39

Afterward, Destiny walked me home, where we ended up shivering in front of my house. “I still can’t believe you live here.”

“It was cheap, what can I say?” I said.

She looked around at the empty lots surrounding our house. “You gonna be OK?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I just have to wait things out, I guess.”

“And hope things don’t get worse.”

I laughed, but she wasn’t joking. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she said, hesitating. “It’s just things haven’t exactly gone your way lately.” She didn’t know the worst of it.

Destiny kicked at the sidewalk. “I kind of worry for you is all.”

“I worry for me,” I added, wondering where she was going with this.

She had something else on her mind. “What if . . . things go bad at the trial?” she asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Um,” she cleared her throat. “Like what if . . . Kalvin and them . . . get off?”

I didn’t want to think about that. “Did you hear something?”

“It’s just that it kinda . . . happened before.”

This was news to me. “When?”

She kicked at a rock in the dirt until it skittered across the sidewalk into the tall grass. “Why do you think they’re so hot for Kalvin?” she asked. “Three years ago, there was a knockout where some old guy ended up in a coma. Rodney Graves happened to be the one who found him. He had just passed this group of kids who did it. When he was waiting for the ambulance, he noticed a girl watching from her stoop. She had seen the whole thing; she knew those kids too. Graves convinced her to be a witness. Checked up on her every day to make sure she was still willing to do it. It was an open-and-shut case. This was back when my brother was king.”

Heavy. “Is that how come he ended up in juvie?”

She laughed bitterly. “No. An hour before the trial, the girl disappeared. The boys had gotten to her, convinced her to not testify. Kalvin . . . made me hide her at Prince’s cousin’s house till the judge had to finally throw out the case, a mistrial. Everyone got off, made a big show of it. People were pissed.”

“So how’d they get your brother, then?”

“’Cause he was an idiot. Thought he was invincible. He hit a reporter who asked the wrong question, right outside the courthouse! In front of everybody!”

“And that’s how Kalvin took over?”

“Yep.”

She kept kicking at the ground. “They’re not going to take any chances this time.”

“Who? Kalvin?”

“No, the city. If they’re not 100 percent convinced you can win the case for them, they will drop you and walk away. They can’t afford to be embarrassed again.”

“And why didn’t you bring this up before I agreed to testify?” She gave me the stink eye. “Um, because you ran away?” Right.

Dad was drinking coffee and working at the kitchen table when I walked in.

“The police raided the school today,” I told him.

He nodded. “Graves called me. Quite a list of charges they had. Assault, collusion, witness intimidation, second-degree murder.”

I’d never get used to hearing that word murder. “How did they know Kalvin intimidated me?”

Dad studied me for a moment. “Not you. Joe Lee.”

“What?”

“Online stuff. Plus making threatening calls and leaving messages in his mailbox. Stupid stuff.”

I thought of Joe sitting by his wife’s grave. The man had no recollection of the attack, but still, they had to make sure he got the message.

“So what do we do now?”

Dad collected his papers and put them in his briefcase.

“Now we wait.”

We were told it’d take two months for it to go to trial. The prosecutor was hoping a few of the younger ones would turn on Kalvin, after spending some time in a cell. There was very little evidence, I guess, so the case seemed to rest with me. They needed more, but no one else was coming forward. Even Joe was hesitant to say anything, because his memories were playing tricks with his head.

Meanwhile, life went back to normal, except all I had was time to think about what I was doing. Graves checked in with us every few days, making sure that I wasn’t getting cold feet. He’d just drop by, as he was always out patrolling the neighborhoods, looking for certain kids before they got too deep into their criminal ways. He always brought us something: donuts, candy. And he always had the same message: “You’re doing the right thing.”

I wasn’t so sure.