‌Friday

 

 

‌Okay, look. If I thought my sudden allegiance to honesty would make me feel con dent, I was wrong. If I was an honest dumbass the day before, I was a freaking piss-scared dumbass on Friday. I’d talked my game, but now I had to follow through with it.

First things rst. I called the police. I had to start from the beginning. I was there.

I looked up the right number and extension and I made the call in the kitchen, shaking, holding the window frame with one hand and staring out into the sliver of street I could see from there. e phone on the other end rang and rang, as if the damn thing was testing me, trying to get me to hang up. But I didn’t.

“I’d like to make a statement,” I said when someone nally picked up.

ere was a loud sigh. “Okay. About what?”

“e Rashad Butler incident. I saw what happened, and I’d like to make a statement.”

ere was a long silence on the other end. It seemed as if he’d muffled the phone with his hand.

When he came back on, he was quick and curt and aggressive, and rattled off a litany of questions. “Look. Were you in the store? Were you inside when it happened? Did you witness what happened inside Jerry’s?”

“No. I was outside.”

e officer sighed again. “Okay,” he said. “Look, we have so many statements.”

“I was there. I need to report what I saw.”

“Fine. I’ll take it over the phone, and someone will call you back if we need more. Name and address, please.”

I couldn’t see the Galluzzo house from the kitchen window, but it was hovering nearby, as if it, or everyone in it, was waiting for me just beyond my view.

He took my statement but didn’t ask any questions, and he hustled me off the phone. No, I hadn’t been inside. No, I didn’t know exactly what happened. But that wasn’t the goddamn point. I didn’t believe Paul’s story, but even if I did, it didn’t matter.

I know what I saw aer that, and that was all that mattered.

 

 

Plans for the march were all over the news, and so were discussions about how to deal with it. Would they cordon off the sidewalks? Would they try to stop the march altogether?

Like usual, I walked Willy to school rst, and as I doubled back around to Central High, I turned the corner onto Main Street, but then I stopped and nearly ran back around the other way. About four blocks ahead, slowly making its way up the street, was an enormous black vehicle—not a tank exactly, but it had six giant wheels, and its triangular metal nose looked designed to crash through concrete walls. One cop in all-black paramilitary gear stood in the lookout turret on top, and he surveyed the street as if he were looking for snipers.

“Holy shit!” I said out loud, as it dawned on me that it was heading straight for the high school! Was this the city’s response to the protest? A tank? What the hell would come next?

I zipped my coat up to the neck, worried now that going to the march was more dumbass than I’d thought. It got closer—the only frigging thing in the road!—and I realized I was shaking. I couldn’t move. As it rumbled by, the concrete seemed to quake, and I stupidly ducked my head, as if that would keep me from being noticed, and steadied my hands by grabbing the straps of my backpack. Oh my God! I can’t do this. I can’t do this! Tanks? Freaking tanks are coming down the street. What the hell, are they sending in the army? It chugged by in all the thunder of its machinery, but then there was something even louder, a jeering boo rising up out of the crowd of students gathered around the front steps of the school.

e police tank continued on, and if it had meant to scare the students, it did the opposite. By the time I snapped out of it and got up to the steps, kids were yelling aer the police tank.

“is is what a police state looks like!” “Serving and protecting who?”

“Don’t shoot!”

I found Jill, who was still at it, passing out yers with info about the protest. “Hey, Quinn,” she said, handing me one.

“What the hell was that?” I said, thumbing to the street.

She kind of bounced in place, all excited. “ey’re going crazy. I hear they’re gearing up for major riots. We’re not rioting. We’re protesting! We have a permit to march!”

I looked back to the street and shook my head. “I don’t know—now that I saw that.” I mean, it was one thing to have a conviction, but to be beaten up or killed for it—was it worth it? “But is it really the right thing to do if the police are bringing in tanks? at’s frigging scary shit!”

But even as I was saying this, another part of my brain was shouting at me. Tanks? What about Dad? Talk about a man who died for his convictions. How many times did he re-up aer 9/11? ree. I was old enough now to know he wasn’t fearless. He’d probably been scared shitless every time he went back. He wasn’t strong because he wasn’t afraid. No, he was strong because he kept doing it even though he was afraid.

Jill looked to the corner where the tank had disappeared down Spring

Street—the route we were supposed to march to get to Fourth Street and Jerry’s. “I hear you,” she said. “But I was talking to Tiffany, and she was telling me about the speech her parents give her younger brother all the time

—the speech, she said, all boys of color get from their parents. Did you ever get that speech from your mother? Did you ever get a list of ways you had to behave if the cops stop you?”

“But this is different, isn’t it?”

Jill waved out over the crowd. “And it isn’t just guys who fear the cops, and families with boys. ere’s a whole movement for the girls too. Hashtag SayHerName. It’s big. is is about everyone who fears cops.”

I adjusted my backpack, pulled the straps tighter against me. “Jesus,” I moaned. Jill gave me a look. “No,” I said. “I mean, that’s real. I’m saying it sucks that there even has to be that hashtag, you know?”

“Look, if there are people who are scared of the police every day of their lives,” Jill said, determined, “I’m going to live in fear of them for at least one day to say that I don’t think that’s right.”

I grunted.

“Quinn, come on.” She pushed my shoulder. “You said you want to do something. is is the something. Join the march. Look, Paulie, Guzzo, my mom—they all hate me now. But it’s like it says on the yer—” She pointed down to the paper in my hands. A block quote from Desmond Tutu covered the top half of the sheet:

IF YOU ARE NEUTRAL IN SITUATIONS OF INJUSTICE, YOU HAVE CHOSEN THE SIDE OF THE OPPRESSOR.

Jill curled a so smile and glanced at the crowd, and then back up at me. “is is like a real moment in history, Quinn,” she said, not yelling, not shouting out over the crowd, but almost shyly, like she was sharing something that meant the whole world to her. “I want to make sure I’m on the right side of it.”

I gazed out over the crowd of students around us. ere were other white kids like me and Jill, and black kids like Tiffany and Tooms, and Latino kids and Vietnamese kids, and multiracial kids, and kids I didn’t know at all and didn’t know how they identi ed, and I thought about what English had said to me and how many times I’d been a dick without knowing it, and it made me wonder how many times I’d remained neutral in the past too, and what that meant. What did Dad do? He ran right into the face of history. I couldn’t duck now, just because I was scared.

“I’m going,” I told Jill. I tried to be cool about it. “I mean, I did wear that T-shirt and all.”

She laughed. “All right then. Let’s go together.”

 

 

e school day was a blur of chaos. Nobody was paying attention to what was happening in class—even most of the teachers were just letting the day

run, so we could all get out of the building. It felt like when the last bell rang the dam would break and a ood of people would pour out of school.

And it wasn’t until I got out onto the sidewalk near the gym that I remembered that, in fact, not everyone was going to the march. As I looked around for Jill, I saw Dwyer cutting across the parking lot to the gym. He was hunched forward, not looking back, trudging his way to practice, and I wondered if there’d even be enough players there to run a play. ey sure as hell couldn’t run “Rashad.” What would they call it instead? ere’d be consequences for all of us skipping practice, I knew that, but that would be Monday. Today—yes, Ma—I was trying to take some responsibility.

I was marching.

I repeated it to myself like a mantra. I was marching. I kept saying it as I scanned the crowd for Jill, pumping myself up, because some people had told me racism was a thing of the past, they’d told me not to get involved. But that was nuts. ey were nuts. And more to the point—they’d all been white people. Well, guess what? I’m white too—and that’s exactly why I was marching. I had to. Because racism was alive and real as shit. It was everywhere and all mixed up in everything, and the only people who said it wasn’t, and the only people who said, “Don’t talk about it” were white. Well, stop lying. at’s what I wanted to tell those people. Stop lying. Stop denying.

at’s why I was marching. Nothing was going to change unless we did

something about it. We! White people! We had to stand up and say something about it too, because otherwise it was just like what one of those posters in the crowd outside school said: OUR SILENCE IS ANOTHER KIND OF VIOLENCE.

I found Jill, and we walked with a huge group of kids, making our slow march to Jerry’s. By the time we got there, the street was a river of people— an enormous group already!—winding back from the corner store. ey were chanting and waving signs. All the streets behind us were open, but the police had cordoned off the side streets along the march route ahead of us. We were stuck in a kind of tunnel. Fucking hell! Sure, they’d let us march from Jerry’s to the police station—that was the plan—but if anything went wrong, we’d be trapped. ousands of us. Noise already echoed off the walls of the buildings on either side of the street.

ere were thousands of cops, too, or what might have been cops. ey looked more like an army of Robocops—black paramilitary out ts, helmets,

automatic ri es. Jill and I kept squeezing our way closer and closer to the front, and when we could see beyond the rst row of marchers, we could see the rst line of the police guard, too. With the row of police tanks, like the one I’d seen that morning, and the rank upon rank of infantry, I swear it looked a lot less like Spring eld and a lot more like Kabul. But it was the corner of Fourth Street. I held my breath for a moment, feeling again what I’d seen there.

Jill and I scooted toward the edge of the street, closer to Jerry’s. I could see the black canisters of tear gas in the belt loops of the cops. I pulled out my phone and start lming them. I didn’t know if I was allowed to lm them or not, but I lmed them anyway. I lmed the tanks, too. I lmed the guys who had their guns raised and aimed toward the marchers. en I tilted the phone back to me.

“Hey, Will,” I said into the picture. “is is for you. Ma’s always telling us to take responsibility. at we have to live up to what Dad died for. We need to get good grades and go to a good college and take advantage of every damn minute of our lives because he died for us. I believe that. But I believe he died for this, too. If he died for freedom and justice—well, what the hell did he die for if it doesn’t count for all of us?”

Someone was blowing a whistle up front and I hit stop. People shouted instructions through a bullhorn. Jill pointed, excited. “I think I see Rashad up there! I think he’s here.” We tried to edge our way a little closer to the front line, and with all the camera crews hovering, and people watching us on their TVs back home, I wondered if anybody thought what we were doing was unpatriotic. It was weird. inking that to protest was somehow un-American. at was bullshit. is was very American, goddamn All- American. I craned my head, trying to see Rashad. And seeing who I thought might be him, right next to his family and English, I couldn’t help wondering how, years from now, Rashad would be remembered.

e kid at the front of a march. Speaking truth to power. Standing up for injustice. Asking only to be seen and heard and respected like the citizen he was. Would he be thought of as the “All-American” boy?

But as the march began, and we trudged forward, shouting along with the people around us, “Spring- eld P-D, we don’t want brutality!” I just wanted to see Rashad, the kid who went to school with me. Rashad, English’s friend.

Rashad, the guy walking along with his family, the son they were probably all just grateful was alive.

e march wound its way from the West Side back into Central. e streets swelled with bodies and chants, and as we got down to Police Plaza 1, the crowd started to fan out around the square. I followed Jill and joined a cluster right near the front. Whistles blew around the square and the chanting stopped, the marching stopped, and everyone began to lie down on the ground.

“It’s a die-in,” Jill told me, and I dropped like everyone else.

Somebody had a microphone and a PA speaker, and she started reciting the names that I quickly realized were of young, unarmed black men and women who had been killed by the police in the last year. I knew some of the names from the news, but many I didn’t. So fucking many.

As I listened, I looked up into what should have been the dark, autumnal evening sky, but instead the haze of ashing police lights, streetlamps, giant spotlights, the headlights of cars, the kaleidoscopic re ection off the cold concrete and glass of Police Plaza 1, all obscured the sky. ere were no stars. e moon was hidden somewhere behind the blinding glare, and it felt like the city itself was collapsing, pressing in, taking only the shallowest of breaths in the squeeze of lost space.

e list of names went on.

And as I heard them, my mind sort of split in two—one part listening, and the other picking up the ideas I’d been kicking around in my head all day: Would I need to witness a violence like they knew again just to remember how I felt this week? Had our hearts really become so numb that we needed dead bodies in order to feel the beat of compassion in our chests? Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self?

But Rashad lived. His name wasn’t on the list, and thank God it didn’t have to be for us all to be here in Police Plaza. I rolled my head to see if I could nd him.

 

 

‌I learned that the night before a protest, it’s impossible to sleep. I didn’t toss or turn, I just lay at on my back staring into the darkness, my mind darting from thought to thought, from friend to friend, from brother to mother, from hashtag to hashtag. And in the morning, I wasn’t groggy or grumpy, or even sleepy. I was sick. And it was a good thing that I hadn’t planned on going back to school until Monday, because I spent what seemed like hours in the bathroom shitting nerves. And pizza.

Once I nally made it out to the kitchen, my mother—who had taken the day off—was sitting at the table in her robe, sipping coffee, staring at the television.

“Good morning,” she said. en, noticing my hand rubbing so circles on my stomach, her voice went into instant worry. “What’s the matter?”

“Not feeling too well,” I said, easing into a seat. “Should I take you back to the hospital?”

“No, no, I don’t think it’s anything like that.” I hoped.

Ma got up, pressed the back of her hand against my forehead, then to my neck. “No fever. at’s a good sign,” she said, relief in her voice. She grabbed the kettle off the stove, lied it to make sure there was water in it, then set it back down. She turned on the ame. “I’ll make you some mint tea,” she added, reaching up into the pantry to grab a tea bag and a mug. “I bet it’s just your nerves. You keep ’em buried in your belly. Got that from your daddy.”

“What you mean?”

“I mean, whenever you get nervous, your stomach acts crazy,” she said. “Your father has the same problem. He can eat anything. Seems like his gut is made of steel when it comes to food. But when he gets nervous, he’s a mess.”

I never knew this about my father, maybe because he never seemed like he was too nervous about anything. I mean, besides that story he told me about him shooting Darnell Shackleford, I had never even known my father to show any sign of fear. But this new information got me thinking. He was sick earlier in the week. Said something didn’t agree with his stomach, so maybe the thing that didn’t agree with his gut was . . . what happened to me. Police brutality. Maybe. Or maybe it was just seeing me in pain. Or maybe even knowing somewhere deep in the pit of his belly that I was innocent.

Ma set the tea in front of me, then sat back down. We both sipped from our mugs and watched the news. Everybody was talking about the upcoming protest, which was scheduled to start at ve thirty. Clips of military vehicles rolling past as reporters talked about “hopes for a peaceful demonstration.” Police officers already dressed in military gear. I had seen it before. I had seen it all the other times there were protests in other parts of the country, other cities, other neighborhoods. I’d heard Spoony talk about it, because he and Berry had taken buses to other cities to march. He had been tear gassed before and told me it was like someone rubbing an onion on your eyeballs, and then pouring hot gasoline down your throat. e words “riot” and “looters” were being thrown into the conversation too, my picture next to Galluzzo’s ashing across the screen, the footage of the arrest, looping. Experts arguing, is isn’t the first time this has happened. But until we have an honest conversation about prejudice and abuse of power in law enforcement, it won’t stop, and, Unless you’ve been a police officer, there’s no way to know how difficult a job it is. Law enforcement isn’t perfect, but there are more good examples than bad.

“Is Dad coming?” I asked, holding the cup up. e steam snaked up into

my nose.

Ma pursed her lips. “Baby, I don’t even know. I woke up in the middle of the night, realizing he wasn’t in the bed. When I got up to check on him, I found him standing at your door, peeking in at you, like he used to do when you were a baby. I didn’t disturb him. I just crept back to the room. I was surprised he even made it up this morning for work, let alone a march.”

“I was awake. I wish he would’ve knocked,” I said, also surprised—that he had been watching me in the rst place. I wondered . . . maybe he was reliving what it was like to leave me every day to be a cop. What it was like to love something enough to do anything to come back to it.

“Yeah, well, you know your father.”

“Did he say something about it this morning?”

“No. He just went to work early, didn’t say much of anything. Kissed me as usual and told me to be safe, but that was it. So we’ll see.”

e smell of mint suddenly turned my stomach. Or maybe it was what my mother had just said, which made me imagine that Dad had given her “the talk.” You know, Never fight back. Never talk back. Keep your hands up. Keep your mouth shut. Just do what they ask you to do, and you’ll be fine. Dad’s guide to surviving the police. Dad’s guide to surviving a protest. Dad’s guide to surviving . . . Dad. Whatever it was, my stomach started hiccuping again, jumping around like I was possessed by something nasty. I set my mug down on the table and ran back to the bathroom.

Once I made sure it was safe to leave the toilet, I needed to go lie down. Who knew that lying down for a week could make you so tired? But before climbing back in the bed, I got on my knees and reached underneath it, trying to grab a shoe box that I had pushed way too far back. Argghkk—that hurt. Once I’d nally swatted it close enough to grip, I pulled the raggedy box from under the bed frame and set it on the mattress. I popped the top off and started digging through the hundreds of pieces of torn newspaper. My Family Circus tear-outs. I don’t really know why I suddenly had to see them now, except maybe they were a distraction I could really, really count on. I mean, I could’ve drawn something myself, but whatever was inside was what was going to come out, so it would’ve probably been another picture of someone getting slammed, or something like that. So e Family Circus was better. Easier.

It had been a few years since I had looked at any of them, and lea ng through them transported me back to sitting across from my father, licking marshmallows off the top of hot chocolate, reading them for the rst time. Man, that seemed like a lifetime ago. Even thinking about it was like thinking about someone else’s life, not my own. I mean, the innocence of it all seemed almost silly now. To think that life could always be as good as breakfast with your family and sharing the newspaper with your dad, looking up to him, imagining that one day you’d read the whole entire paper and drink coffee too. To think that my life could be as perfect as Billy’s.

I ipped through a dozen tear-outs, then another, and then I froze. Between my ngers was the one of Billy talking to his mother. It read, First

thing you need to know is, I didn’t do it. I put it to the side and pulled out another. is one showed the little boy standing at his father’s bed. His father is just waking up, and the little boy says, Put your glasses on, Daddy, so I can remember who you are. And another that simply said, Mommy, when am I gonna reach my full potential? ey were still boring. Still not funny at all. But I kept reading them, a simple and safe white family framed in a circle, like looking into their lives through a telescope or binoculars from the other side of the street. From a different place. From a place . . . not always so sweet. I laid back in the bed and continued pulling them from the box, one by one, until nally I dried off to sleep.

But it was only a short nap because before I knew it, Spoony was knocking on my door.

“Li’l bruh, you gotta get up, man. It’s almost time to go,” he said, cracking the door, peeking in before pushing it wide open, just as everyone had done at the hospital. He was dressed in all black. Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black boots. A megaphone in his hand. Damn. “Get dressed,” he said, followed by, “What in the world were you doing?”

I looked around at all the scraps of comic strips littering the bed. “Nothing, man,” I said, sitting up. “I’ll be ready in a sec.”

I put on all black too—just seemed like the right thing to do—and met Ma, Spoony, and Berry in the kitchen. Berry was also dressed in black. My mother, she had on her usual mom jeans, sweater, a light jacket, and sneakers. Oh, and a fanny pack. She was ready. ey all were. But I needed to go to the bathroom, one more time.

“Get it out, baby,” my mother said, explaining to Spoony that I had been sick all day, like that was any of his business. But that’s moms for you. Funny thing is, I didn’t even have to go. ere was something else I wanted to do.

In the bathroom, I stood at the sink, staring at my re ection. I brought my hands to my face and slowly peeled the tape and bandage back, revealing my nose. Still swollen. ere was a knot on the top—a lump that changed the way my whole face looked. I turned my head sideways—bump looked even worse. I hated that damn bump, but I didn’t want people to see me all bandaged up like that. Not because I was embarrassed. Well, I was, a little. But more importantly, I wanted people to see me. See what happened. I wanted people to know that no matter the outcome, no matter if this day ended up as just another protest and Officer Galluzzo got off scot-free, that I

would never be the same person. I looked different and I would be different, forever.

When I returned to the kitchen, my mother instantly began to tear up. My brother nodded, balled his right hand into a st, and extended it toward me. “You ready?”

I bumped my st to his. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

 

 

I couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t even get all the way to Fourth Street because of all the people. So Ma parked on Eighth and we walked down to join the crowd, English, Carlos, and Shannon all texting me telling me that they were in front of Jerry’s. We wove in and out of the herd—so many people, mostly strangers, but everyone there for the same reason. It was unreal. Lots of people held up signs. Police officers lined the streets, creating a kind of wall, containing us. ere were these huge trucks, like road tanks, blocking us at either end, locking us into a seven- or eight-block rectangle.

e newspeople were there as well, men in gray suits and blue ties, holding microphones in front of some kids I recognized from school.

“Stay close,” Spoony said as we pushed down Fourth Street. He held my mother’s hand, and I kept a hand on her shoulder as he and Berry led the way. I was glad they had done this before, because my heart felt like it had grown feet and was trying to run away from my body. As we moved through, eventually people started to recognize me, and the crowd began to split open, making a clearer path for us.

“I see Carlos!” I said to Spoony, raising my voice to be heard.

“ere’s English over there!” Berry shouted back, pointing to the right. And there they were, my friends—my brothers—standing in front of Jerry’s, holding big white poster boards, RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY written in bold black marker. ey went crazy when they saw us—Shannon waving us forward like we were the royal family or something, making sure to let people know to let us through. When we nally got to them, they each hugged me, then my mom. I looked out at the crowd. People, young, old, black, white, Asian, Latino, more people than I could count. It was straight out of an Aaron Douglas painting, except there were faces. Faces everywhere. My teachers, Mr. Fisher and Mrs. Tracey. Tiffany, who gave me

a look, both happy and sad. Latrice Wilkes. Oh! My comrades from ROTC, and because it was Friday, uniform day, they were dressed head to toe. Some of the basketball players. Football players. Neighborhood people. Pastor Johnson, in a suit, but this time, instead of a Bible, he held a sign up that said, RASHAD IS ABSENT AGAIN TODAY, BUT GOD IS NEVER ABSENT. Katie Lansing

was there. I didn’t see Mrs. Fitzgerald, but I wouldn’t have wanted her out there, even though I was sure she was tough enough to handle it. Even Clarissa was there, which was amazing. I waved to her, but the crowd seemed to think that I was waving to everybody, and so they all cheered for me, which was overwhelming. I knew it wasn’t just about me. I did. But it felt good to feel like I had support. at people could see me.

e chant was a simple one. I’m not sure exactly who came up with it. It just sort of started in the middle and rippled through the crowd. “Spring-

eld P-D, we don’t want brutality! Spring- eld P-D, we don’t want brutality!” We chanted it, no, we screamed it, at the top of our lungs, over and over again as we started marching toward Police Plaza 1. Spoony shouted it into the megaphone, and he wasn’t the only one. Everyone was on the same page, chanting the same thing as we moved down Main Street. Me, Spoony, Carlos, English, Berry, and Shannon were in the front of the crowd, and all of a sudden, our arms locked and we were leading the way like—the image came to me of raging water crashing against the walls of a police dam. Marching. But it wasn’t like I was used to. It wasn’t military style. Your le! Your le! Your le-right-le! It wasn’t like that at all. It was an uncounted step, yet we were all in sync. We were on a mission.

And as we approached the police station, standing on the steps outside Police Plaza 1 was my father. Spoony slapped my arm and nodded toward Dad, totally surprised. My brother raised an eyebrow at me. I raised one at him. “Whatttttt?” en we both grinned at the exact same time. Ma, of course, was crying. Instantly. She had been doing a pretty good job at keeping it together, but seeing my father standing there waiting for us broke her. He jogged down the steps and met us with hugs. He didn’t say anything. Just hugged and locked arms with us as we turned around and faced the crowd, still chanting, “Spring- eld P-D, we don’t want brutality!”

Spoony gave Berry the megaphone and she started chanting through the speaker, even louder than he had. He dug in his backpack and pulled out the papers, the same papers he’d showed us the night before at the kitchen table,

as Berry slowly got down on the ground. She lay at on her back, the megaphone still to her mouth, still chanting. Spoony followed suit. He nodded to me. My father looked on, uneasy, as me, Carlos, Shannon, and English all laid down. My mother leaned in to him and whispered something. e confusion slowly slid from his face, and he took his wife’s hand and helped her lower herself to the ground. en he joined us as well. And the people in front of the crowd followed suit, realizing what was happening. e die-in was beginning, and like dominoes, the crowd began to drop, each person, young and old, lying at on the dirty pavement, the police officers all around us in riot gear, their hands on their weapons, afraid and perplexed.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Berry shouted through the megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen!” e chanting died down. “We are here, not for Rashad, but for all of us! We are here to say, enough is enough! We are here to say, no more! No more!” Spoony gave the rst paper to her. And into the megaphone, she began.

“is is a roll call! Sean Bell!” en she followed with “Absent again today! Oscar Grant! Absent again today! Rekia Boyd! Absent again today! Ramarley Graham!” She paused, and at that point the rest of us knew exactly what to do.

“Absent again today!” “Aiyana Jones!” “Absent again today!” “Freddie Gray!” “Absent again today!” “Michael Brown!” “Absent again today!” “Tamir Rice!” “Absent again today!” “Eric Garner!” “Absent again today!” “Tarika Wilson!” “Absent again today!”

And Spoony kept feeding Berry the papers, one aer another, as she continued to read down the list of unarmed black people killed by the

police. And I laid there on the hard concrete, for the second time in a week, tears owing down my cheeks, thinking about each one of those names.

 

 

‌Oh my God! He was right over there! Closer than I’d been to him when Paul laid into him. Much closer. And Rashad was looking at me, too.

I locked eyes with a kid I didn’t know, but felt like I did. A white guy, who I could tell was thinking about those names too.

All I wanted to do was see the guy I hadn’t seen one week earlier. e guy beneath all the bullshit too many of us see rst—especially white guys like me who just haven’t worked hard enough to look behind it all.

ose people. I hadn’t known any of them, and he probably hadn’t either. But I was connected to those names now, because of what happened to me. We all were. I was sad. I was angry. But I was also proud. Proud that I was there. Proud that I could represent Darnell Shackleford. Proud that I could represent Mrs. Fitzgerald—her brother who

was beaten in Selma.

I wanted him to know that I saw him, a guy who, even with a tear-streaked face, seemed to have two tiny smiles framing his eyes like parentheses, a guy on the ground pantomiming his death to remind the world he was alive.

For all the people who came before us,

ghting this ght, I was here, screaming at

the top of my lungs. Rashad Butler.

Present.

‌ZOOM OUT.

ZOOM OUT, MORE. A LITTLE MORE.

THE PLAZA. FLOODED WITH BODIES.

BUT NO BLOOD.

NO LIGHTS AND SIRENS.

JUST

CRACKLING VOICES. NAMES, RISING

TO THE SKY. IN THE CENTER OF IT ALL,

THE BOY WHO REMAINS AND THE BOY BESIDE HIM. TWO BOYS, IN FOCUS.

TWO BOYS, CLEAR.

A NEW TOMORROW,

AN ARM’S LENGTH AWAY.