We Are Not Like Them(37)

Jimmy’s story clings to me like a scent as I race across town to meet Wes. It’s shaken something loose in me, my emotions stirred up like flakes in a snow globe. I need to settle down, focus on what I have to say to Wes. I haven’t told Scotty the interview is in jeopardy. Hopefully I won’t have to.

I pull into the small parking lot of Morgan & Sons Funeral Home, and there’s Wes sitting on the steps in front of the place, under a dark green awning. It’s easy to recognize him from his pictures, an older, brawnier version of Justin—light skin, a smattering of freckles across his nose, gap teeth, and his eyes, a striking hazel that lean brown or green depending on the angle. He’s wearing a giant pair of Beats headphones and nodding his head.

When he looks up, he slips them off and calls out my name like we’re long-lost cousins and not strangers. “Riley Wilson!”

I sit down on the stairs next to him; the concrete is as frigid as a block of ice.

“You ever see Hamilton?” he asks.

“No, I wish. I wanted to take my grandmother to see it when it came to Philly last Christmas, but we couldn’t get tickets.”

“Same. I stood in line at six a.m., but ticket brokers scooped ’em all up and then they were out of my price range. That’s what I was just listening to, the soundtrack.” He looks at his headphones like he wants to pick them back up and tune out the world again. I don’t blame him.

“I can’t stop listening. Justin and I knew all the words to all the songs. We would do a full-out performance to ‘The Room Where It Happens.’ I mean, we got down!” He stops to sit with the memory. “Justin put it on TikTok or Chatsnap or one of them. He showed it to me, but I’ll never be able to find it—but then, I probably couldn’t even watch it anyway. It would hurt too much. Him singing, laughing. That boy loved to perform—he was always spitting rhymes, writing poems….”

Wes looks down as if shocked by the coffee cup next to him, when really the shock must be where he’s sitting and why. “Listen to me going on, before I even offered you some coffee.” He thrusts a steaming paper cup at me. “I stopped at the new place over on the corner. Six dollars for a coffee should come with a nip too, but this is just straight caffeine. Could use it though. Haven’t been sleeping much. I didn’t know how you like it, so here….”

He pulls a handful of individual packets of creamer, sugar, and sweetener out of his pocket. I can’t believe he even thought of getting me coffee, much less all the fixins. But I’m grateful to have the warm cup in my hands, and the hit of caffeine. I pour the creamer and sugar in my coffee.

“That’s how I like it too,” he says. “Light and sweet. Opposite of how I like my women, by the way.”

His big laugh makes me laugh too—I’m grateful for our easy rapport. But then he catches himself. “Look at me laughing. It’s funny how everything can be awful and then for a split second you can’t help yourself, it’s normal and you forget. Of course then it’s worse when that second passes. Does that make any sense? It’s like when I wake up in the morning and remember it all again. Justin’s gone. He’s gone but he’s also everywhere. All over the media. I assume you saw the latest? They want to put that stupid picture of him with a joint everywhere. As if that’s some news. Teenage boy smokes weed. What a headline. Guess he deserved to die? The irony is he didn’t even like weed, said it made him paranoid. He was just doing that to fit in with his friends. He was a total geek, so the idea that he was some sorta drug fiend? Or a drug dealer?” His laugh is back but with a razor-sharp edge. “Gimme a break, that’ll be something, Justin out here selling weed. I mean, this is a kid who named a hamster Neil after some science guy. But yeah, yeah, he must be a gangbanger, right? Because we all are. It’s some shit.” He shakes his head. “I’m not saying some shit doesn’t go down with these little wannabe thugs over here, but Justin wasn’t caught up in that. I worried about him for that reason. He was too soft sometimes. This world isn’t made for soft types, you know. I wanted to protect him. And I failed. Simple as that. I failed.” His head hangs so low, the steam from his coffee fogs his glasses.

“You did your best. You couldn’t have known this would happen.”

Wes shoots me a look. “Come on, little miss. We all knew this could happen. I’ve been stopped a dozen times by the cops. I wasn’t much older than Justin when a couple of them threw me on the ground and damn near ripped my shoulder right outta the socket. I can’t sink a layup anymore. But no one was talking about it back then. No one was making videos. I told Justin all about it though. I told him to shut up and do what they say if they ever stopped him. But he didn’t get the chance. They didn’t give him a chance.”

“My dad gave my brother the same talk. And my brother—well, he’s had his own problems with the cops.” I almost tell Wes everything, the hell Shaun’s gone through, but I don’t. He doesn’t need my problems. “How’s Tamara?” It’s a ridiculous question—how can she be anything but devastated?—but I ask anyway, sincerely. He picks up his head slow as a sunrise.

“Not great. She couldn’t stop screaming when I carried her outta the morgue. It’s hard to watch my sis struggle like this. First her husband. And now her child. It’s not right, man. If I hadn’t given up on God a long time I ago, I would now, for sure. I just wish I could get her to eat. She’s all but stopped, ever since Justin went into the hospital. She’s lost fifteen pounds she didn’t have to lose. She’s gonna waste away like this.”