The officer parks and puts his brights on. I blink to keep from being blinded.
I remember something else Daddy said. If you’re with somebody, you better hope they don’t have nothing on them, or both of y’all going down.
“K, you don’t have anything in the car, do you?” I ask.
He watches the cop in his side mirror. “Nah.”
The officer approaches the driver’s door and taps the window. Khalil cranks the handle to roll it down. As if we aren’t blinded enough, the officer beams his flashlight in our faces.
“License, registration, and proof of insurance.”
Khalil breaks a rule—he doesn’t do what the cop wants. “What you pull us over for?”
“License, registration, and proof of insurance.”
“I said what you pull us over for?”
“Khalil,” I plead. “Do what he said.”
Khalil groans and takes his wallet out. The officer follows his movements with the flashlight.
My heart pounds loudly, but Daddy’s instructions echo in my head: Get a good look at the cop’s face. If you can remember his badge number, that’s even better.
With the flashlight following Khalil’s hands, I make out the numbers on the badge—one-fifteen. He’s white, midthirties to early forties, has a brown buzz cut and a thin scar over his top lip.
Khalil hands the officer his papers and license.
One-Fifteen looks over them. “Where are you two coming from tonight?”
“Nunya,” Khalil says, meaning none of your business. “What you pull me over for?”
“Your taillight’s broken.”
“So are you gon’ give me a ticket or what?” Khalil asks.
“You know what? Get out the car, smart guy.”
“Man, just give me my ticket—”
“Get out the car! Hands up, where I can see them.”
Khalil gets out with his hands up. One-Fifteen yanks him by his arm and pins him against the back door.
I fight to find my voice. “He didn’t mean—”
“Hands on the dashboard!” the officer barks at me. “Don’t move!”
I do what he tells me, but my hands are shaking too much to be still.
He pats Khalil down. “Okay, smart mouth, let’s see what we find on you today.”
“You ain’t gon’ find nothing,” Khalil says.
One-Fifteen pats him down two more times. He turns up empty.
“Stay here,” he tells Khalil. “And you.” He looks in the window at me. “Don’t move.”
I can’t even nod.
The officer walks back to his patrol car.
My parents haven’t raised me to fear the police, just to be smart around them. They told me it’s not smart to move while a cop has his back to you.
Khalil does. He comes to his door.
It’s not smart to make a sudden move.
Khalil does. He opens the driver’s door.
“You okay, Starr—”
Pow!
One. Khalil’s body jerks. Blood splatters from his back. He holds on to the door to keep himself upright.
Pow!
Two. Khalil gasps.
Pow!
Three. Khalil looks at me, stunned.
He falls to the ground.
I’m ten again, watching Natasha drop.
An earsplitting scream emerges from my gut, explodes in my throat, and uses every inch of me to be heard.
Instinct says don’t move, but everything else says check on Khalil. I jump out the Impala and rush around to the other side. Khalil stares at the sky as if he hopes to see God. His mouth is open like he wants to scream. I scream loud enough for the both of us.
“No, no, no,” is all I can say, like I’m a year old and it’s the only word I know. I’m not sure how I end up on the ground next to him. My mom once said that if someone gets shot, try to stop the bleeding, but there’s so much blood. Too much blood.
“No, no, no.”
Khalil doesn’t move. He doesn’t utter a word. He doesn’t even look at me. His body stiffens, and he’s gone. I hope he sees God.
Someone else screams.
I blink through my tears. Officer One-Fifteen yells at me, pointing the same gun he killed my friend with.
I put my hands up.
THREE
They leave Khalil’s body in the street like it’s an exhibit. Police cars and ambulances flash all along Carnation Street. People stand off to the side, trying to see what happened.
“Damn, bruh,” some guy says. “They killed him!”
The police tell the crowd to leave. Nobody listens.
The paramedics can’t do shit for Khalil, so they put me in the back of an ambulance like I need help. The bright lights spotlight me, and people crane their necks to get a peek.
I don’t feel special. I feel sick.
The cops rummage through Khalil’s car. I try to tell them to stop. Please, cover his body. Please, close his eyes. Please, close his mouth. Get away from his car. Don’t pick up his hairbrush. But the words never come out.
One-Fifteen sits on the sidewalk with his face buried in his hands. Other officers pat his shoulder and tell him it’ll be okay.
They finally put a sheet over Khalil. He can’t breathe under it. I can’t breathe.
I can’t.
Breathe.
I gasp.
And gasp.
And gasp.
“Starr?”
Brown eyes with long eyelashes appear in front of me. They’re like mine.
I couldn’t say much to the cops, but I did manage to give them my parents’ names and phone numbers.
“Hey,” Daddy says. “C’mon, let’s go.”
I open my mouth to respond. A sob comes out.
Daddy is moved aside, and Momma wraps her arms around me. She rubs my back and speaks in hushed tones that tell lies. “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right.”
We stay this way for a long time. Eventually, Daddy helps us out the ambulance. He wraps his arm around me like a shield against curious eyes and guides me to his Tahoe down the street.
He drives. A streetlight flashes across his face, revealing how tight his jaw is set. His veins bulge along his bald head.
Momma’s wearing her scrubs, the ones with the rubber ducks on them. She did an extra shift at the emergency room tonight. She wipes her eyes a few times, probably thinking about Khalil or how that could’ve been me lying in the street.
My stomach twists. All of that blood, and it came out of him. Some of it is on my hands, on Seven’s hoodie, on my sneakers. An hour ago we were laughing and catching up. Now his blood . . .
Hot spit pools in my mouth. My stomach twists tighter. I gag.
Momma glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Maverick, pull over!”
I throw myself across the backseat and push the door open before the truck comes to a complete stop. It feels like everything in me is coming out, and all I can do is let it.
Momma hops out and runs around to me. She holds my hair out the way and rubs my back.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she says.
When we get home, she helps me undress. Seven’s hoodie and my Jordans disappear into a black trash bag, and I never see them again.
I sit in a tub of steaming water and scrub my hands raw to get Khalil’s blood off. Daddy carries me to bed, and Momma brushes her fingers through my hair until I fall asleep.
Nightmares wake me over and over again. Momma reminds me to breathe, the same way she did before I outgrew asthma. I think she stays in my room the whole night, ’cause every time I wake up, she’s sitting on my bed.
But this time, she’s gone. My eyes strain against the brightness of my neon-blue walls. The clock says it’s five in the morning. My body’s so used to waking up at five, it doesn’t care if it’s Saturday morning or not.
I stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, trying to recap the night before. The party flashes in my mind, the fight, One-Fifteen pulling me and Khalil over. The first shot rings in my ears. The second. The third.
I’m lying in bed. Khalil is lying in the county morgue.
That’s where Natasha ended up too. It happened six years ago, but I still remember everything from that day. I was sweeping floors at our grocery store, saving up for my first pair of J’s, when Natasha ran in. She was chunky (her momma told her it was baby fat), dark-skinned, and wore her hair in braids that always looked freshly done. I wanted braids like hers so bad.
“Starr, the hydrant on Elm Street busted!” she said.