“You sure you up for this?” DeVante asks. “It’s gon’ get wild out here.”
“I’m sure.” He eyes me. “I want everyone to know that decision is bullshit.”
He puts his hand on the seat with his palm facing up. I put my hand on his.
Seven cranks up the car and backs out the driveway. “Somebody check Twitter, find out where everything’s going down.”
“I got you.” DeVante holds up his phone. “Folks headed to Magnolia. That’s where a lot of shit happened last—” He winces and grabs his side.
“Are you up for this, Vante?” Chris asks.
DeVante straightens up. “Yeah. I got beat worse than this when I got initiated.”
“How’d they get you anyway?” I ask.
“Yeah. Uncle Carlos said you walked off,” says Seven. “That’s a long-ass walk.”
“Man,” DeVante groans in that DeVante way. “I wanted to visit Dalvin, a’ight? I took the bus to the cemetery. I hate that he by himself in the Garden. I didn’t want him to be lonely, if that make sense.”
I try not to think about Khalil being alone in Garden Heights, now that Ms. Rosalie and Cameron are going to New York with Ms. Tammy and I’m leaving too. “It makes sense.”
DeVante presses the towel against his nose and lip. The bleeding’s slacked up. “Before I could catch the bus back, King’s boys snatched me up. I thought I’d be dead by now. For real.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not,” Chris says. “Gives me more time to beat you in Madden.”
DeVante smirks. “You a crazy-ass white boy if you think that’s gon’ happen.”
Cars are up and down Magnolia like it’s a Saturday morning and the dope boys are showing off. Music blasts, horns blare, people hang out car windows, stand on the hoods. The sidewalks are packed. It’s hazy out, and flames lick the sky in the distance.
I tell Seven to park at Just Us for Justice. The windows are boarded up and “Black owned” is spray-painted across them. Ms. Ofrah said they would be leading protests around the city if the grand jury didn’t indict.
We head down the sidewalk, just walking with no particular place to go. It’s more crowded than I realized. About half the neighborhood is out here. I throw my hoodie over my hair and keep my head down. No matter what that grand jury decided, I’m still “Starr who was with Khalil,” and I don’t wanna be seen tonight. Just heard.
A couple of folks glance at Chris with that “what the hell is this white boy doing out here” look. He stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“Guess I’m noticeable, huh?” he says.
“You’re sure you wanna be out here?” I ask.
“This is kinda how it is for you and Seven at Williamson, right?”
“A lot like that,” Seven says.
“Then I can deal.”
The crowds are too thick. We climb on top of a bus stop bench to get a better view of everything going on. King Lords in gray bandanas and Garden Disciples in green bandanas stand on a police car in the middle of the street, chanting, “Justice for Khalil!” People gathered around the car record the scene with their phones and throw rocks at the windows.
“Fuck that cop, bruh,” a guy says, gripping a baseball bat. “Killed him over nothing!”
He slams the bat into the driver’s side window, shattering the glass.
It’s on.
The King Lords and GDs stomp out the front window. Then somebody yells, “Flip that mothafucka!”
The gangbangers jump off. People line up on one side of the car. I stare at the lights on the top, remembering the ones that flashed behind me and Khalil, and watch them disappear as they flip the car onto its back.
Someone shouts, “Watch out!”
A Molotov cocktail sails toward the car. Then—whoompf! It bursts into flames.
The crowd cheers.
People say misery loves company, but I think it’s like that with anger too. I’m not the only one pissed—everyone around me is. They didn’t have to be sitting in the passenger’s seat when it happened. My anger is theirs, and theirs is mine.
A car stereo loudly plays a record-scratching sound, then Ice Cube says, “Fuck the police, coming straight from the underground. A young nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown.”
You’d think it was a concert the way people react, rapping along and jumping to the beat. DeVante and Seven yell out the lyrics. Chris nods along and mumbles the words. He goes silent every time Cube says “nigga.” As he should.
When that hook hits, a collective “Fuck the police” thunders off Magnolia Avenue, probably loud enough to reach the heavens.
I yell it out too. Part of me is like, “What about Uncle Carlos the cop?” But this isn’t about him or his coworkers who do their jobs right. This is about One-Fifteen, those detectives with their bullshit questions, and those cops who made Daddy lie on the ground. Fuck them.
Glass shatters. I stop rapping.
A block away, people throw rocks and garbage cans at the windows of the McDonald’s and the drugstore next to it.
One time I had a really bad asthma attack that put me in the emergency room. My parents and I didn’t leave the hospital until like three in the morning, and we were starving by then. Momma and I grabbed hamburgers at that McDonald’s and ate while Daddy got my prescription from the pharmacy.
The glass doors at the drugstore shatter completely. People rush in and eventually come back out with arms full of stuff.
“Stop!” I yell, and others say the same, but looters continue to run in. A glow of orange bursts inside, and all those people rush out.
“Holy shit,” Chris says.
In no time the building is in flames.
“Hell yeah!” says DeVante. “Burn that bitch down!”
I remember the look on Daddy’s face the day Mr. Wyatt handed him the keys to the grocery store; Mr. Reuben and all those pictures on his walls, showing years and years of a legacy he’s built; Ms. Yvette walking into her shop every morning, yawning; even pain-in-the-ass Mr. Lewis with his top-of-the-line haircuts.
Glass shatters at the pawnshop on the next block. Then at the beauty supply store near it.
Flames pour out both, and people cheer. A new battle cry starts up:
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! We don’t need no water, let that mothafucka burn!
I’m just as pissed as anybody, but this . . . this isn’t it. Not for me.
DeVante’s right there with them, yelling out the new chant. I backhand his arm.
“What?” he says.
Chris nudges my side. “Guys . . .”
A few blocks away, a line of cops in riot gear march down the street, followed closely by two tanks with bright lights.
“This is not a peaceful assembly,” an officer on a loudspeaker says. “Disperse now, or you will be subject to arrest.”
The original battle cry starts up again: “Fuck the police! Fuck the police!”
People hurl rocks and glass bottles at the cops.
“Yo,” Seven says.
“Stop throwing objects at law enforcement,” the officer says. “Exit the streets immediately or you will be subject to arrest.”
The rocks and bottles continue to fly.
Seven hops off the bench. “C’mon,” he says, as Chris and I climb off too. “We need to get outta here.”
“Fuck the police! Fuck the police!” DeVante continues to shout.
“Vante, man, c’mon!” says Seven.
“I ain’t scared of them! Fuck the police!”
There’s a loud pop. An object sails into the air, lands in the middle of the street, and explodes in a ball of fire.
“Oh shit!” DeVante says.
He hops off the bench, and we run. It’s damn near a stampede on the sidewalk. Cars speed away in the street. It sounds like the Fourth of July behind us; pop after pop after pop.
Smoke fills the air. More glass shatters. The pops get closer, and the smoke thickens.
Flames eat away at the cash advance place. Just Us for Justice is fine though. So is the car wash on the other side of it, “black owned” spray-painted on one of its walls.
We hop into Seven’s Mustang. He speeds out the back entrance of the old Taco Bell parking lot, hitting the next street over.
“The hell just happened?” he says.