The only other time in his life Quan felt fear as mind-numbing as the night they took Daddy? His own first arrest.
The whole thing was so ridiculous. He was thirteen. Eighth grade.
(Which he barely made it into. Looking back, it’s wild to Quan how drastically shit had changed inside him.)
On this particular day, he was just…mad.
It got like that sometimes. Nothing had to happen—or trigger, as Doc says when Quan slips up and starts talking about his feelings. There were just days, moments, when rage would overtake him and his vision would literally go white at the edges.
Quan wasn’t a violent dude. Yeah, he’d been in a fight here and there, especially when kids would talk shit about Daddy being locked up. But he wasn’t one to explode: screamin’ and cussin’, hulkin’ out, flippin’ tables, throwin’ chairs and swingin’ on teachers like this one dude in his class, DeMarcus, who got expelled a month before Quan’s (dumb) arrest.
No. That wasn’t Quan.
Instead—he stole.
Never anything major. Some days he’d swipe a pencil from a classmate’s desk or grab one of the markers from the metal tray beneath the crusty old dry-erase board. He’d tail a mom and kid into Rite Aid just close enough for it to look like he was with them, then he’d slip off and pocket a tin of Altoids or a fresh tube of Burt’s Bees lip balm. He’d get the double tingle with that one…one in his fingertips as he made the grab, and another on his lips once he applied the stuff.
Magic.
On THE day, he was particularly furious. His eyes burned with it, and his ears rang, and for hours, he’d had the taste of metal in his mouth.
The convenience store he walked into wasn’t new, but it’d been remodeled. There were flashy new gas pumps—they had diesel now—and a bright new sign. The storefront had new windows and doors Quan was sure were bulletproof, and on the inside, the back wall was inset with new slushy (twelve flavors), soda, juice, and coff-uccin-cciato machines.
Real shiny.
While the snack aisle was tempting, Quan found himself drawn to an end-of-the-aisle display filled with…novelties is the only way to describe it. There were something called Pez, which looked like weird toys but apparently involved candy. There were bags of variously colored marbles. There were packages of dice and oddly shaped lighters. There was even some…paraphernalia. Brightly colored glass pipes and bowls.
What caught Quan’s eye? A deck of playing cards.
To this day, he has no idea why. There was nothing special about them. There were three or four full decks at home, so it’s not like he was getting anything he didn’t have.
He just knows they called to him. Beckoned. His fingertips got to tingling.
He checked all around to make sure no one was looking—outside of an older woman buying cigarettes and a baby-toting mom grabbing a Sprite, he was the only one in the store. Then he grabbed a pack of the cards and slipped them into his pocket.
He thought he was in the clear, Quan did. He even popped into the bathroom to make it look like his reason for being in the building was a need to pee.
But on his way out, the brown-skinned (but definitely not black) clerk stopped him.
“Young man…”
And Quan turned.
“Don’t move any further,” the dude said. “I’m calling the police.”
He had his hands on the counter. One of them around the handle of a gun.
* * *
—
He never pointed the pistol at Quan. Just kept it where Quan could see it.
What Quan hadn’t realized—and felt stupid about later: the fancy remodel came with a fancy security system. One with cameras. So the clerk could watch just about everything happening in the store on a screen behind the (definitely bulletproof) glassed-in checkout area.
He saw Quan pocket the cards.
Which…was it that big of a deal? They were $2.99. He could put ’em back, promise to leave and never return, and be on his way.
Did dude really have to call the damn cops over a
deck
of
Bicycle
playing
cards?
That can’t-do-shit rage expanded in Quan’s chest and pushed up into his throat, but he couldn’t get his mouth open to let it out, so it whistled up past his ears and tried to make its escape through the inside corners of his eyes.
But he wasn’t about to let himself cry. Not with a dude mad over three-dollar cards staring him down like he’d busted in with a mask and a Glock and tried to rob the place.
“Hey, man, can we just forget this? I don’t even need the cards, I can put them ba—”
But then the bell connected to the door chimed, and in stepped a police officer who looked like someone had stuck a bicycle-pump tube in his rear and
pump
pump
pumped
him up.
Perhaps even using the air that had been in Quan’s lungs: he suddenly didn’t have any left.
He locked eyes with the cop, and the Bad (Dad) Night washed over him, and his chest
locked up
the way it had when kid-snatcher cop had Quan’s scrawny eleven-year-old torso wrapped in that death grip.
Wasn’t the best time for it either. Swole Cop took Quan’s inability to answer questions—
We got a problem here, son?
You hear me talkin’ to you?
So you’re a tough guy then?
Not gonna answer my questions?
—as an act of defiance.
Quan found air the moment Swole Cop’s ham-ish hand locked around Quan’s (still scrawny) upper arm in a death grip. Sucked that air in with gusto as he gasped from the sudden burst of pain.
And then he let it out.
“OWW!”
“So now you can speak?”
He jerked Quan around and snatched him out of the store with more force than necessary considering Quan wasn’t resisting in the least. He was too scared.