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KAI
At lunchtime, I waited at the entrance to the cafeteria for Imani because I wanted to sneak her into the library to talk. After watching João bury his mom last night, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my parents. And neither João nor Landon was good at talking about shit.
As a herd of wild students pushed to get into the cafeteria first, I spotted Imani at the rear of the crowd, pulling off her reading glasses and shoving them into her case.
She looked over at me and smiled. “What are you—”
Before she could finish her sentence, I took her hand and whisked her away toward the library. “I want to eat lunch with you alone today,” I said, not mentioning my parents yet. I didn’t know what I would even say to her about it anyway, but I… I really needed to talk. “Come on.”
“You never want to eat lunch with me alone,” Imani said, hurrying after me. “Is everything okay?”
When we reached the library, I released her hand. The librarian looked over at us and gave me a weird look, but then she returned to reading her smutty porno book that she hid underneath a thick-ass copy of Moby Dick.
I brought Imani all the way to the back of the library, where there were some desks that overlooked the front of Redwood Academy. Mom was heavy on my mind, and I knew that Imani would gladly talk with me about it. I just didn’t know what to say to her. João’s mother might’ve committed suicide by using some drug, and mine had died from a drug overdose after Dad’s passing, but I … I couldn’t stop thinking about what life would’ve been like with her.
All those memories flooded back into my head and plagued my fucking mind.
It had been Akio’s parents’ fault that my mother had fallen into despair without my father, and then they’d had the fucking audacity to disgrace João’s mother’s corpse. They couldn’t let her stay dead in peace, but they’d had to hijack her body and cut off her finger to taunt us with it.
“Kai?” Imani said, waving a hand in front of my face, then pulling out her lunch box. “You okay?”
“My mom overdosed on drugs after my father died,” I said abruptly, forcing the words past my lips.
I had already told her once, but I had more to say about it. I didn’t like talking about them—I fucking hated it, honestly—but I wanted to tell Imani. She had won Landon’s heart and torn down João’s walls. I had been sorta feeling left out lately.
But I could never allow myself to open up to Imani as much as the way the other guys did.
Not until Akio’s parents were taken care of. Not until they were dead.
I refused to give myself to someone else, love them with my whole heart, only to have it ripped out of my fucking chest and smashed to pieces by the barrel of Akio’s family’s gun. I had been holding back so much rage and sorrow inside my body for them. I couldn’t let them do the same with Imani, and if they tried, I couldn’t be too attached until I knew they would never get to have her, until I knew that I could love her without constantly looking over our shoulders to make sure she was going to be okay from the trauma and drama that came with Redwood.
“It was cocaine,” I said because I was so shit at talking. I’d rather bottle this up, but that hadn’t gone over so well with João. “I found it on her when I came home that night. She was already long gone, not that long after my father died.”
After she had died, I hadn’t embraced the pain. I fucking became it.
I’d wanted the world to burn because my insides were on fire, sizzling, melting to a fucking crisp. And nobody had helped me because I didn’t have anyone. Allie had her mother. I had … my-fucking-self and Poison.
“I’ve killed so many people since then,” I whispered. “So fucking many of them. I want to rid myself of this pain and make this place more livable and survivable for the kids in the slums like me.”
“How do you feel after”—Imani swallowed hard—“killing?”
“I’m fucking numb to it now,” I said. “It gives me a rush, and then it’s fucking gone.”
Imani furrowed her brows. “Well, this was not the reason I thought you wanted to eat lunch with me today, but I’m glad that you did. You’re quiet, Kai Koh, but you always surprise me.”
“That’s not the only reason that I wanted to talk to you. You shouldn’t go to Senior Night tonight,” I said to Imani. “You nor Allie.”
They both loved attending the football games, but with Akio’s family threatening her and her family, it wasn’t a good idea. All I wanted to do was hide her in my home and hope that Akio’s family didn’t know where the fuck I was located. I refused to let them take someone else from me, especially her.
“I know that we shouldn’t,” Imani said. “But this is Jace’s last night playing football on the Redwood Academy field. Allie isn’t going to stay home, and I’m definitely not going to let her go alone, especially not after what Nicole admitted happened to her with the police. Who knows what those filthy Redwood cops might try to do with her?”
Imani wasn’t not going to go, and I didn’t think there was a way to convince her otherwise. She’d been to almost every football game since freshman year with Allie. This was the last game ever.
“Be safe,” I said. “Don’t do anything stupid. Take your gun with you.”
“I will, Mom,” she joked with me. When I didn’t laugh—because this shit was serious—she dropped her smile and sighed softly. “I know to be safe. I was planning on bringing my gun, anyway. I’m not going to let anyone hurt Allie. She’s just as important to me as she is to you.”
After a few moments, she bit into her apple and leaned closer, lowering her voice. “When are you going to tell her that she’s your sister?” Imani asked, brushing some hair off my forehead, her finger curling around the back of my ear. “It’s getting so hard for me not to tell her. She’s going through a rough time right now with her mom and stepfather. It would be nice for her to have someone else in her life.”
While I knew that it would—hell, because I wanted someone else too—I still wasn’t ready. I wanted Allie to join us in taking down all the corrupt shitheads in Redwood. I wanted her to follow Dad’s dream of exposing everyone for who they really were.
But she wasn’t ready to know the truth about Redwood or about me being her brother.
