“I have to,” she says. “As your attorney I have to do what’s in your best interest. Your mom knowing you’re out here is in your best interest.”
No, it’s not, ’cause she’ll kill me. “But you’re my attorney. Not hers. Can’t this be a client confidentiality thing?”
“Starr—”
“Please? During the other protests, I watched. And talked. So now I wanna do something.”
“Who said talking isn’t doing something?” she says. “It’s more productive than silence. Remember what I told you about your voice?”
“You said it’s my biggest weapon.”
“And I mean that.” She stares at me a second, then sighs out her nose. “You want to fight the system tonight?”
I nod.
“C’mon then.”
Ms. Ofrah takes my hand and leads me through the crowd.
“Fire me,” she says.
“Huh?”
“Tell me you no longer want me to represent you.”
“I no longer want you to represent me?” I ask.
“Good. As of now I’m not your attorney. So if your parents find out about this, I didn’t do it as your attorney but as an activist. You saw that bus near the intersection?”
“Yeah.”
“If the officers react, run straight to it. Got it?”
“But what—”
She takes me to the patrol car and motions at her colleague. The lady climbs off and hands Ms. Ofrah the bullhorn. Ms. Ofrah passes it over to me.
“Use your weapon,” she says.
Another one of her coworkers lifts me and sets me on top of the cop car.
About ten feet away there’s a shrine for Khalil in the middle of the street; lit candles, teddy bears, framed pictures, and balloons. It separates the protestors from a cluster of officers in riot gear. It’s not nearly as many cops as it was on Magnolia, but still . . . they’re cops.
I turn toward the crowd. They watch me expectantly.
The bullhorn is as heavy as a gun. Ironic since Ms. Ofrah said to use my weapon. I have the hardest time lifting it. Shit, I have no idea what to say. I put it near my mouth and press the button.
“My—” It makes a loud, earsplitting noise.
“Don’t be scared!” somebody in the crowd yells. “Speak!”
“You need to exit the street immediately,” the cop says.
You know what? Fuck it.
“My name is Starr. I’m the one who saw what happened to Khalil,” I say into the bullhorn. “And it wasn’t right.”
I get a bunch of “yeahs” and “amens” from the crowd.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong. Not only did Officer Cruise assume we were up to no good, he assumed we were criminals. Well, Officer Cruise is the criminal.”
The crowd cheers and claps. Ms. Ofrah says, “Speak!”
That amps me up.
I turn to the cops. “I’m sick of this! Just like y’all think all of us are bad because of some people, we think the same about y’all. Until you give us a reason to think otherwise, we’ll keep protesting.”
More cheers, and I can’t lie, it eggs me on. Forget trigger happy—speaker happy is more my thing.
“Everybody wants to talk about how Khalil died,” I say. “But this isn’t about how Khalil died. It’s about the fact that he lived. His life mattered. Khalil lived!” I look at the cops again. “You hear me? Khalil lived!”
“You have until the count of three to disperse,” the officer on the loudspeaker says.
“Khalil lived!” we chant.
“One.”
“Khalil lived!”
“Two.”
“Khalil lived!”
“Three.”
“Khalil lived!”
The can of tear gas sails toward us from the cops. It lands beside the patrol car.
I jump off and pick up the can. Smoke whizzes out the end of it. Any second it’ll combust.
I scream at the top of my lungs, hoping Khalil hears me, and chuck it back at the cops. It explodes and consumes them in a cloud of tear gas.
All hell breaks loose.
The cops stampede over Khalil’s shrine, and the crowd runs. Someone grabs my arm. Ms. Ofrah.
“Go to the bus!” she says.
I get about halfway there when Chris and Seven catch me.
“C’mon!” Seven says, and they pull me with them.
I try to tell them about the bus, but explosions go off and thick white smoke engulfs us. My nose and throat burn as if I swallowed fire. My eyes feel like flames lick them.
Something whizzes overhead, then an explosion goes off in front of us. More smoke.
“DeVante!” Chris croaks, looking around. “DeVante!”
We find him leaning against a flickering streetlight. He coughs and heaves. Seven lets me go and grabs him by the arm.
“Shit, man! My eyes! I can’t breathe.”
We run. Chris grips my hand as tight as I grip his. There are screams and loud pops in every direction. Can’t see a thing for the smoke, not even the Just Us bus.
“I can’t run. My side!” DeVante says. “Shit!”
“C’mon, man,” Seven says, pulling him. “Keep going!”
Bright lights barrel down the street through the smoke. A gray pickup truck on oversized wheels. It stops beside us, the window rolls down, and my heart stops, waiting for the gun to come pointing out, courtesy of a King Lord.
But Goon, the Cedar Grove King Lord with the ponytails, looks at us from the driver’s seat, a gray bandana over his nose and mouth. “Get in the back!” he says.
Two guys and a girl around our age, wearing white bandanas on their faces, help us into the back of the truck. It’s an open invitation and other people climb in, like this white man in a shirt and tie and a Latino holding a camera on his shoulder. The white man looks oddly familiar. Goon drives off.
DeVante lies in the bed of the truck. He holds his eyes and rolls in agony. “Shit, man! Shit!”
“Bri, get him some milk,” Goon says through the back window.
Milk?
“We’re out, Unc,” says the girl in the bandana.
“Fuck!” Goon hisses. “Hold on, Vante.”
Tears and snot drip down my face. My eyes are damn near numb from burning.
The truck slows down. “Get li’l homie,” Goon says.
The two guys in the bandanas grab some kid on the street by his arms and lift him into the truck. The kid looks around thirteen. His shirt is covered in soot, and he coughs and heaves.
I get into a coughing fit. Snorting is like hacking up hot coals. The man in the shirt and tie hands me his dampened handkerchief.
“It’ll help some,” he says. “Put it against your nose and breathe through it.”
It gives me a small amount of clean air. I pass it to Chris, he uses it, passes it to Seven beside him. Seven uses it and passes it to someone else.
“As you can see, Jim,” the man says, looking at the camera, “there are a lot of youth out here protesting tonight, black and white.”
“I’m the token, huh?” Chris mutters to me before coughing. I’d laugh if it didn’t hurt.
“And you have people like this gentlemen, going around the neighborhood, helping out where they can,” the white man says. “Driver, what’s your name?”
The Latino turns the camera toward Goon.
“Nunya,” Goon says.
“Thank you, Nunya, for giving us a ride.”
Woooow. I realize why he looks familiar though. He’s a national news anchor, Brian somebody.
“This young lady here made a powerful statement earlier,” he says, and the camera points toward me. “Are you really the witness?”
I nod. No point hiding anymore.
“We caught what you said back there. Anything else you’d like to add for our viewers?”
“Yeah. None of this makes sense.”
I start coughing again. He leaves me alone.
When my eyes aren’t closed I see what my neighborhood has become. More tanks, more cops in riot gear, more smoke. Businesses ransacked. Streetlights are out, and fires keep everything from being in complete darkness. People run out of the Walmart and carry armfuls of items, looking like ants rushing from an anthill. The untouched businesses have boarded-up windows and graffiti that says “black owned.”