Jude
That girl liked understanding things.
But she was never going to understand him. The proof was: she trusted him.
Guess whose fault that was? Hers, right? Because trust was all about having things in common. When it came to him and her, the list of things they shared was exactly one word long.
And they couldn’t even agree on whether the word was Pookie or True.
The light from Mr. Peters’s kitchen window painted a long stripe across the backyard grass. Jude lay down in it. He had a choice to make. He needed it to be the right one.
But what if there was no right choice? What if no matter what he did, it was wrong?
Something moved in Mr. Peters’s yard. Turning his head, Jude spied a skunk. It waddled along, then all of a sudden stuck its nose to the ground and started digging. It spun around and dug another hole, tearing up Mr. Peters’s grass like its life depended on it. Maybe it did. Plus—whoa. Babies. Three skunk babies, following their mother, hoping for a tasty skunk treat.
Jude jumped up. He felt bad watching them wreck Mr. Peters’s nice grass. He should scare them off.
He looked up at the sky. Tonight, instead of the stars he could only see the empty spaces in between.
Then he got another text.
This one from Jabari.