“Took you long enough,” the older boy quipped, smile slanted. A wicked glint in his eye. “I been comin’ here every day.”
Which gave Quan pause…but also made him feel kinda good? “You were looking for me?”
Trey rolled his eyes. “Man, get your little ass in here,” he said.
And Quan went.
Trey couldn’t have known it (or maybe he could’ve?), but in that moment, Quan didn’t actually want to be alone.
He needed a friend.
Someone who cared.
Because from the moment Mama and Quan had stepped out of the fluorescent-lit law-and-order lair into the crisp Georgia evening, it was crystal clear to Quan that she no longer did.
For the first ten of the fifteen-minute bus ride home, they hadn’t exchanged a single word. In fact, Quan wondered if it looked like they were even together. He’d been his mother’s son for thirteen years and knew when her refusal to look at him was rooted in anger. That felt like sitting next to a dragon whose hide was radiating heat because it was fighting
hard
to keep the fire in.
This, though? It’d been like he wasn’t even there.
There was no heat of motherly fury. No fire at all.
There was…ice.
And it got colder and colder—the void growing larger and larger—the closer they got to home.
When the bus took the turn before the turn before their stop, Quan had literally shivered. Little hairs on his arms raised up and everything.
“Mama, I’m sorry,” he’d said, eyes fixed on what looked like a wad of gum so stomped into the grooved floor, it’d become a part of it.
She’d reached up and pulled the stop-cord that wrapped around the interior of the bus.
“That’s what your father used to say.”
Then she’d stood up and walked to the rear exit door.
That’s how things continued over the next few days. Dwight had vanished again (though Quan was sure he’d come back eventually) so it was more peaceful around the house…but Mama wouldn’t even look in his direction. She wouldn’t speak unless spoken to, and then only with short, emotionless responses—
Yeah.
Nope.
Dunno.
and then Quan’s least favorite:
I don’t care, LaQuan.
Dasia followed her lead.
Gabe still loved Quan, but he was also afraid. Of what, Quan didn’t know, but the fact that the little dude would check to see if Mama or Dasia was around before interacting with his big bro felt like a stab straight to the heart with a Lego sword.
Quan was utterly and completely alone.
(Over a deck of damn cards.)
“You not gone cry, are you?” Trey asked as Quan sat down beside him, more than ready to blast off into oblivion.
Quan dropped his eyes and shook his head. “Nah.”
“It’s cool if you do,” Trey said. “I ain’t gone tell nobody—”
And he shrugged.
“—I cried after my first arrest.”
Quan sniffled then. And hated himself for it.
“I get it, li’l man,” Trey went on. “First time is scary as fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“I was eleven. Damn cuffs barely fit.”
Silence.
(Quan didn’t really know what to do with that information.)
“I seent your mom’s demeanor,” Trey continued. “She not really speakin’ to you now, right?”
Quan sighed. “Yeah.”
“Mines was the same way. Your pops locked up?”
Crazy. “Yeah.”
“Figured.”
“What’d you do?” Quan asked, not really thinking. “When you were eleven?”
“Skippin’ school and an MIP.”
“MIP?”
“Minor in possession of alcohol. I did this pretrial diversion shit that included Al-Anon meetings—they wanted me to ‘see how alcoholism affects other people’—so they wound up dropping the charges, but the arrest itself? Scariest shit I ever been through, man.”
“How old are you now?”
“Fifteen. You what, twelve?”
“Just turned thirteen.”
“It’s crazy, ain’t it? I had this white lawyer once—really wanted to help kids like us, so he took my case pro bono. I was thirteen at the time, and he told me he had a son my age who’d just had his bar mitzvah, you familiar?”
Quan shook his head. “Nah.”
“It’s this ceremony where a young Jewish dude becomes ‘accountable for his actions.’ ” He used air quotes. “So he goes from ‘boy’ to ‘man,’ essentially. Lawyer homie is sitting there all geeked, telling me about it, and I’m thinking to myself: So your son is a grown man by Jewish standards, yet still gets treated like a kid. Meanwhile ain’t no ceremonies for kids like us, but if we get in trouble we get treated like adults.”
Nothing Quan could say to that.
“Funniest part is the only reason dude was even workin’ with me is because I got caught with a dime—that’s a little baggie of weed that costs ten bucks—”
“I know what a dime is, man.”
Trey smirked. “Yeah, all right. Well, like I was saying, as the cop frisked me, he said, ‘You wanna act like an adult, the law will treat your ass like one.’ When I asked lawyer dude if he’d ever say anything like that to his son, he was shook.”
So was Quan.
“Anyway, you in it now, li’l dude.”
Quan swallowed hard. Was he in it? What did that actually mean?
“I gotchu, though, all right?” Trey threw an arm around Quan’s shoulders then. “I been where you at, man. And I know where you goin’. Ain’t a whole lotta pathways for niggas like us, you feel me?”