The Hate U Give(22)

“I’m hungry,” Sekani whines not even five minutes out the parking lot.

“Didn’t they give you a snack in after-school?” Seven asks.

“So? I’m still hungry.”

“Greedy butt,” Seven says, and Sekani kicks the back of his seat. Seven laughs. “Okay, okay! Ma asked me to bring some food to the clinic anyway. I’ll get you something too.” He looks at Sekani in the rearview mirror. “Is that cool—”

Seven freezes. He turns Chris’s mix off and slows down.

“What you turn the music off for?” Sekani asks.

“Shut up,” Seven hisses.

We stop at a red light. A Riverton Hills patrol car pulls up beside us.

Seven straightens up and stares ahead, barely blinking and gripping the steering wheel. His eyes move a little like he wants to look at the cop car. He swallows hard.

“C’mon, light,” he prays. “C’mon.”

I stare ahead and pray for the light to change too.

It finally turns green, and Seven lets the patrol car go first. His shoulders don’t relax until we get on the freeway. Mine neither.

We stop at this Chinese restaurant Momma loves and get food for all of us. She wants me to eat before I talk to the detectives. In Garden Heights, kids play in the streets. Sekani presses his face against my window and watches them. He won’t play with them though. Last time he played with some neighborhood kids, they called him “white boy” ’cause he goes to Williamson.

Black Jesus greets us from a mural on the side of the clinic. He has locs like Seven. His arms stretch the width of the wall, and there are puffy white clouds behind him. Big letters above him remind us that Jesus Loves You.

Seven passes Black Jesus and goes into the parking lot behind the clinic. He punches in a code to open the gate and parks next to Momma’s Camry. I get the tray of sodas, Seven gets the food, and Sekani doesn’t take anything because he never takes anything.

I hit the buzzer for the back door and wave up at the camera. The door opens into a sterile-smelling hall with bright-white walls and white-tile floors that reflect us. The hall takes us to the waiting room. A handful of people watch the news on the old box TV in the ceiling or read magazines that have been there since I was little. When this shaggy-haired man sees that we have food, he straightens up and sniffs hard as if it’s for him.

“What y’all bringing up in here?” Ms. Felicia asks at the front desk, stretching her neck to see.

Momma comes from the other hallway in her plain yellow scrubs, following a teary-eyed boy and his mom. The boy sucks on a lollipop, a reward for surviving a shot.

“There go my babies,” Momma says when she sees us. “And they got my food too. C’mon. Let’s go in the back.”

“Save me some!” Ms. Felicia calls after us. Momma tells her to hush.

We set the food out on the break room table. Momma gets some paper plates and plastic utensils that she keeps in a cabinet for days like this. We say grace and dig in.

Momma sits on the countertop and eats. “Mmm-mm! This is hitting the spot. Thank you, Seven baby. I only had a bag of Cheetos today.”

“You didn’t have lunch?” Sekani asks, with a mouth full of fried rice.

Momma points her fork at him. “What did I tell you about talking with your mouth full? And for your information, no I did not. I had a meeting on my lunch break. Now, tell me about y’all. How was school?”

Sekani always talks the longest because he gives every single detail. Seven says his day was fine. I’m as short with my “It was all right.”

Momma sips her soda. “Anything happen?”

I freaked out when my boyfriend touched me, but—“Nope. Nothing.”

Ms. Felicia comes to the door. “Lisa, sorry to bother you, but we have an issue up front.”

“I’m on break, Felicia.”

“Don’t you think I know that? But she asking for you. It’s Brenda.”

Khalil’s momma.

My mom sets her plate down. She looks straight at me when she says, “Stay here.”

I’m hardheaded though. I follow her to the waiting room. Ms. Brenda sits with her face in her hands. Her hair is uncombed, and her white shirt is dingy, almost brown. She has sores and scabs on her arms and legs, and since she’s real light-skinned they show up even more.

Momma kneels in front of her. “Bren, hey.”

Ms. Brenda moves her hands. Her red eyes remind me of what Khalil said when we were little, that his momma had turned into a dragon. He claimed that one day he’d become a knight and turn her back.

It doesn’t make sense that he sold drugs. I would’ve thought his broken heart wouldn’t let him.

“My baby,” his momma cries. “Lisa, my baby.”

Momma sandwiches Ms. Brenda’s hands between hers and rubs them, not caring that they’re nasty looking. “I know, Bren.”

“They killed my baby.”

“I know.”

“They killed him.”

“I know.”

“Lord Jesus,” Ms. Felicia says from the doorway. Next to her, Seven puts his arm around Sekani. Some patients in the waiting room shake their heads.

“But Bren, you gotta get cleaned up,” Momma says. “That’s what he wanted.”