by Nic Stone
Cards.
Fifty-four.
Stacked.
Against him.
Four suits.
Two jokers.
Joke…
was on him.
What was he supposed to do?
…good in school
got him a cheating accusation and in-school suspension.
…his very best
wasn’t ever good enough.
…what he could
felt as limited as his hands did in the cuffs.
What
Was
Quan
Supposed
To
Do?
Mama wasn’t gonna get rid of Dwight no matter how often he hurt her (though Quan didn’t get WHY), but Quan knew telling somebody else would not only hurt her, but him and Dasia and Gabe too. Because they’d get taken away.
Split up for sure.
Both of Mama’s folks were gone, so Quan would probably go to some random relative of Daddy’s he’d never met (since Daddy’s folks were also deceased).
No clue what would happen with Dasia and Gabe. Quan wasn’t sure Dwight actually had parents—seemed more likely he was the spawn of demons or the result of some test tube experiment gone wrong—so whether there were family members they could go to on their dad’s side, he didn’t know.
Only shared living relative Quan could think of was “Aunt” Tiff, and though she seemed nice, he doubted she’d want to open her nice-ass house to three little hood kids (though he didn’t doubt she had the spare rooms). He was sure his salmon-on-a-river-eating cousin didn’t want anything to do with the likes of him.
And wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. About any of it.
He was in a police station.
In handcuffs.
Arrested.
The deck of cards he slid into a pocket sealing his fate.
“Delinquent Junior,”
Dwight had been calling him for years.
Was that who he was for real?
There was no denying the impulse to take what wasn’t his. Was the D in his DNA for delinquent? The Jr. shorthand of “Junior” for just repeating?
Maybe Daddy had been wrong. Ms. Mays too.
There was no way out.
No way up.
Maybe a way through…but he had no idea what to.
Could he really be anyone different than who he was?
Who even was he?
The door to the room opened, and an officer in slacks and a button-down, badge clipped to his belt, stood aside so a brown-skinned woman wearing dark sunglasses could lean her upper body into the room.
“Let’s go” was all Mama said.
And as she and Quan stood waiting for a cop who clearly was in no rush to retrieve Quan’s meager-ass belongings, the doors to the lobby opened, and a commotion ensued.
There was shouting—
“Man, get your filthy hands OFF me. I ain’t even do nothin’!”
—then feet shuffling and a bit of a struggle as two cops pulled a darker-than-Mama brown-skinned boy into the booking area. He wasn’t quite kicking and screaming, but—
“Y’all always be comin’ at me! Tryna pin some shit on me!”
“Let’s go, LaQuan.” (From Mama.)
“Get on my damn nerves!”
That’s when the boy—because he was definitely a boy; maybe a year or two Quan’s senior: age fifteen at most—caught sight of Quan.
And smiled.
“Hey, I know you!”
he shouted across the space.
And he did. Quan knew him too.
Well, knew of him.
Quan wasn’t completely sure of his name—either Dre or Trey—but he’d definitely seen him around the neighborhood.
One particular instance came to mind: one of the last times Quan was permitted to take Dasia and Gabe to the playground, he’d seen one guy—definitely older—duck out of the rocket ship with a black book bag slung over his shoulder. Quan could see inside then, and there was another guy counting money.
A boy.
He’d looked up, and Quan froze.
Money-counting boy had just smirked. Like he was the new captain of Quan’s spaceship.
Same way he was now smirking at Quan in the precinct.
“See you on the outside, homie,” he said.
Then he quit resisting the cops and disappeared.
March 12
Dear Justyce,
Bruh.
I think I might be in love.
Her name is Liberty Ayers. Gorgeous, long dreadlocks. Eyes so dark they’re almost black. Skin the color of a roasted hazelnut. (But don’t tell her I said that shit cuz when I mentioned it to her—and you know your boy mentioned it to her—she looked me dead in my eye and said, “You’re childish. Women don’t like being compared to food.”)
I’m not gonna talk about her body cuz she caught me checkin’ her out and “read me the riot act,” as Doc said later when I told him how homegirl lit into me. But I will say, if I WAS gonna talk about it, I’d be saying some excellent things.
I can’t ask her to marry me yet because she’s my case manager’s intern, so it would create a “conflict of interests.” (Again: Doc’s words.) But talking to her makes me wonder how different my life coulda been if I’d met somebody like HER instead of Trey at thirteen.
She’s his same age—nineteen going on twenty—and a sophomore at Emory University. Now. When she was younger, though? Homegirl was a menace.
And her story…Looking at her, you would never expect it. She was raised by her granddaddy cuz both parents were locked up, but he had real bad diabetes and was wheelchair-bound, so she did more taking care of him than the other way around.
Actually messed me up a little bit hearing her talk about her younger self because she sounded a lot like my baby sister.
Anyway, Libz (you ain’t allowed to call her that, though) started getting into fights and shit in third or fourth grade. First time locked up, she was twelve…fight went too far and she broke some girl’s arm (BRUH!).
Second time was for second-degree criminal damage to property.
Third time? Grand theft auto.
At fourteen.
(BRUUUUUUH!!!)
But she said something that got me: the twelve months she had to serve for that final offense were some of the hardest but BEST months of her life. She lost her granddad and everything, but she said even THAT made her wanna make some changes. And all because she met someone who wouldn’t let her “continue to bury my bright spots,” as she put it. (She got a way with words too, dawg. Total package.)
Now while I’m not buying all the happy-happy-joy, *meet-one-person-and-turn-your-life-around!* bullshit, it got me thinking about my own situation. I do think me winding up in here was inevitable, but now I can’t stop pondering, if you will, all these what-ifs.
Did you know the first time Trey and I ever spoke, we were at the police station? He was being booked, and I was being released. STILL mad about the dumb shit they arrested me for, but he was there because of a breaking and entering charge.
After he was let go—because in that case, he hadn’t actually done it—he sought me out. And even though I knew his ass was trouble, I started kicking it with him. Going wherever he asked me to.
Listening to Liberty talk, I feel like I started to get why. She was telling me how HER case manager—the one who helped her make a turnaround—taught her that people have this drive to do stuff so other people know we exist.
(Bet you forgot a dude was smart, didn’t you? #GotEem!)
It really made me think about the years between being
a KID kid—like that age when you and me met—and a for-real grown-ass man (even though when you black, SOME folks wanna act like you’re a grown-ass man before you actually are). How when you’re in that like middle to high school range, the people you’re connected to REALLY influence what you wind up doing.
After my dad got locked up, I ain’t really have no positive connections—nobody who was a good influence or who called out some good they saw inside me. Honestly, except for ONE teacher—who just had to go and have a baby—wasn’t nobody paying me no mind AT ALL, let alone saying anything positive or uplifting or encouraging or pick your feel-good term.
Which I think is where Trey came in for me. Nah, he wasn’t no good influence, but he did…see me. If that makes any sense. Libz’s life shifted to its current direction because somebody saw HER and like noticed the GOOD shit in her. Started pointing it out.
A positive connection, she called it.
Which makes me wonder: Would MY life have gone in a different direction if I’d made more positive connections? Cuz Trey was really just the first in a string of NOT-positive connections that led to some not-great decisions.
Don’t make no difference now because here I am. But “food for thought” (#ShitDocSays) nonetheless.
Yo, speaking of Doc, homie has really grown on me.
It’s too bad I didn’t meet him sooner.
—Q
Trey was waiting for Quan inside the rocket ship.
How he’d known Quan would eventually come there is still a mystery to Quan, but three days after their brief encounter at the precinct—if you could even call it that—Quan stepped onto the playground intending to vanish into his personal outer space
and
found
Montrey David Filly.
Sitting.
Back pressed up against the curved inner wall. Long legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. Hands clasped over his midsection.
Chillin’.
Quan stopped dead the moment he saw Trey in there. He was still a good few yards from the rocket.
Which didn’t matter at all.
“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?”
And Quan did.
Feel him.
So when Trey would come a-knockin’, Quan would always go.
* * *
—
While that first arrest did wind up on Quan’s record, no charges were filed.
With the second arrest, he got lucky (and Trey did too because the boys had just parted ways): he was charged—juvenile possession of a firearm…not that he had any intention of using the .22 caliber he’d gotten from Trey that was about the size of his palm—but it was a misdemeanor. The juvenile court district attorney was two hearings from retirement and wanted “to go out on a restorative note,” so she dropped the charges, gave Quan community service, and told him to get his life together
“before it’s too late, young man.”
The charge attached to his third arrest stuck—breaking and entering tended to do that—and Quan did his first ninety-day stint in a youth detention center.
He spent his fourteenth birthday there.
But looking back, it was the fourth arrest that solidified his course.
He was at the mall. Group of white dudes in suits were laughing all loud and shit in the food court. Which irritated Quan: if it’d been a group of dudes like him, seated in the same positions, talking and cackling at the same volume, they would’ve been asked to leave.
Once his eyes caught on the two phones in the open bag of the dude seated at the head of the table—Idiot.—the irritation made it that much easier to decide on the bump-and-snatch move he
(thought he’d)
perfected.
Perfect diversion—lady pushing a stroller—went by at the perfect time.
Bump…
Quan—
tripped
