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IMANI
Later that night, I reluctantly sat at the dinner table in my home, jaw clenched as Akio’s mother said something to Mom. While I sat at the dinner table with Akio and his parents, I couldn’t focus on the conversation in the slightest. My thoughts raced not only with how Redwood’s gang would kill Principal Vaughn, but also on why Kai hadn’t answered my texts from earlier.
Mom gave a fake laugh to whatever had been said and smiled over at me tensely, elbowing me. Mom was another one of the snotty rich from Redwood, but today, she looked uneasy, being in the presence of someone like herself. Maybe after being exposed to what had happened with Landon at the hospital, then João’s mom, she had some sympathy now.
But I wasn’t holding my breath.
People like her could act.
Not wanting to listen to Akio’s mother go on and on and on like everything was perfect in her life, I cleared my throat. “What’d you do to the Koh family?” I blurted out because I didn’t want to be here.
All that happened at these dinner parties was talking about people who were either richer than them or the poor, who could barely afford to eat. And they fucking thought that it was cool or something. All of it was annoying and disgusting.
Everyone at the dinner table sucked in a collective breath, an awkward silence falling heavily upon the room. I pursed my lips and stared between Akio’s mother and father, who were suddenly pale.
“So?” I asked, eyebrow arched. “What happened?”
Akio’s mother, who I rarely saw, smiled too widely at me and continued eating her steak. “Nothing, sweetie.” She glanced over at Akio and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, as if she was secretly accusing him of something. “Why do you think something happened?”
“Because Kai Koh’s parents are both dead.”
“Why do you think we had something to do with it?”
Oh, this bitch wants to test me today …
“Imani,” Mom said, giving me the stink eye she always did before a scolding. “Stop it.”
Pissed off, I pushed out of my chair and shot up. Leaning over the table with my hands posted on it, I towered over Akio’s mother and narrowed my eyes. “People like you won’t get away with everything. Whatever you did to them, you will pay for it one day.”
“Are you threatening me?” Akio’s mother asked, voice tense.
Deciding that she wouldn’t intimidate me, I held her intense stare. “Yes.”
She gave a shrill laugh. I didn’t want to be here and attend another dinner with this bitch, so I walked out of the room and into the kitchen while Mom called for me to come back in and sit down. But I was eighteen. I would take her scolding later. I didn’t care.
“Akio, why don’t you take care of your friend?” Akio’s mother said from the other room.
I expected her to follow with the words, Before I have to.
But she didn’t.
A moment later, Akio hurried into the other room with me. “What are you doing?! You can’t say stuff like—”
“Come on,” I said, grabbing my keys from my purse and walking toward the back door to leave this house until Akio’s family was gone for tonight because I didn’t want to deal with their shit.
To my surprise, Akio shrugged on his coat and followed after me quickly, as if he didn’t want to be at dinner with them either. I kinda felt bad for the kid. He had to live with those assholes every single day of his life.
So, I drove around Redwood in silence with Akio in my passenger seat, not really having anything to say to him because I knew he wouldn’t tell me what his parents had done to Kai’s parents. They had to have done something because that look on Akio’s face earlier at dinner …
It seemed like Akio feared his parents, especially his mother.
After taking a spin downtown, I found myself driving around Main Street and glancing out into the dark ocean. Restaurants and shops were filled with the Redwood rich, drinking and laughing as if their lives were perfect, as if they didn’t care that the poor got raped and left for dead in their alleyways.
Across the street, near the restaurant where João’s mother had been raped, a lone woman walked on the side of the road and chatted with a big, burly man.
When it registered in my brain that it was João’s mom, I slammed on the brakes. The car behind me laid on its horn, and I turned on my blinker and pulled to the side of the road, glaring at the car as he sped past.
“What the hell are you doing?” Akio asked, grabbing his seat belt.
