19

RODNEY

“There are three things worth killing for,” Marquese tells Rodney. Rodney rides in the big blue MegaBus on the way to Chicago; Marquese is still in the big white hospital on the way to recovery. “I guess you don’t think about something like that until something like this.”

Rodney tries apologizing again, but Marquese isn’t having it. “It’s worth dying for your family, and your family is all your brothers, and that includes you. It’s worth dying for your country, and . . .”

Rodney tries to hear over his rumbling stomach. The money he gave Jawahir for a phone and the one-way ticket to Chicago was almost all the money he had. “So what’s the third, Marquese?”

“Your woman. I didn’t get that because you know I ain’t never had nothing like you and Jawahir. Man, I can see it between you. You two are like cartoon magnets with wiggly lines drawing you to each other. I think that’s why I stood up. Farhan wasn’t just insulting me, you, and all brothers. He was insulting love, and that’s just wrong. When I’m dead and gone, all that money I made ain’t gonna remember me. It ain’t gonna cry; it’s just going into somebody else’s pocket. But you, you got it.”

“Had it.” Rodney tells Marquese about going to Chicago and being away from Jawahir. “I could come in the hospital with you and they could cut out a piece of me, and it won’t hurt more than this.”

“Then why you running?”

“If I stay, I’m going to get violated,” Rodney confesses. “I can’t go back inside.”

“You afraid Jawahir would pull an Aaliyah and drop you when you’re—”

“No, that’s not it.” Of this, Rodney is more than one hundred percent sure. “But I said I wasn’t going back in. I told everybody at CHS, everybody at home, and everybody at school that I was done with that life. But mostly, I told myself that I’d never step foot inside again and I’m going to keep my word.”

“I’ll testify that you were trying to break up the fight.” Rodney flashes not on the images of the fight, but the sound of the knife entering Marquese’s body and then his body hitting the ground. “I’ll tell—”

“And we know how much judges and POs believe what young black men say,” Rodney says, feeling his anger rise. “Farhan and his buddies got way more cred than any of us and you know that.”

Marquese, who loves to argue, doesn’t say a word. Both he and Rodney know the system. “So how you feeling?” Rodney asks. “When you going home and going back to school?”

Marquese laughs, then starts coughing. When he starts talking again, his tone is different, like he’s in pain. “I don’t think school will take me back. I think they want me gone, and you too I bet.”

“Probably, that’s what they do.” Rodney remembers Principal Evans trying to get him to enroll in River Creek Academy, one of the charter schools the district uses to warehouse problem kids and ex-cons. But since he wanted to play football, or thought he did, he got Bryant to get Coach to convince Evans to let him back in. He’s got no ally in his corner now, and more enemies than he’s ever had.

Marquese and Rodney keep talking; it makes the miles so much quicker, and Rodney can only assume it makes hours laying in hospital bed a little less painful by talking to a friend.

Rodney finally ends the call when another comes in: Jawahir. “It’s her, Marquese, I gotta go.”

“Family, country, and love,” Marquese says. “Worth killing for, worth dying for.”

Rodney smiles at the idea of big bad Marquese falling in love.

He quits smiling when Jawahir tells him what Farhan said about buying two dresses.

“I’m scared, Rodney,” she says. Rodney hears the terror in her voice. He balls his fists in rage.

“Gimme a couple of days and—”

“It won’t make a difference,” Jawahir says, her voice still shaking. “Nothing will make a difference. We’ll never be together, not in Chicago, not here, maybe not until we get to Jannah.”

“Jannah?” Rodney asks.

“Paradise, or what you might think of as heaven.”

Rodney tries to hold back a laugh, but can’t manage to do so. “I ain’t going to Paradise.”

“How can you say that?”

“Heaven’s for good people, and I’ve only been a good person since I met you.”

Silence makes Rodney think the phone’s cut out, but when he looks at the screen, the call seems to be working. “Jawahir, are you there?”

“Yes, Rodney, yes, I am here. I’ll pray for you, for both of us to go to Paradise.”

“Jawahir, when we’re together again,” Rodney whispers softly as if Jawahir’s ear was next to his, “that’s heaven for me.”