I wasn’t falling for that shit. “Business. Contracts. Financing. Real estate. Got my mentor that youth center he wanted to build, with his name on a plaque,” I confirmed.
That made her sit up, her face bright. “You’re behind the Morales Center? That’s yours?”
“It’s not mine. It’s the community’s. I just wrote checks till the doors opened and folks started showing up.”
“I’m guessing you don’t talk about it much.”
“I don’t need to.”
“You should. People need your story as much as they need the services.”
“Representation matters,” I said, all high pitched.
She glared at me. “It does.”
We left the interrogation room and slid into the next space, where the walls were painted a deep navy blue and lit up with timelines of cases solved by advances in forensic science. Strands of fake DNA twisted in a suspended sculpture overhead. Farrah’s steps slowed, awestruck again.
“You want one of these?” I asked, gesturing at a glass case with a lab coat folded neatly beneath a plaque.
“One of what? A lab coat? Hell, yeah. Dr. Gray loading” she laughed.
“I meant a milestone with your name,” I said, pointing at the plaque. “Do you wanna discover something? Teach something that makes people do better?”
She went quiet. “Yeah. But not for me.” she said finally.
“For who, then?”
“The kids I want to help. I want to find a way that makes adults stop making children endure trauma until they repeat it.”
“You could,” I said. “Figure it out. Then, I could donate?—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
Assume she’d share with me, that I’d be in her future? Yeah, I had slipped up with that one. But all she said was, “Offer to fix it with money or a phone call. I ain’t a project.”
I nodded. “Damn.” That little word again.
She glanced at me and softened. “I ain’t saying I don’t want help. I just… want my hands on the steering wheel.”
“You like control,” I said.
“Control is a fantasy.”
I shook my head. “Nah. I gotta have it.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You the oldest?” she asked.
“Yeah, and the one who got had to learn too much too early.” I didn’t know why I revealed that. I sped right on past it. “You the oldest?”
“Only,” she said, and it explained a hundred things at once about my bougie little thug. She shook her head at my smirk. “I am not spoiled.”
“What y’all be saying? ‘Oh, Farrah,please!” I teased. “Your parents good?”
“My parents great.”
“They know you here?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
