Dear Martin Read online

The ladies’ room door opens. “You ready, Just—?” Mama sees SJ. “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t realize you were speaking with someone.”

  “Ma, this is Sarah-Jane,” Jus says, never taking his eyes off SJ.

  Mama: Lovely to meet you.

  SJ: Same to you, Ms. McAllister.

  Mama turns to Justyce. “I’m gonna head on out to the car. You coming?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” he says. “I want to walk SJ out.”

  “No, no. You don’t have to. My parents are actually waiting for me. I’ll see you at the grave site?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Okay. Bye, S.”

  “Bye, Jus.”

  As SJ disappears around the corner, Mama’s expression shifts to a frown. “Sarah-Jane, huh? You know her from school or something?”

  “She’s my debate partner, Ma. I’ve mentioned her plenty of times.”

  “Hmph. I saw how she was looking at you. More on that girl’s mind than debate—”

  “Can we not start with this at my best friend’s funeral, please?”

  “I’m not starting with anything, Justyce. Just sayin’ watch yourself with that one. That’s all.”

  That one.

  “She’s a good friend, Ma.”

  “And you’d do well to keep it that way.”

  Jus wants to argue. He wants to tell Mama all the ways SJ made him believe he was big while everyone else wanted to keep him small. He wants to call Mama on her prejudice. Tell her, in his mind, she’s just as bad as the guy who shot him and Manny.

  But he doesn’t get a chance to.

  The second he and Mama step out of the church, they get mobbed by reporters.

  Mr. McAllister, how’s it feel to be the Boy Who Survived?

  Justyce, do you think there will be justice?

  What’s it like knowing it could’ve been YOU in that casket?

  That last one sets Justyce off. “Do YOU have to be such an asshole, man?”

  “Justyce, don’t say another word,” Mama says, then to the reporters: “My son has no comment. Now if you’ll excuse us…”

  She uses an arm to sweep a smaller reporter out of the way, then grabs Justyce by his elbow to pull him through the gap. Mr. Taylor shouts and points in their direction, and suddenly he and Mama get flanked by what have to be bodyguards.

  Justyce winces as one of the huge guys—burly, blond, looks like his name could be Lars—bumps his bad arm. The pain that shoots from his shoulder through his entire body like a bolt of lightning is nothing compared to what’s inside him.

  Tison Indictment Step Forward for Justice or Grand Jury Blunder?

  BY: TOBIAS D’BITRU

  Staff Writer

  Yesterday afternoon, a Georgia grand jury returned a multiple-count indictment against former Atlanta police officer Garrett Tison in connection with a January shooting involving two teenaged boys. The indictment stands in glaring contrast to the Nevada and Florida cases involving the deaths of Shemar Carson and Tavarrius Jenkins, and two of the charges—aggravated assault and felony murder—have many members of the community in an uproar.

  “The man was defending himself from thugs,” said Tison’s neighbor April Henry. “I’ve known Garrett for twenty-five years. If he says those boys had a gun, they had a gun.” A fellow police officer, who asked to remain anonymous, claims the indictment is nothing more than a publicity stunt at Tison’s expense. “They’re out to make an example of him. Prosecutor pulled the race card, and the grand jury bought it hook, line, and sinker.”

  And many agree. At a solidarity rally held in Tison’s honor, picketers wore T-shirts that read “Race-Baiting Should Be a Crime” while holding signs featuring Tison’s face and the words “Protector not Poster Child.”

  A trial date has yet to be announced.

  Two days after being permanently set free from his sling, Justyce gets to drive his brand-new car. Ken Murray, owner of seven Honda dealerships across the city, is the father of one of Jus’s classmates, and Jus found a Civic with Condolences from the Murray Honda Family on the windshield the day he came home from the hospital.

  At first, he wanted to give it back—the idea of driving around in a free car from some rich white dude made him sick to his stomach considering what had happened. But after staring at it for weeks and rereading the Neither of you young men deserved what happened letter from Mr. Murray, Jus decided to accept the gift.

  It’s been a month and a half since the shooting, but going to Manny’s house now is no easier today than it would’ve been the day he learned Manny was gone. The Riverses invited Justyce to dinner tonight to “commemorate” Garrett Tison’s indictment, but Jus really isn’t looking forward to being alone with them. Especially not inside their house. The more he thinks about it—and he’s been thinking about it a lot lately—it wasn’t the house that felt like a second home to him. It was Manny.

  As he pulls into the driveway, Jus instinctively heads toward door three of the four-car garage. He can remember all the times he and Manny waited for it to rise before pulling inside, and his stomach crawls up into his throat.

  Before he can throw his car in reverse and get outta there, door three does rise, and Mr. Rivers motions for Justyce to pull in. The spot is empty, of course—Range Rover’s long gone—but there’s no way Jus can fill it. He puts his car in park in the driveway and climbs out. “ ’Preciate it, Mr. Julian, but I can’t,” he says.

  Manny’s dad smiles sadly and looks over the space. “It’s just so empty, you know? Come on in.”

  When Jus steps inside and the fragrance of chicken cacciatore assaults his senses, he’s one hundred percent sure he doesn’t wanna be here. He doesn’t wanna sit down at the antique oak table to eat from the “special-occasion” dishes Dr. Rivers has taken from her china cabinet. He doesn’t wanna make small talk with his dead best friend’s parents as they eat his favorite meal and not their son’s.

  All of this is way too much, and he wants to leave and never come back.

  He steps into the dining room anyway.

  “Thank you for coming, sweetheart,” Dr. Rivers says, pulling Jus into what has to be the most emotion-filled hug he’s ever experienced. He counts a full seventeen seconds before she lets go.

  “Thanks for having me,” he replies.

  “Go ahead and sit,” Mr. Julian says. “I’ll get you something to drink.”

  Jus does as instructed, and after a minute, Mr. Julian comes to the table with three beverages: a glass of red wine for Dr. Rivers, a glass of iced tea for Justyce, and a tumbler of what Jus assumes is Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel—that’s the stuff Manny used to sneak into his flask—for himself.

  Just seeing it makes Jus want to vomit.

  “So how you holdin’ up, Justyce?” Mr. Julian says once seated. “Back in school yet?”

  Jus shakes his head. “Not quite. I move into the dorm on Sunday and start classes Monday.”

  “I see.”

  Dr. Rivers comes in holding an oval dish with two potholders. She sets it on the table, and the chicken breasts and legs smothered in mushrooms and red sauce stare up at Justyce. “You think you’re ready?” she says.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” Jus shrugs. “I’m caught up, but it’s now or never if I want to graduate in May.”

  She nods and heads back to the kitchen. Returns with a dish full of jasmine rice with three chunks of butter melting into it. “Pass me your plate.”

  Jus complies.

  “We’re really happy you came to join us tonight,” Mr. Julian says. “Means a lot to us.”

  Dr. Rivers hands Jus his plate, loaded up with food he has no appetite for. “We’re not expecting you to talk much,” she says. “Just nice to have your presence is all.”

  “Thank you. Yours too.” A lie, but it seems the right thing to say.

  The three descend into silence as silverware clinks and scrapes against bone china and beverages slowly disappear from glasses. Justyce is thankful for the lack of conversation; Man
ny’s absence makes it almost impossible to breathe, let alone talk.

  Once they finish, Mr. Julian clears his throat. “So, Justyce, we invited you here tonight for a few reasons,” he begins.

  Justyce picks up his glass and gulps down the rest of his tea.

  “The first, of course, is to memorialize the indictment,” Mr. Julian goes on. “We won’t dwell on it, but to us—and surely to you as well—it is something to commemorate.”

  Dr. Rivers nods. “It’s not a conviction, of course. But it’s a start. Just a relief to know what happened is being treated as a crime.”

  Jus stares at the gilt edge around his plate. “Yeah,” he says. “That is a relief.”

  “Moving on,” Dr. Rivers says. “The second reason: I’m not sure if you remember Emmanuel’s cousin—Quan Banks?”

  Justyce’s head jerks up.

  “He says you went to elementary school together. Is that correct?”

  “It is,” Jus says. “But I had no idea he and Manny were cousins until…” He pauses. “Until Quan got arrested.”

  She nods. “Well, if you’re willing, Quan would like to see you. You’ve been added to his visitation list.”

  “Oh. Okay…”

  “Emmanuel’s death hit him pretty hard. You don’t have to visit, of course”—she and Mr. Julian do that married thing where they communicate with a glance—“but he says you’re the only person he wants to talk to.”

  “I see.” Though he really doesn’t.

  “If you’re interested, I’ll give you the information before you leave.”

  Jus doesn’t know what to say. Quan wants to see him? “Okay. Sounds good.” Another lie.

  For a minute, no one speaks. Jus can feel Mr. Julian’s gaze, but there’s no way he can look at him. He’s what Manny would’ve looked like if he’d gotten the chance to get older.

  “There’s one more thing.” Dr. Rivers’s voice wavers. “Julian?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Mr. Julian gets up from the table and walks over to the china cabinet. Opens it and pulls out a black box. He sets it on the table in front of Justyce. “We intended to give this to Emmanuel for his eighteenth birthday,” he says. “I have no doubt he’d want you to have it under these circumstances, so we’d be honored if you’d receive it in his stead.”

  Jus stares at the box, afraid to move, let alone touch it.

  Dr. Rivers clears her throat, and he lifts his head. She smiles, though there are tears in her eyes. “Go on.”

  Jus takes the box off the table and lifts the hinged top. By some miracle, he manages not to drop the contents on the floor and run away screaming.

  It’s a watch. A Heuer with a brown face and gold numbers, on a black leather band. Jus doesn’t know much about watches, but he’s about eighty-seven percent sure this one is vintage and worth more money than Mama’s ever had in her bank account at once. He carefully removes it and flips it over. The inside of the band is stamped with the letters EJR.

  “My grandfather bought that watch in the 1940s,” Mr. Julian says. “His name, like Manny’s, was Emmanuel Julian Rivers. It’s been passed to the eldest male for two generations now. We want you to have it.”

  Jus is dumbfounded. “I, uhh…I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Dr. Rivers says. “Just knowing it’s in your possession means a lot to us.”

  Jus looks back and forth between Dr. and Mr. Rivers, who are both smiling but obviously waiting for some kind of response from him.

  His eyes drop to the watch. Which puts a big-ass lump in his throat. There’s no talking past it, so he does the only other thing that makes sense.

  He stretches out his wrist and puts it on.

  The first thing Jus notices when he pulls into the visitor lot of the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center is how much the building reminds him of a high school. It makes his stomach twist a little. Holding kids deemed menaces to society in a place that would be completely normal if not for the twelve-foot barbed-wire-topped fences seems like someone’s bad idea of a joke. Like, Oh, look at this nice-ass school…HA! GOTCHA! LOCKDOWN, FOOL!

  After Justyce puts the car in park, he takes a minute to look around. Let it sink in that he’s really here. That he’s about to go inside a “juvie” and sit down with the guy who killed Castillo, the cop who profiled Jus and started him on this failure of a “social experiment” trying to be like Martin.

  He almost can’t believe it.

  Once Jus started at Bras Prep, Quan and those other guys became nothing more than reminders of the life Jus wanted to escape. Quan never made fun of Jus the way the rest of them did, but still: hearing that Quan wanted to see him was a little suspect.

  But then he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Suspicion finally gave way to curiosity, and here he is.

  The minute he steps inside the facility, the guard by the door gives him a once-over before pointing toward an area marked VISITORS. Jus is smacked with a sweat-inducing wave of discomfort. He leaves his ID and keys with the lady at check-in, and a second guard lifts his chin as Jus approaches the metal detector. “Damn, boy,” he says, taking in Justyce’s button-down, pressed khakis, and loafers. “You cleaner than some of the lawyers that come up in here.”

  “Uhh…Thanks.”

  “Who you here to see?”

  “Quan Banks.”

  The guard nods. “Go on through,” he says. “Show those boys what they could be like if they got they shit together, ya hear me? She’ll walk you down.” He gestures to the check-in lady now waiting for Justyce to step into the long hallway.

  Jus follows her past a bunch of white-walled rooms—classrooms, they look like—until they reach a large steel door with a tall rectangular window that Jus suspects is bulletproof. The room has maybe six or seven young guys in orange jumpsuits inside with their visitors. As the lady punches a code into the keypad on the door, Jus spots Quan waiting for him.

  The door opens. Voices spill out into the hallway. Quan lifts his head. He and Jus meet eyes. A smile spreads into Quan’s cheeks, and as it overtakes his entire face, Jus remembers the last time he saw it: the summer before fifth grade when Quan beat Jus at Monopoly for the first time. Seeing Quan smile like that makes Jus even more nervous about being here.

  “Brainiac!” Quan says, standing to greet Jus. “So glad you made it, homie!”

  “Yeah.” Jus peeks over his shoulder at the now-shut exit door. “It’s been a while.”

  “Have a seat, my nigga. Have a seat.”

  Quan sits back down, and Jus follows suit. Seeing the other kids in the jumpsuits talking to their visitors makes Jus anxious to leave. Especially since the majority of the guys in the room look like him.

  It’s depressing.

  “So how you been, Justyce?” Quan asks.

  Jus scratches his head. “Truthfully? I’ve seen better days, man.”

  “Real fucked up about Manny.”

  “Yeah. It is fucked up.” Saying the words is like a weight lifting. “One minute, we’re ridin’ along, and the next…” Jus sighs and shakes his head.

  “What about you, homie? You recoverin’ all right and everything?”

  “Well, my arm is workin’ again, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Yo, when I saw that cop’s face on the news—” Quan stops talking. “Nah, never mind, never mind.”

  “What about him, man?”

  Quan looks Jus in the eye. Then he leans closer, beckoning Jus to follow suit. “You know that cop they say I popped?”

  How could Justyce forget? “Yeah. I do, actually.”

  “That asshole who opened fire on you and Manny? He was dude’s partner.”

  Jus almost falls off the chair. “Castillo?” he says. “Tomás Castillo was Garrett Tison’s partner?”

  “Yup.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Tison was there the night I…uhh…”

  “The night you shot Castillo.”
r />   “Allegedly.”

  Jus sits back in his chair to let it all sink in.

  “You good, dawg?” Quan says.

  “Huh?”

  “You lookin’ a little shook over there.”

  Should Jus tell him? Nothin’ to lose, right?

  Jus takes a quick peek around and leans forward. “Can I tell you something crazy?”

  “I’m listenin’.”

  “Well, like a week before you…before Castillo died, dude arrested my ass. My girl was drunk, and I was tryna get her home, but he thought I was carjacking her. Put me in cuffs and wouldn’t let me say a word.”

  “So the muthafucka got his just deserts.” Quan cracks his knuckles.

  Justyce takes in Quan’s tough-guy expression and orange jumpsuit as the power of his words, and seeming lack of remorse, settle into Jus’s bones.

  Jus leans forward again. “Tell me why you did it, dawg.”

  Quan’s features harden. “Why I did what?”

  “Quan, I know you confessed. You don’t have to act innocent with me.”

  “I don’t know what you talkin’ about, man.” Quan crosses his arms.

  All right, then. Different approach. “Okay, new question: Why would someone do what you’re accused of doing?”

  Quan shrugs. “If that’s what someone’s told to do, they do it.”

  “Who would tell someone to do that, though?”

  Quan turns away and Jus can see he’s about to lose him again. But Jus really needs to know because now there’s a new question on the table: Who’s to say Garrett Tison’s quickness to pull the trigger wasn’t caused by seeing his partner killed by a black kid? It’s no excuse, of course. But Jus knows the effects of trauma are real: he watched his dad lash out at his mom for years.

  “Wait, forget that ‘who would tell’ question. I just really need to understand, Quan. I got shot and Manny’s dead because Garrett Tison thought I had a gun. Now you’re tellin’ me he was there when you kill—I mean, when his partner got shot?”

  Quan’s eyes narrow. “Whatchu trying to say, man?”

  “I’m not trying to say anything, Quan. Just put yourself in my shoes. All of this shit is foreign to me.”