I walk down the stairs like I’m descending straight into a fantasy, like I’m about to meet a ghost. When my bare feet hit the pavement and I’m staring at the back of his head, I know it ain’t no dream. He’s wearing his blue-and-yellow backpack, same one I handed Mrs. Randall. Same one I gave him for his birthday so many months ago. I walk closer, until I am standing right above him and, then, with only an oversized T-shirt draped over my body, I sit beside him, slip my own feet into the pool. My legs submerge to mid-calf.
I’m staring straight at him, but he’s still looking right into the pool, like he hasn’t even registered my presence beside him. His eyes are fully open now, face still discolored along the cheekbones, but the parts of him that make his face his are repaired. Perfectly rounded. The bulging eyes. Pouted lips.
“What you doin’ here, Trev?” I touch him lightly with my shoulder, so even if he doesn’t look at me, he’ll be able to feel me.
He keeps his eyes on the pool, on his feet as they come up from underneath its surface and splash back under again. Then, like some timer went off in his head, he whips his head toward me, locks eyes with mine, and flashes me a smile.
“Had to come get my ball.”
I can’t help but beam at that, my whole body spreading into a grin ’cause both of us know it’s so much more than that, but also, maybe in some ways, it’s just that simple. How we grew together in the bounce of a ball, how the beginning of our collapse started with a basketball court and a beating. How we don’t get to return to none of it again, but maybe we can steal this moment. Maybe this excuse is just enough to spin us into a pickup game where we’ll laugh because we can, until the sun disintegrates and nighttime threatens to set us free just to capture us again, back into the things we can’t escape. When I have to send him back onto whatever bus he snuck here on. Don’t even matter, though, because I will send him off with a kiss to the forehead and that ball in hand, that momentum can’t nobody take away.
It seems both obvious and ridiculous when Trevor stands up, takes off his backpack, and lifts his shirt up over his head, then removes his shorts, standing there an inch taller in the same baggy boxers like he did before the shoes showed up poolside.
I don’t even realize I’m doing it: undressing, slipping out of the shirt; not until I am skin rimmed in markings, accented in scabs still healing from my nails. Just like that, in the bright of a morning that is deceptively calm, both of us in our underwear, Trevor grabs hold of my hand, clasps on tight. We don’t even need to count down because, somehow, we can both feel when it’s time to dive in. Keep diving. Shit pool turning to ocean it’s so deep. Beneath the water, I open my eyes, let the chlorine stain them red, and turn my head toward Trevor. He’s looking at me. His mouth is open. I open mine and we both begin to laugh, connected by the fingers, bubbles coming out our mouths and meeting in the middle of the water. Trevor and I finding our laughter just like Dee somewhere in the beyond, screeching out this moment of delirious joy, letting the water swallow us.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 2015, when I was a young teenager in Oakland, a story broke describing how members of the Oakland Police Department, and several other police departments in the Bay Area, had participated in the sexual exploitation of a young woman and attempted to cover it up. This case developed over months and years and, even as the news cycle moved on, I continued to wonder about this event, about this girl, and about the other girls who did not receive headlines, but nonetheless experienced the cruelty of what policing can do to a person’s body, mind, and spirit. For this one case that entered the media, there were and are dozens of other cases of sex workers and young women who experience violence at the hands of police and do not have their stories told, do not see court, and do not escape these situations at all. Yet the cases we know about are few.
When I began writing Nightcrawling, I was seventeen and contemplating what it meant to be vulnerable, unprotected, and unseen. Like many black girls, I was often told growing up to tend to and shield my brother, my dad, the black men around me: their safety, their bodies, their dreams. In this, I learned that my own safety, body, and dreams were secondary, that there was no one and nothing that could or would protect me. Kiara is an entirely fictional character but what happens to her is a reflection of the types of violence that black and brown women face regularly: a 2010 study found that police sexual violence is the second most reported instance of police misconduct and disproportionately impacts women of color.
As I wrote and researched this book, I drew inspiration from the Oakland case and others like it, as I wanted to write a story of my city, but I also wanted to explore what it would mean for this to happen to a young black woman, for this case to be put in the narrative control of a survivor, for there to be a world beyond the headline, and for readers to have access to this world. The stories of black women, and queer and trans folks, are not often represented in the narratives of violence we see protested, written about, and amplified in most movements, but that does not erase their existence. I wanted to write a story that would reflect the fear and danger that comes with black womanhood and the adultification of black girls, while also recognizing that Kiara—like so many of us who find ourselves in circumstances that feel impossible to survive—is still capable of joy and love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, I am abundantly grateful for Lucy Carson and Molly Friedrich and the rest of The Friedrich Agency for being my best advocates and cheering me on every step of the way. Thank you to Ruth Ozeki for your peerless wisdom and for introducing me to the lovely Molly and Lucy. Thank you to my editor, Diana Miller, for your constant insight and thoughtful notes through unforeseen circumstances. Thank you to the entire team at Knopf for championing Kiara’s story. Thank you to Niesha for giving me insight to ground Nightcrawling in an authentic sex-work experience.
Thank you to Samantha Rajaram for being my Pitch Wars mentor and friend. Pitch Wars was such an incredible opportunity that gave me what I needed to revise this novel and, most important, your friendship and support. A special thank-you to Maria Dong for the generous and brilliant editing help.
Thank you to Jordan Karnes for being a reader when I desperately needed one and for years of workshops and writing that prepared me to write this in the first place. To Oakland School for the Arts, for allowing me the first space where I could exist as a writer, and to the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate program for nurturing the poet in me. To all the children I have loved and cared for, thank you for filling my days with joy so I could spend my nights with these words.
Daddy, thank you for giving me your love of writing and for all the jazz. Mama, thank you for giving me a house full of books and teaching me the value of reading. Logan, thank you for being the first person I call when I’m stuck and the best listener and brother I could ask for. Magda, thank you for being my best friend and first reader of almost everything. Thank you to Zach Wyner, for your early mentorship, writing sessions, and constancy in my life. To all my friends and family, you have given me a rich world worth writing about and a community I am endlessly thankful for.
To Oakland, for raising me and giving me the cafés, libraries, apartments, and skies to write this book inside. You will always be home.
And lastly to Mo, my love, thank you for being by my side from that first read to hours of editing to the final touches. You are my biggest support, my anchor, my solace after a day’s work. Without you, I wouldn’t have been able to make this book what it is. You are the Alé to my Kiara and I cannot express to you how lucky I feel to come home to your arms, your food, and your words. You are my everything.