Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments From Jason Reynolds: First and foremost, I’d like to acknowledge all the men, women, boys, and girls who have lost their lives as a result of police brutality. Your names, though too many for these pages, will always live on in our hearts and minds. Your untimely, unjust deaths will hopefully serve as the […]
Chapter no 19
ZOOM OUT. ZOOM OUT, MORE. A LITTLE MORE. THEBODIES. PLAZA. FLOODED WITH BUT NO BLOOD. NO LIGHTS AND SIRENS. JUST CRACKLING VOICES. NAMES, RISING TO THE SKY. IN THE CENTER OF IT ALL, THE BOY WHO REMAINS AND THE BOY BESIDE HIM. TWO BOYS, IN FOCUS. TWO BOYS, CLEAR. A NEW TOMORROW, AN ARM’S LENGTH […]
Chapter no 18
Oh my God! He was right over there! Closer than I’d been to him when Paul laid into him. Much closer. And Rashad was looking at me, too. I locked eyes with a kid I didn’t know, but felt like I did. A white guy, who I could tell was thinking about those names too. […]
Chapter no 17
I learned that the night before a protest, it’s impossible to sleep. I didn’t toss or turn, I just lay at on my back staring into the darkness, my mind darting from thought to thought, from friend to friend, from brother to mother, from hashtag to hashtag. And in the morning, I wasn’t groggy or […]
Chapter no 16
Okay, look. If I thought my sudden allegiance to honesty would make me feel con dent, I was wrong. If I was an honest dumbass the day before, I was a freaking piss-scared dumbass on Friday. I’d talked my game, but now I had to follow through with it. First things rst. I called the […]
Chapter no 15
My mother did eventually show up with the lawyer she found Wednesday evening, but by the time she got there, I was wiped, maybe from getting up so early talking with Dad, or maybe from actually talking with Dad, or maybe from talking with Mrs. Fitzgerald, or maybe from all of it. I was beat. […]
Chapter no 14
I woke up a frigging hour before the alarm clock. My mind was racing. Ma was still at work, Willy still snored in the trundle bed below me, and so I got up and stood in the living room, staring out the window. Pink sunrise warmed the houses on the other side of the street, […]
Chapter no 13
DEAR CADET BUTLER, IYOUHADDIDN’T PLANNED TOANY COMEVISITORS. VISIT YOU, BUT ITTOUGH WAS TIMES COMMUNICATED TO MEI THAT WANT AND IN LIKE THESE, CAN TOTALLY UNDERSTAND YOU WANTING AS MUCH PRIVACY AS POSSIBLE, AND HAVE ENCOURAGED YOUR FELLOW CADETS TO ALSO RESPECT YOUR WISHES. NONETHELESS, IAND WANTED YOUYOUTO AKNOW YOURRECOVERY COMRADESAND AND RETURN I HAVE TO […]
Chapter no 12
Willy was dragging his ass again on Wednesday morning, but truthfully it wasn’t all his fault. I was kind of dragging my ass too, still dwelling on all the things I’d been talking to Jill about the night before. It’s not like I was dreaming about it, it was more that weird state where your […]
Chapter no 11
As the story of sixteen-year-old West Springfield native Rashad Butler develops, the city seems to be split in terms of which side of the argument they fall on in this case. Was it about race? e abuse of power? Or was it just another case of a teenage criminal, caught red-handed? For those who are […]