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Danielle’s head snapped up. Both she and Bakari frowned in unison. Whatever this was, it was news to them.
Bakari’s jaw tightened. “Mike—”
“Chill, man. I’m not about to say anything. I’m trying to make a point.”
“Which is?” Bria said.
“It doesn’t feel good to be suspected of some shit you didn’t do. Assuming none of you did it. And yet everybody up in here is willing to throw my boy under the bus when I know for a fact he ain't do shit.”
No one spoke. The only sound was Jace crunching on a carrot stick. Mike looked around the room at each of their faces, and Bria saw a crack in his usually cool demeanor. He looked desperate.
“It ain’t right.,” Mike said. “Y’all know it ain’t.”
“So you’re taking his side? He ain’t one of us,” Bakari said.
“Why does there even need to be an ‘us’?”
Mike was the smartest one in the room, by far, but he was emotional, especially when it came to his background. Bakari surely meant “us” as in the Twelve, but the way Mike heard it, Bakari may as well have called Demetrius a thug.
“It’s not about that, Mike,” Jace said. “We just don’t know him like you do. And if we don’t know him, how can we trust that he wouldn’t do something like that?”
Mike sat back on the couch, legs spread far and wide, a stance not unlike his classroom posture. The teachers hated his above-it-all attitude, but there was nothing they could do. He did his work, just not exactly the way they wanted him to. “It’s whatever, bruh. I’m just saying, I know him, and it ain’t him to do something like that. I feel like it’s real easy for y’all to try and pin shit on him just because he’s a hood nigga.”
Bakari frowned. “That ain’t it.”
“Okay,” Mike said, a smirk covering his face, which was looking more and more punchable by the moment. “I guess I’m stupid now.”
Avianna spoke up and broke the tension. “What if it really was one of us? Like, I’m really sitting here nervous right now.”
“It wasn’t,” Jace snapped. “What if she really did kill herself?”
“She didn’t,” Bria said. “The police are gonna question all of us, and we’re supposed to say Demetrius was hanging out with her that night.”
Mike raised his voice. “I’m not blaming Demetrius. I don’t care what y’all parents say. He ain’t have shit to do with it.”
“I guess we know where you stand, then,” Bria said. “If it wasn’t him, and if it wasn’t one of the other kids from school, then it had to somebody in this room.”
They each looked around the room, trying to read faces, perhaps. Or perhaps they were trying to figure out how to hide their own feelings. Their own guilt.
“You know what’s funny? I saw you with her that night,” Mike said, fixing his gaze on Bakari like the scope of a rifle. “Everybody knows you liked her.”
Bakari’s jaw tightened again, and Danielle stared at the floor. “I didn’t like her like that. If you saw me with her, we must have just been talking.”
Mike smiled. “Yeah, y’all were talking, but it was after we came back inside. So that means you might have been the last one with her.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Come on. I know you’re an athlete, but evenyouhave to know where I’m going with that.”
Bakari stood abruptly. Danielle grabbed his hand. “Bakari, don’t,” she pleaded. He looked down at her and then at Mike, who was still lounging, not bothered at all by the display. “This nigga talk too much,” Bakari said through gritted teeth.
“Is that a temper I see?” Mike taunted.
Bria spoke up this time. “Mike, would you shut up? You’re just trying to piss him off.”
Mike burst out laughing, sending tiny apple chunks flying into the air. “He makes it so easy, though.”
An impartial observer might attribute the hard feelings between the young men to resentment. Mike was damn near a genius, but he wasn’t cool. Bakari was a popular athlete, but he had to work his ass off for every A. To Bria, they were two sides of the same coin.
