“Just some dude,” she sighs. “It’s my fault—he was vandalizing my car and I got in the way.”
Not at all what happened. How much does she have to hide from this guy?
“You didn’t catch his name?” her dad asks. “What was he wearing? Did you see his shoes? Could you describe him to a sketch artist?”
“Dad, it’s fine, he was just angry and showing off for his friends. He realized he hit me and took off.”
“It is not fine, young lady, I’ll have him behind bars for the rest of his miserable life, the fucking cockroach.” He must feel me watching them, because suddenly his eyes are on me. “Who the hell are you?”
I cower as he barks at me. I am overtly aware of the gun on his hip—the baton, the taser, and whatever else he carries. That soft expression is gone when he looks at me. There is no humanity in his stare. Just pure hatred, and it lands on me because I am the one sitting here. “I’m—”
“This is Rhett,” Riley lies. “He actually tried to catch the guy when he ran off. And he drove me here.”
Her dad looks down at her with wide, angry eyes, and immediately quells any curiosity about why she’s lying about who I am to him. “I see,” he growls.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, sir,” I say as I stand. Officer McLeon moves Riley nearly all the way behind him when I move, and I shove my hands in my pockets, so I don’t reach out for her. That isn’t a good idea with this guy either, though, so I take them back out and twiddle my thumbs in his clear view. “I was only waiting around because I didn’t feel like she should be alone.”
“Getting a little touchy feely with her, weren’t ya?” he asks.
“Dad,” Riley growls, low in warning. She peers at me over his shoulder and frowns, the embarrassment clear on her face.
“You don’t happen to drive for any ride-shares, do you?” he asks.
Riley’s eyes are wide when she looks at me for a response. I have a fifty-fifty shot of not totally fucking this up. “No, sir,” I say.
Riley’s shoulders fall with her relief, and her dad’s eyes narrow in suspicion. He doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t believe a word out of my mouth, though. “Well. You can get on, then.”
“Thank you again,” Riley says. She mouths, “I’m sorry” as I walk past her, and I just nod so she knows I heard. I get the picture. I want to kiss her goodbye, ask her if she wants me to tell Rhett to go to the protest alone. She needs me now more than Phillip and his family ever will.
But what she needs is for me to feign indifference and walk out of here like she’s no one to me. And like I’m no one to her.
And maybe that’s what I really am after all.
Rhett takes a long look at me when I climb back in his truck. He’s disappointed and irritated, it’s obvious on his face, but I ignore him as long as I can. Only when he doesn’t put the vehicle in drive for two solid minutes, do I say, “What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“Just say it.”
He sighs. “Is she worth it?”
I bite my lip and look out the window. “Shit worth having is worth fighting for,” I say.
“Uh huh,” he grunts. “But is she worth it?”
I keep my eyes focused on the window seam, on the little chip in the rubber. “Yes,” I say. He sighs again but drops the subject and drives us to the protest. The protest of her father being back on the job. The protest of fifteen-year-old kids getting gunned down for nothing.
Is she worth it?
In truth? She didn’t answer my question. I don’t know if she wants to fight for us. And I don’t even know if I should.
The inundation of questions that followed was maddening. It took three hours and a promise to file an official police report to get my dad off my ass about Lincoln. He wanted his last name, address, driver’s license number, plates, everything. And when I told him the honest truth, that I didn’t know those things—not that I would share it anyway, especially after his little outburst when Lincoln dropped me off at home—I thought I’d be driving him back to the hospital for a brain aneurysm.
“You got in a fight with a dirty old nigger, and that’s bad enough, but then you got in a car with another you don’t know! And you didn’t even get his plates or license? God damn it, Riley! He could’ve raped you—or killed you!”
Knowing a license number does nothing to help me with that, and would only prove beneficial in trying him for a crime should he commit one. But letting Dad freak out over that was easier than trying to explain to him that I knew for a fact I wasn’t in any danger, because I know both of those ‘dirty’ boys, and neither of them want to hurt me.
One of them wants to be with me.
Everything inside of me wants to go to Lincoln. My bones ache to stand beside him and scream that this was all wrong, to prove there are white people against racism in the world, too. The night’s still young, I could pull it off. But I still felt wrong, like I’d be stepping on all the wrong toes by raising my voice. Be a witness, don’t take the spotlight. That’s what women tell men, right? To hear our stories without repeating them back as if they could possibly understand what it was like to grow up female?
I’ll never understand what it’s like to go through life as a person of color. I don’t envy them the burden.
Quiet is where I belong—out of the way, silently rooting for them from the sidelines, hoping everything works out and the rest of my race learns to take a seat, too.
“What’re you doing out here?”
I jolt in surprise, the gun nearly tumbling out of my hands. “Uncle Mike,” I gasp, clutching my chest as my heart tries to hammer its way out.
I couldn’t stand being in the house with my dad anymore, so I snuck out. I walked two miles, maybe three, before I caught a ride share to Mike’s property and picked the lock to the barn. I couldn’t sleep anyway, and I needed the normalcy, the peace of routine.
Dismantling and cleaning the guns was something I could do in my sleep, and it calmed me. Like counting sheep, or warm milk for normal people. Unlike being loud, fighting injustice, weapons are my comfort zone.
Idly I wonder what that means about me, but my uncle standing in the barn door keeps me from properly psychoanalyzing myself. I did not expect him to catch me.
He narrows his eyes, but for once, he doesn’t look angry at me. There’s a soft concern behind his eyes, and a mild curiosity as to what I could possibly be doing on his property at this hour of the night, and without Dad to escort me.
“Don’t you have school tomorrow?” he asks, glancing down at his watch. “It’s pushing ten.”
I nod but avert my eyes back to the gun. “Dad and I didn’t clean up real well when we visited the other day,” I say. “I thought I’d try and clean up a bit.
He’s not convinced. “I see.”
Silence echoes between us, as I shakily keep cleaning the guns and he leans against the shed doors, staring intently as if he can Jedi the truth from my mind.
“I just needed to get out of my house,” I admit finally.
“C’mon inside,” he says. “It’s freezing, and I have tea.”
“You don’t have to do—”
“Now you just hush and listen to your elders,” he gripes. “Clearly you’ve got a lot on your mind. I’m always game for a distraction, so come in and vent. Then you can get your ass home and go to bed, and have a long, productive day at school.”
The sarcasm oozes out of his pores. Mikey is not a fan of the public education system, and warred with my dad frequently about putting me in a private, elitist academy. Dad won out, sending me to the schools Mom had chosen before her passing, but that didn’t stop Mikey from making his opinions known.
He gestures for me to wash my hands in the sink before I can sit at the table. I pick at my nails, unable to stop my nervous fidgeting, before he all but shoves the mug between my hands and pours the scalding water over the cream and tea bag. It smells of peppermint and a hint of choco
late, and one deep breath in calms my frazzled nerves.
“So what’s going on?” he asks, stabbing aggressively at his own cup.
I don’t know how to tell him the truth. Mikey and I have always been friends, but we were never close. I know his views don’t differ much from Dad’s—how could they? They were raised in the same household, with the same values, so of course their beliefs would be similar.
Then again, he and Dad were the best of buds until Phillip Jordan was killed.
“Why are you upset with my dad?” I ask. Mikey stares at me, so I ramble on. “Like...I get why. But, you’re not standing with him against the backlash from that boy dying, and he knows you’re angry about it, I just... I don’t...”
“Don’t understand why I care about some random black boy?” he asks.
I flush and lower my eyes. That random black boy had a family, a life, a future, all snuffed out within an instant. And not a soul in my family could tell me his name if their life depended on it. I still wake up in a cold sweat, haunted by the nightmares of his smiling face on the television. Meanwhile, everyone else just calls him The Victim.
“I tried to tell him to keep an eye on you around them niggers,” Uncle Mikey sighs.
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“You’re softhearted,” he says, like it’s a bad thing. “And you really are their type, physically speaking. Bit chunky, babyfaced...”
Instinctively I cover my stomach by crossing my arms, curling in on myself best I can. That’s two people who think I’m fat, and it’s the only reason Linc would be interested. For one, I can find every rib in my side—just because I curve doesn't mean I’m chunky.
And besides. There’s nothing wrong with that, anyway.
Two, the people who’ve said he’s only interested in me because I’m fat seem to have an IQ of twelve. They also think all black people are violent, stupid, and rapists.
I need better friends. And better family.
“I’m mad ‘cause he lied about it,” Mikey says, after I’m sure he’s not going to answer me. “He made up some huge, elaborate story about the kid having a gun and how he needed to get back home to you. And then he kept lying even when he got caught, and he’s still full of shit now.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I have no doubt that kid was a menace. When Marty can admit he shot that boy ‘cause he’s black, I’ll stand beside him ’til the day I die,” he swears. “Until then, I’ll sit back. I don’t advocate for liars.”
My heart drops and heat creeps up my neck, my words coming out breathless when I ask, “So you do believe it was purely racist?”
“Of course it was racist,” he says. “Do I think it started that way? No. But your dad’s got some serious PTSD about them niggers, so... I’d go so far as to say he went out of his mind when he felt threatened.”
“Can we not use that word, please?” I ask. I remember a time when I didn’t care how often the N word got thrown around in my family, but damn, my skin is crawling at the sound of it from his mouth now.
He shrugs and sips his tea, but doesn’t apologize.
“PTSD,” I say. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, your mom,” he says. I stare at him, blankly, and he shakes his head. “Why’re you looking at me like that? Marty told you by now what really happened to her, didn’t he?”
I shake my head no, and he sighs. “Well, fuck.”
I was told Mom died in a car crash. She was cremated, and Dad never let me see the body. He told me I shouldn’t remember her like that—pale and cold and lifeless. He wanted me to keep the sweet memories we had, the charity runs, the coloring together when I was too sick to leave bed, seeing her smiling face as she cheered me on from the sidelines of my softball games.
I lean back in my seat and wrap my arms tight around my ribcage, hugging myself tight like I genuinely think I can hold myself together. “What happened to Mom?”
“It’s really not my business,” he grumbles.
“Uncle Mikey,” I say, “please. I won’t tell Dad you told.”
He considers for a long while, his eyes on the table. Then he huffs. “Your mom was fucking around on Martin with one of them.”
I forget how to breathe. I open my mouth, asking him to elaborate, but no sound comes out besides a strangled cough. My tongue and lips move to form a pleading “what?” but to no avail.
“It was some guy from the radio station.” Mikey takes pity on my croaking and waves a hand to stop me so he can continue on. “Some personality hot shot. She worked there part time—you understand. Not everyone is built to be a cop’s wife.”
I reach up and stroke my throat with the pad of my thumb, trying to coax the muscles to relax enough to pull in enough oxygen so I don’t faint right there. I shake my head. “I was old enough to remember,” I squeak. “I think I would know if she... I-If she was...”
Uncle Mikey chuckles. “You’re just like your father. He denied it, too.”
“She wouldn’t cheat,” I insist. “She was happy with Dad and I.”
“Oh, pumpkin, I know if your dad taught you anything, it’s that niggers don’t take no for an answer.” Uncle Mikey shakes his head, breathing out heavily. “Marty found out when the other guy drove the car off the road. Mom was DOA, guy died in the hospital later. And this was after your brother had his little chimp baby, so it really didn’t land well on Marty.”
“My brother?” I sputter. My mind is struggling to wrap around my mother being a cheater, so the change in topic is easy to latch on to. “After—his what?”
Uncle Mikey ventures to the kitchen island, rifling through his junk drawer for a weathered, bent picture to pass to me. A man who looks like a younger, happier version of my father stands in front of a mountain range. Beside him, a young black girl, her dark skin glowing bronze in the bright sunshine. On the man’s shoulders is a little boy, with a shaved head and a wild look on his face. The back is dated summertime, almost a decade ago.
“This is Ryker?” I ask, pointing a shaking finger at the picture. I trace the strong jaw that I never got, staring at the abundance of freckles on his pale skin. It’s the first I’ve ever laid eyes on my brother, but there’s no doubt we’re related. The little boy—his son, he got his mom’s round face, but the McLeon freckles carried over. “Dad always said he went crazy and lived off the grid, somewhere in Alaska or Canada somewhere.”
“Well he did go crazy,” Uncle Mikey says easily. “Your dad would’ve paid to abort that half-breed, but Ryker wouldn’t budge. He bought an RV with his college savings and took off with the two of ‘em. He stays in better touch with me than Marty.”
The picture flutters down to the table in front of me when my trembling hands can no longer hold on. So Dad disowned my brother for being with a woman of color. Mom died because of her affairs. What would he do to me if he found out what I’m doing with Linc?
What would he do to Lincoln?
I hunker down in my seat, vehemently blinking the tears out of my eyes. I’m numb all the way down in my soul, the shock sending tremors through my whole body. I want the dark, to sleep, and when I wake up, I want to wake in my own bed. I want this all to be some nightmare.
“Ryker’s girl looks sweet,” I hear myself saying. I don’t consciously realize the words are tumbling out of my mouth, and I barely recognize my own voice right now. “And Mom’s death was still an accident. It’s not like they’re thugs or villains or something...”
“They’re all thugs, Riley, they just present like they’re not.”
“That’s not true,” I snap. Anger. Anger is easier than drowning in grief like I lost her all over again, easier than feeling the ache of betrayal, than the fear that was already so suffocatingly present and has now been increased tenfold. “Phillip Jordan was fifteen, Uncle Mikey, he didn’t have a dangerous bone in his body.”
He rolls his eyes, but pinches the bridge of his nose like he can hide it. “I’m sure he would’ve got th
ere one day.” He clears his throat, taking a gulp of his tea before continuing. “Your dad’s always had issue with them. I mean—we were raised in a different time. People weren’t always so sensitive about this kinda stuff. You could say what you thought without being labeled a bigot, you know?”
“You could also rape and enslave them without repercussions at one point, too,” I say. “Owning people of color was legal. That doesn’t mean it was okay.”
“God, you’ve become such a snowflake,” he laughs, like it’s something funny. “I didn’t own slaves. Neither did Gramps. I, personally, don’t think we need to keep living in guilt over something that happened before we were born.”
“They’re not talking about what happened before we were all born, though, they would just appreciate having to pay for a traffic ticket when they get pulled over and not a coffin.”
“One thing we have to agree on,” he says, “is this: they are a bunch of hypocrites, Riley.”
“Who?” I ask. “Black people?”
He nods. “They go parading around with their little protests, saying their lives matter more than ours. And that we can’t blame the whole race because of a few bad people, right? But isn’t that what they’re doing to the police? Look at what’s happening to your dad—he’s public enemy number one. No one’s even looking at that little punk or questioning if he did anything wrong. It’s all a game of let’s blame the officer.”
The absurdity of his statement renders me speechless. I want to kick myself for that, since silence seems to be a go-to I can’t shake, but I don’t have the energy to fight him. Clearly, he’s no better than my dad. So much for finding someone to talk to.
“I’m exhausted,” I say. “I think I’m gonna head home.”
He waves his hand. “It’s late. Crash on the couch and head to school in the morning.”
“But Dad—”
“Would rather know you’re somewhere safe for the night.” He takes my half-empty mug and walks to the sink, running them under the faucet as he nods his head toward the living room. “Go on, then.”
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