Concrete Rose (The Hate U Give, #0)(37)

“Damn.” I sit back and glance between them. I never ever heard them talk this way. “This sound like some coup shit.”

“Yeah, it’s cool as hell.”

This fool. “I said ‘coup,’ Rico. C-o-u-p. It mean a rebellion. That’s what Napoleon did in France back in the day.”

“Oh. Nah, we ain’t rebelling. Just making money.”

“Yep,” Junie talk around a mouth full of fries. “You read too many books, Mav. Do something better with your time.”

Man, whatever. It’s the way King act toward Shawn and them sometimes that made me wonder. Now he got other li’l homies slinging on the side. If Shawn ever find out, I don’t wanna know how that’ll go down.

The bell ring, signaling that lunch period over. We take our trays to the trash bins. I watch Ant dump his. He head to the same world lit class that I go to.

I keep my eyes on him as we walk in the room. He take his seat in the middle. I start for mine but Mrs. Turner gently catch my arm.

“Hey, Maverick,” she says. Mrs. Turner the sweetest teacher at the school and one of the youngest. She kinda fine, too. Got ass for days, good Lord. “I’m glad to see you back. How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” I say, and glance at Ant. He watch us all amused.

“I’m so sorry about your cousin,” Mrs. Turner go on. “Grief can be overwhelming. Mr. Clayton would like for you to come to his office this period and talk.”

The whole class watching now. I’m not Li’l Don no more. I’m the dude who saw his cousin with a bullet in his head.

I sigh out my nose. “I told you I’m fine, Mrs. Turner. I don’t need to talk to the counselor.”

She hand me a hall pass. “Go, Maverick. I’ll catch you up on the lessons tomorrow.”

Ant snort. “Weak ass.”

I start for him. “What?”

“You heard me! You as weak as your cousin. It was only a matter of time before his disrespectful ass got killed.”

Mrs. Turner grab me before I can get to him. She strong as hell. She turn me toward the door. “Maverick, to the office now! Antwan, you can explain your abhorrent comments to me later in detention.”

“Ooooh,” echo around the classroom.

Mrs. Turner nudge me out the door and close it behind me as Ant try to plead his case.

I pace the hall for a second. I swear to God I could walk in that room and strangle that dude with my hands. Now I’m supposed to go discuss my “feelings” with Mr. Clayton? What good will that do? It won’t bring my cousin back or take care of the dude who killed him.

Nah, forget that. Forget everything. The condolences, the stares, all of it.

I toss the hall pass in a trash bin, and I walk out the building.

The wind no joke today. It whip my hood right off my head. That explain why hardly anybody outside.

I’m a few blocks from school when a silver Mercedes-Benz pull up beside me; a ’97 S500 on twenty-inch rims, to be exact. The dark tint keep you from seeing inside, but everybody in the Garden know that’s Shawn.

He roll the passenger window down. “Whaddup, Li’l Don? Where you headed?”

I keep walking. He the last person I wanna see. “Don’t worry ’bout it.”

“I ain’t worried, I only asked,” he says as he drive alongside me. “You good?”

“Yep.”

Shawn sighs. “You mad over the other day, ain’t you? Let’s talk man-to-man.”

I stop and look at him. “That’s gon’ be hard when you treat me like a kid.”

“That ain’t the case, Mav,” Shawn says. He reach over and push open the passenger door. “Hop in.”

Shawn’s Benz is banging. Leather interior, sunroof, TVs in the back. I used to tell Dre I’m gon’ get a ride like this one day. He’d laugh and say, “Yeah, and you gon’ wreck it. You can’t drive worth a damn.”

I miss him so much.

Shawn slurp a big slushy from the gas station. He one of them weird folks who stick to one flavor. He glance over at me. “Okay, Li’l Don! I see you with the Lakers Starter jacket and the Reeboks. Flossin’ on ’em!”

Don’t nobody give props like big homies. He can go on somewhere with that. “You said you wanna talk. Talk.”

“A’ight, well, first off, I didn’t call myself treating you like a kid but like a brother,” Shawn says. “It wasn’t that long ago that you was tryna follow me and Dre everywhere. You’ll always be that li’l dude we ditched in the mall.”

“Y’all were dirty as hell for that,” I mumble, and Shawn bust out laughing. I was around eleven, Dre and Shawn were around sixteen. I wanted to go to the arcade, and they were tryna holla at girls in the food court. I was being a pain in the ass, for real. They gave me money to buy a milkshake. When I went back to the table, they were gone.

“We were tryna get some ass, and you were cock-blocking,” Shawn says. “We thought we was gon’ teach you a lesson. Shiiid, we find you, you up in Victoria’s Secret. Got them fine-ass clerks all over you. Had them and them girls mad at us.”

“Ay, I had game. I’m surprised y’all let me go anywhere after that.”

“That was all Dre. He wanted to keep you close,” Shawn says. “He’d tell me all the time, ‘If Mav can’t go, I can’t go.’”