WHILE G-MA’S GETTING dinner ready, I take Ray-Ray in my room and show him my comic collection. I know he thinks I’m a geek for reading them, but I give him a couple of the New 52 to take home with the other books. I’m a huge DC Comics fan. Marvel is cool, but I’ve been a DC head, Justice League and all that stuff, since I was a little kid.

“Just try them,” I say, but then I shut up because now I’m starting to sound like G-ma.

“Who’s this?” Ray-Ray asks me next. He picks up the picture of my dad from next to the bed.

It’s an old picture, and it shows him in his good police uniform. “Dress blues” is what Dad used to call them.

“That’s my father,” I say.

“I thought you said he was some kind of big detective,” Ray-Ray says.

Oh, man. I’ve got so many lies going, I kind of forgot about this one. So I take a risk—a huge risk—and go ahead and tell Ray-Ray the truth.

“He was,” I say. “But then he died. Some guy shot him in the stomach when he was making an arrest. Like three years ago.”

“For real?” Ray-Ray says.

“His name was Kenneth Wright, like me,” I say. “He’s the one who taught me how to play chess.”

Ray-Ray doesn’t say anything about that. He doesn’t call me out about lying, either. Which is cool.

It’s not like I meant to keep it all a secret. Arthur knows about it. Dele and Vashon, too. I just don’t like to talk about it that much. G-ma always says I’m the bravest kid she knows, because of everything that happened. But back then, it didn’t make me feel so brave. Kind of the opposite, actually.

“Dude looks like you,” Ray-Ray says. Then he sets the picture down again and picks up one of my comics.

“I guess,” I say. People used to tell me that all the time.

Mostly, though, I think he looks like Stainlezz Steel.