The Hate U Give(74)

Chris knocks on the window. “Starr, c’mon.” He puts his hands against the window like they’re binoculars and he’s trying to look through the tint. “Can we talk?”

“Oh, now you wanna talk to me?”

“You’re the one who wouldn’t talk to me!” He bows his head, pressing his forehead against the glass. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the witness they’ve been talking about?”

He asks it softly, but it’s hard as a sucker punch in the gut.

He knows.

I unlock the door and scoot over. Chris climbs in next to me.

“How did you find out?” I ask.

“The interview. Watched it with my parents.”

“They didn’t show my face though.”

“I knew your voice, Starr. And then they showed the back of you as you walked with that interview lady, and I’ve watched you walk away enough to know what you look like from the back, and . . . I sound like a pervert, don’t I?”

“So you knew me by my ass?”

“I . . . yeah.” His face goes red. “But that wasn’t all. Everything made sense, like how upset you got about the protest and about Khalil. Not that that wasn’t stuff to get upset about, ’cause it was, but it—” He sighs. “I’m sinking here, Starr. I just knew it was you. And it was, wasn’t it?”

I nod.

“Babe, you should’ve told me. Why would you keep something like that from me?”

I tilt my head. “Wow. I saw someone get murdered, and you’re acting like a brat ’cause I didn’t tell you?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But you think about that for a second,” I say. “Tonight you could hardly say two words to me because I didn’t tell you about one of the worst experiences of my life. You ever seen somebody die?”

“No.”

“I’ve seen it twice.”

“And I didn’t know that!” he says. “I’m your boyfriend, and I didn’t know any of that.” He looks at me, the same hurt in his eyes like there was when I snatched my hands away weeks ago. “There’s this whole part of your life that you’ve kept from me, Starr. We’ve been together over a year now, and you’ve never mentioned Khalil, who you claim was your best friend, or this other person you saw die. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”

My breath catches. “It’s—it’s not like that.”

“Really?” he says. “Then what is it like? What are we? Just Fresh Prince and fooling around?”

“No.” My lips tremble, and my voice is small. “I . . . I can’t share that part of me here, Chris.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I croak. “People use it against me. Either I’m poor Starr who saw her friend get killed in a drive-by, or Starr the charity case who lives in the ghetto. That’s how the teachers act.”

“Okay, I get not telling people around school,” he says. “But I’m not them. I would never use that against you. You once told me I’m the only person you could be yourself around at Williamson, but the truth is you still didn’t trust me.”

I’m one second away from ugly crying. “You’re right,” I say. “I didn’t trust you. I didn’t want you to just see me as the girl from the ghetto.”

“You didn’t even give me the chance to prove you wrong. I wanna be there for you. You gotta let me in.”

God. Being two different people is so exhausting. I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it. As much as I say I don’t have to choose which Starr I am with Chris, maybe without realizing it, I have to an extent. Part of me feels like I can’t exist around people like him.

I am not gonna cry, I am not gonna cry, I am not gonna cry.

“Please?” he says.

That does it. Everything starts spilling out.

“I was ten. When my other friend died,” I say, staring at the French tips on my nails. “She was ten too.”

“What was her name?” he asks.

“Natasha. It was a drive-by. It’s one of the reasons my parents put me and my brothers in Williamson. It was the closest they could get to protecting us a little more. They bust their butts for us to go to that school.”

Chris doesn’t say anything. I don’t need him to.

I take a shaky breath and look around. “You don’t know how crazy it is that I’m even sitting in this car,” I say. “A Rolls freaking Royce. I used to live in the projects in a one-bedroom apartment. I shared the room with my brothers, and my parents slept on a fold-out couch.”

The details of life back then are suddenly fresh. “The apartment smelled like cigarettes all the damn time,” I say. “Daddy smoked. Our neighbors above us and next to us smoked. I had so many asthma attacks, it ain’t funny. We only kept canned goods in the cabinets ’cause of the rats and roaches. Summers were always too hot, and winters too cold. We had to wear coats inside and outside.

“Sometimes Daddy sold food stamps to buy clothes for us,” I say. “He couldn’t get a job for the longest time, ’cause he’s an ex-con. When he got hired at the grocery store, he took us to Taco Bell, and we ordered whatever we wanted. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Almost better than the day we moved out the projects.”