The Hate U Give(103)

Iesha said King was gonna fuck us up because I dry snitched. That meant my whole family.

This is it.

“You son of a bitch!” Daddy marches toward King, and King’s boys advance toward Daddy. Uncle Carlos stops him. The King Lords reach for their pieces and tell Daddy to bring it. King laughs like it’s a comedy show.

“You think this shit funny?” Daddy yells. “Punk ass, always hiding behind your boys!”

King stops laughing.

“Yeah, I said it! I ain’t scared of you! You ain’t shit to be scared of! Trying to burn up some kids, you fucking coward!”

“Oh uh-uh!” Momma starts for King, and Uncle Carlos has to work overtime to hold her back too.

“He burned Maverick’s store down!” Mr. Lewis announces to everybody, in case we didn’t hear. “King burned Maverick’s store down!”

It bubbles around the crowd, and narrowed eyes set on King.

Of course, that’s when the cops and the fire truck decide to show up. Of course. Because that’s how it works in Garden Heights.

Uncle Carlos convinces my parents to back away. King lifts his cigar to his lips, eyes gleaming. I wanna get one of Mr. Lewis’s baseball bats and knock him upside his head.

The firefighters get to work. The cops order the crowd to back up. King and his boys are really amused now. Shit, it’s like the cops are helping them out.

“You need to be getting them!” Mr. Lewis says. “They the ones who started the fire!”

“That old man don’t know what he talking about,” King says. “All this smoke done got to him.”

Mr. Lewis starts to charge at King, and an officer has to hold him back. “I ain’t crazy! You did start it! Everybody know it!”

King’s face twitches. “You better watch yourself, lying on folks.”

Daddy glances back at me, and there’s this expression on his face that I’ve never seen before. He turns around to the cop who’s holding Mr. Lewis and says, “He ain’t lying. King did start it, Officer.”

Ho-ly shit.

Daddy snitched.

“It’s my store,” he says. “I know he started the fire.”

“Did you see him do it?” the cop asks.

No. That’s the problem. We know King did it, but if nobody saw it . . .

“I saw him,” Mr. Reuben says. “He did it.”

“I saw him too,” Tim says.

“So did I,” Ms. Yvette adds.

And shit, now the crowd is echoing the same thing, pointing at King and his boys. I mean, everybody’s snitching. The rules no fucking longer apply.

King reaches for his car door, but some of the officers draw their guns and order him and his boys to the ground.

An ambulance arrives. Momma tells them about our smoke inhalation. I snitch and tell them about DeVante, although his black eye makes it obvious he needs help. They let the four of us sit on the curb, and they put oxygen masks on us. I thought I wasn’t that bad anymore, but I forgot how nice clean air is. I’ve been breathing in smoke since I got to Garden Heights.

They look at DeVante’s side. It’s purple-looking, and they tell him he’ll need to go in for X-rays. He doesn’t wanna go in the ambulance, and Momma assures the paramedics that she’ll take him in herself.

I rest my head on Chris’s shoulder as we hold hands, oxygen masks on both of us. I’m not gonna lie and say tonight was better because he was here—frankly this has been one fucked-up night, nothing could make it better—but it doesn’t hurt that we went through it together.

My parents come our way. Daddy’s lips thin, and he mumbles something to Momma. She elbows him and says, “Be nice.”

She sits between Chris and Seven. Daddy hovers over me and Chris at first, as if he’s expecting us to make room for him.

“Maverick,” Momma says.

“A’ight, a’ight.” He sits on the other side of me.

We watch the firefighters put out the flames. No point though. They’re only saving a shell of the store.

Daddy sighs, rubbing his bald head. “Damn, man.”

My heart aches. We’re losing a family member, for real. I’ve spent most of my life in that store. I move my head off Chris and rest it on Daddy’s shoulder. He puts his arm around me and kisses my hair. I don’t miss that smug look that crosses his face. Petty.

“Wait a minute.” He pulls away. “Where the hell y’all been?”

“That’s what I wanna know,” Momma says. “Acting like you can’t answer my texts or calls!”

Really? Seven and I almost died in a fire, and they’re mad ’cause we didn’t call them? I lift my mask and say, “Long night.”

“Oh, I’m sure it was,” Momma says. “We got ourselves a li’l radical, Maverick. All on the news, throwing tear gas at the cops.”

“After they threw it at us,” I point out.

“Whaaat?” Daddy says, but in that impressed way. Momma cuts him a side-eye, and he says in a more stern tone, “I mean, what? What you do that for?”

“I was mad.” I fold my arms onto my knees and stare at my Timbs through the gap. “That decision wasn’t right.”

Daddy puts his arm around me again and rests his head against mine. A Daddy-snuggle. “Nah,” he says. “It wasn’t.”