Chapter no 10
On Tuesday morning, everything changed—for real. Spray painted in wide, loopy neon-blue letters like a script of stars so bright they glowed in the day, and stretched so large it covered the entire sidewalk at the foot of the front stairs, was a graffiti tag. A tag so huge every single student, teacher, administrator, staff […]
Chapter no 9
There’s this dude named Aaron Douglas. Scratch that. ere was this dude named Aaron Douglas. A painter in the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Mrs. Caperdeen, my art teacher freshman year, turned me on to him during a lesson about artists from that period. Now, I had already been into art, way before Mrs. Caperdeen’s […]
Chapter no 8
If I thought walking away from Paul would make me not think about him, or what he had done for me over the years, I was an idiot. At school on Monday it felt like everyone was talking about Rashad. Who’d seen him? What was going on? Was he coming back to school? How bad […]
Chapter no 7
I stayed home with Willy Saturday night and we watched World War Z and then had a Mario Kart marathon until I felt bug-eyed and useless. It was good to escape into his world for a while, because aer we walked Jill home, I was still stuck in my head and it wasn’t fair to […]
Chapter no 6
Sunday. I slept late and woke up to an empty room. Silence. No one. So nice. Sunday TV is just as bad as Saturday TV, so I le it off and laid there in the cold space, staring at the wall, thinking about everything. I was supposed to have been at Jill’s party on Friday. […]
Chapter no 5
In our town, it really isn’t shocking to see a ght go down. I’ve seen kids with house keys tucked between their knuckles throwing punches at each other. I’ve seen ten guys from our school chasing four dudes from another school down a block and a stranger step into the melee with a bat to […]
Chapter no 4
Custody. at’s the one word I kept hearing over and over again as I dried in and out of a painkiller coma, which by the way, might’ve been the best sleep I’d had in I don’t even know how long. And that’s with a broken nose and a few fractured ribs. Custody. ey brought me […]
Chapter no 3
On Friday nights there were always only two things on my mind: getting the hell out of the house and nding the party. But before I could get my buzz on with Guzzo and Dwyer, I had to take care of Willy. Ma used to want me to stay home with him, but thank God […]
Chapter no 2
Your le! Your le! Your le-right-le! Your le! Your le! Your le-right-le! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I le. I le. I le-le-le that wack school and that even more wack ROTC drill team because it was Friday, which to me, and basically every other person on Earth, meant it was time to party. Okay, maybe not […]
Chapter no 1
ZOOM IN. ZOOM IN MORE. A LITTLE MORE. A BOY, GRAINY. FACEDOWN ON THE PAVEMENT. A MAN ABOVE HIM. FISTS RAINING LIKE STONES. HOWLING. LIGHTS AND SIRENS. BLOOD ON THE STREET. THE BOY IS STILL MOVING. AND THEN HE IS NOT.