to the curb. Did he forget something? Mr. Success circled around the front bumper. He stopped long enough for a judgmental glare to connect Dee to the graffiti left on the wall beside us and kept trucking for the door.

Dee tipped his head at the bricks. “It wasn’t me. Not sayin’ I never tagged nothing. But not here.”

The presumption in Mr. Brake’s eyes carved a hole in my gut with a reflection of how calloused I’d been before. “I shouldn’t have accused you.”

He shrugged like it was nothing less than expected, and the ache in my chest widened.

He hung his head so low, the front of his jacket muffled his voice. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “You know, for that night. It was stupid. Tito can be a real a—”

However forcefully the expletive entered his mind, he seemed to have enough restraint to stop from saying it in front of me.

Of all moments, Jaycee’s sticky notes soared to mind. I rested my hand on Dee’s arm. “I forgi—”

A. J. closed in from the opposite end of the walkway. Dee shot him a chin flick without any hint of fear or question. It wasn’t until his eyes met mine that they took on a look of perplexity. Was he so tormented by guilt that grace was harder to accept than judgment?

Success Man hurried past us again with a folder in hand. His SUV pulled away from the curb and opened a view to Tito leaning against the building across the street. His stare nearly pinned me to the wall with the same force his forearm had that night.

He had some kid hovering at his side this time. Must’ve been his brother from the looks of it. What kind of person dragged an elementary kid into a gang?

Tito flicked a cigarette on the ground and pushed off the bricks.

On command, a bright green, lowered Mazda 6 with black rims crept out from a side street and tailed Mr. Brake’s SUV. They’d been staking out the place, following people who visited? No wonder they knew who our grant contacts were.

Tito flaunted a dark grin as he strutted away, his brother on his heels.

Dee flew around the corner, looking ready to chase him down.