Chapter 11

“Wren,” I whisper, “I’m so sorry.”


He doesn’t tear up but he just looks so weak.  It’s as though he’d just gotten the biggest beat down of his life as he struggles to get back up.   He seems so hurt and there’s nothing that I can really do for him at that moment but apologize.

“It’s my dad who told you that message, wasn’t it?” Wren asks.

“He wants to come pick you up later tonight.  Wren if you can please not tell him that I told Dijon.  He specifically wanted me not to tell Dijon.”


“Why not?” Wren asks.

“He...uh...and this is what he said, guys, this isn’t me…”


It was something offensive and Vance who had just apologized for his own offensive behavior wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t coming from him.  Right now none of that mattered.  

“Just say it,” I respond.

“Your dad thinks Dijon has something to do with it,” Vance states.

“That’s fucking crazy,” Wren states, “If he wants to come get me later then that’s fine but he’s not going to keep disrespecting my partner…”


Partner.  He called me his partner.   I feel this deep emotion at that moment as I’m sitting there.  I feel so much guilt that I’m the one who caused him to be feeling all of this pain right now.  I stole his address.  I want to tell him.  Even with Vance standing right there.  I wanted to reveal all of it.  

But I don’t know if this is something he could ever forgive.

And at this point I just get silence.

It gets even more awkward when Vance states, “That crowd is getting bigger man.  I got to go.  You need to go be with your family right now.”


Vance leaves and now I really don’t have an excuse.  I feel like this isn’t something I can keep from him.  I would hate if he kept it this from me.

So I turn to him and say, “Wren, I got to tell you something.”


“Can it wait.  I need to make some calls about my mom.”

He tries to walk away but I get in the middle of him and the door pressing up against his chest to keep him there in the room.  

“I had something to do with it.”

I spit the words out.  It’s almost like emptying shots into his heart.  I knew this was going to kill him.  I wanted to just get it over with.   At first he keeps just squinting at me as though trying to rephrase the words in order for it to make sense for him.  

It becomes clear that doesn’t work though when he shakes his head and says, “You going to have to run that back.”


“I described your house to Taz…” I state.

He gets quiet.  Real quiet.  He just stares at the ground.  I can’t read him at all in this moment.   I reach out to him trying to touch him.

“Don’t touch me.”



“I’m sorry Wren.  I really am.”


I had made it clear to him by doing this that I chose Taz over him.  And the thing was I regretted it.  I regret feeling so much anger towards McHenry that I would do down the path of wanting something to happen to him.  


And now an innocent person was dead, because of me.

“I loved you,” he admits to me.

Him using that word breaks me.   It’s because when he says it he looks at me and it is clear that he meant it.   There was this connection that I felt this entire time.  This connection that said this relationship was unlike many others you were going to have in your life time.  And I felt that connection being shed.

He makes his way to the door.  He wanted nothing to do with me. I can see that much.  But I couldn’t just let him walk out there.

“You can’t go out there,” I tell Wren, “Those are Taz’s people out there.  Taz found Coin’s sextape.   He has been planning all of this whole thing.”

“He killed my mother.   You helped him!”  Wren spazzes on me,  his face getting red and real tears streaming down his face,  “You warning me about Wren.   Like I didn’t know what he was.  You should have been warning me about YOU!”

He reaches for the door.  I slam myself hard against it.   At this point I don’t care what I have to do to keep Wren safe.   I would do it.  

“Please don’t go out there.”

“Give me one good reason.   Give me one good reason that I shouldn’t leave.  One.”

He stares at me hard.   I could see rage in his eyes.  Real pain.   If I were anyone else I would have had my head smashed in the wall.   I could see the rage in his eyes.   He’s so angry that he can’t do anything in this moment but cry.

After I can’t respond he angrily says, “Exactly.  Get out of my way.”

“You want a reason.  Fine.  Your LIFE!”  I shout, “Taz is looking for you.”


There is a pause.

And Wren said, “Don’t act like you give a fuck about my life now.   You’re the fucking reason my mom is dead.”

He reaches for the door again.  My heart breaks.  I know I’ve hurt him and I know he isn’t thinking right if he plans on going out there.  

Tonight was the night.   Nothing good would happen outside of those doors tonight.  Nothing good at all.

“Please.  Wren. For me…”

He pushes past me, “For YOU?   My mother is dead.  And she’s never coming back.   And so are my feelings for you.   So move…”

“Taz plays 3 games ahead.   You are his target.  You probably always were…”

“He’s looking forward me?”  Wren states getting past me finally before adding in a low deep tone, “Maybe I’m looking for him…”

~



The night is on fire and I have no choice but to go outside.  Others are out there as well.   A big wave of energy is throughout the night.  I can see people coming out of their rooms to see what the chaos is.  Most people start walking towards the parking lot area where the shouting is taking place.  

I search the crowd desperate to find Wren in it but there is no sign of him.

 “No good cops but dead cops!”  I hear.

I listened as the shouts and screams moved further into the night. The riot was moving away from the dorms towards the school buildings.  I followed a group of students who were going towards the rioters.  They were all ordinary looking, just faces in a crowd. Except for  Taz.

He’s standing up on a table with speakers on it.  . Just looking at him made you think ‘The People’. Proud, defiant, and surrounded by people you wouldn't want to mess with. I  wasn't sure of the exact details, but I knew Taz to be the one who sparked the violence when I hear him shout something out.

“Burn this shit down!  Burn this shit down!”

I had to admit Taz was good at this.  The angry look of these invaders was testimony enough to that.  Taz provoked rage against authority, he had an ability to make the very idea of mentioning Coins name and holding up a photo of Coin cause a frenzy with the people he was with.  He was making the crowd berserk with fury. After hearing him speak for half a minute Taz  thought it no wonder he had been able to start a riot on an otherwise perfectly ordinary day.

“Hey, you there! Break the window!” Derek broke off mid-sentence to remind some random rioter why he was there.  The boy obediently used his bat to shatter a nearby window.

Chaos ensued. The riot had been through here, that was obvious. None of the cars on the street had intact windows, one had even been overturned. The dorms  saw similar destruction.

I could hear the riot as it tore apart another part of the dorm area.   I watched as the riot drag people from their houses. I knew some of those people.  There were a few security cops that were trying to control them, but when they beat a rioter the riot beat them back twice as hard.

“Yo—-you need to get out of here!”  I turn and see Vance.

Vance had this look on his face,   It was clear he had been terrified. Staying with the riot would end in arrest, leaving would mean Wren could be in trouble.   What if Wren found Taz before I did.  

“They won’t hurt me….”

“Maybe not the rioters but Scott and Andrew are blaming all this on you.”

“Me?”

Vance nods,  “Andrew says he recalls who jumped him.  He recalls that they were your friends.”

Vance tracking me down to warn me about the brothers made it clear that he had heard something.   I’m not surprised.   They needed someone to blame for all the tension and now that the tension was here things were going to get worse.

“Where are they not?”

“A lot of the guys are gathering around.   They are getting some weapons together.  They are talking about defending the school.”

Of course they were.   There was no way Taz and his people were just going to take this school so easily without the school putting up the fight, and the truth is all I saw was tragedy in this night if I didn’t do something quick.  

“I have to get to him…”

“The police are coming,” Vance states…

I hear his warning but right now I feel the need to at least warn these people,   I push through the crowd.

Seeing an opportunity, I  made my way through the melee and joined the group following Taz. No one had noticed me standing next to Taz...not even him for a second.  

“Taz what the fuck…”

Taz, noticing it is me grabs my hand and raises it, “This is Dijon.   He is a survivor of the police brutality at the hands of Officer McHenry!”

The crowd gets loud cheering and screaming.   There is more frenzy.  The crowd gets louder and angrier.   When those faces look back at me I can see that in that moment I’ve become the embodiment of all their pain and anger.  

“The cops are coming!” I scream out warning the crowd now that I’ve got their attention.

I think that’s enough to cause them to scatter.   I think that’s enough to get them to rethink all of the damage they are doing but then I hear Taz lifting up his amplifier again.

“Fuck the police!  That’s why we have to get his son now!” Taz barks out to the crowd.

“GET HIS SON! GET HIS SON!”  The crowd shouts.

Taz actually joins in on this crazy chant.   I can’t take it anymore grabbing him and pulling him down from his pedestal.

“You gonna get these people arrested.  Or hurt,” I warn Taz.

“That’s why we’re here, boy.  The revolution has started.

“You promised me you wouldn’t do anything.”

Taz doesn’t even seem the slightest bit concerned that he betrayed me in that moment and did this.   Instead he had this smile on his face.   This was his moment.  His moment in the sun.    

“People are finally listening…”

“This isn’t about Coin is it?  This is all about you.”

Taz stares at me and gives me this look,  “I did this for us.   All of us.   I did this shit because no one else was going to.”

“McHenry is alive…” I state.

“What?”

“McHenry is still alive.   Whatever you did, killed an innocent woman.”

It’s at that moment it occurs I realize that I backed the wrong person.   There was no soul there.  There was no regret.  All he cared about now was the movement and he’d lost himself in it.  

“So what?  A racist bitch got what she deserves.  

I’m shocked when Taz says that.   There is no emotion.  It’s as though McHenry’s wife dying meant nothing to him.   It’s at that moment I see just how broken Taz has really become in that moment.  

It wouldn’t matter to Taz if McHenry’s wife wasn’t racist.  It wouldn’t mean a damn.  He’d done damage to the enemy.  That’s what he seemed to care about more than anything.

And now he’s gotten the revolution he wanted.

“This is about to get out of hand Taz… look!”

In the background not too far away from is a group of white kids are making their way over to the rioters.   They are students.  They have weapons as well.  I recognize a few of them almost immediately.   Scott and Andrew were among them.  

This meant trouble.

And Taz seems to smile at the idea of trouble,  “This is what we wanted.  Both of us.  This is revenge...”

He grabs me up by the side of my waist and pulls me into him.   That was the thing about Taz.   That’s when he kisses me right there in the middle of the crowd.  His tongue goes down my throat.  His hand secures the back of my head.  

“I’m good…” I push him off of me.

He shakes his head a couple of times walking away from me backward.

“A damn shame.   You have the best voice.  You could have been the voice of a revolution.”

I see him take something out of his bookbag and shove it into his coat.  Something solid.  Something metal.  And my heart sinks knowing that Taz wasn’t just ready to set a light that could burn down society but he was willing to burn with it.

I watch him and his people walking up to Andrew and his people.    At first it’s just cursing back and forth.  An angry shout where you don’t really know who is saying what.   Then all of a sudden there is a loud noise.

It all happens in a moment.

They started this war.  

I watch as the two sides are not too far away from me.

“THIS IS OUR SCHOOL!” a voice shouts out from the white side.

“FUCK 12!”  the black side shouts out.

There is this feeling of something about to happen.  The screams start not making sense.   The voices mesh together to the point that they all seem like one big sound.  And in my mind I stop hearing everything.  And all I see is anger.   The two sides facing down screaming at each other but none really listening to what the other side was saying.  

Silent noise.  

A faint rustle of leaves came from the garden below. I  looked out, swearing as I saw movement. A shout came from the crowd . A gunshot turned shouts to scream.

Everything was sudden chaos.  Instead of the gunshot making people run away it did the opposite.  It made people get angry.  It made the two sides collide.  I see Taz in the distance.  He’s one of the first ones to Wren would never speak to me again.  He wanted nothing to do with me.   a punch.   The crowd roars and everyone’s fighting everywhere.  Punches are being thrown and people are being attacked.

In the distance I see him.

“WREN!”


He wasn’t safe.   If anyone from Taz’s end recognized him he would be in danger.  My heart is racing wondering how fast I can get to him from where I am.  I try to push through the crowd in the direction that I saw him.

“Wren?”



I turn back and forth trying to find him.  He seems to have disappeared.  That’s when I see an alley and see Wren.  He runs down the alley.

I take off down the street.

He’s fast. Super fast.  By the time I get to the alley I don’t even see him anymore.   I give up halfway down the alley and turn back around.

“Look who it is…”


I turn around and I’m shocked when I see Andrew.   He’s not alone.  Scott and half of the Ruby team is with him.   I hadn’t seen them following me into the alley.  I was so concerned with Wren.   But when they do see me they all have this look in their eyes.  It’s this look that tells me they came here with intentions.

They wanted to catch me alone.

“What’s good, my nigga?” Scott says.

I take a step back away from them.  They are approaching me in an aggressive way.  Half of them are laughing.  The other half just look pissed.  These boys definitely had something on their minds.  


“I don’t want any problems,” I tell them.

I keep backing up.  Further and further.   I wanted to turn around and run but there were too many of them.  They would run me down and the fear of one of them hitting me in the back as I run away terrifies me.  


“Oh you don’t want any problems?” Andrew asks, “It’s because of your dumb ass that these fucking thugs are at our school causing trouble.”


“I didn’t want this.”


“You wanted it.  You’ve been trouble since the beginning,” Andrew states, “And what’s about to happen to you isn’t because you're black.  It’s because you’ve been a pain in my ass…”


“Does that make you feel better?” I ask Andrew, “Does it make you sleep better at night not to have someone put the racist title on you?  You know what you are.  You know what’s in your heart.  You can’t lie to yourself for too long.”


“He’s calling you out bro…he’s onto you,” Scott teases his brother.

“He’s a faggot.  He wants ME to be on him,” Andrew argues back.

At that moment Andrew makes a mad dash for me.  I turn to run away feeling the my feet hit the pavement.  He fast.  Faster than me and I find myself being tackled to the ground.  My stomach hits the pavement.

I feel him pushing up against me, grinding his waist into me.  His boys are there laughing as he pretends to hump me on the ground.   I try to get up but he slams my head into the concrete.  My arm is free and I elbow Andrew as hard as I can in the abs.  He groans in pain.  As soon as he lets up a little bit my fist smashes into his right eye.

This gets him off of me.

“Little motherfucker got some bite!”  Scott laughs when his brother takes the punch and falls off of me.  

“Come on bitches...I ain’t scared of none of you,” I get to my feet.

My mouth is bleeding probably from being pushed to the ground.  I spit out the blood.  There were more of them than me.  But I expected it.  At this point I knew that they didn’t want to talk.  They wanted to hurt me.  But I wasn’t going to go down running, screaming and begging.   Maybe Taz wasn’t always right.  Maybe he went too far.  But he did teach me how to stand up for myself.  And right now I wasn  standing.

“Something funny?”

“You guys gonna help me or you just going to stand there and let this guy laugh at us,”  Andrew asks his friends.  

“Kill him,” Scott urges.

I don’t feel my face for the next few seconds when they come at me bashing me over and over.   I fight back throwing my fists at the aggressors feeling the punches and throwing them back.

It happens until I feel someone grab me from my collar.   I am pulled back away from the barrage of punches, kicks and swear words.

And I notice the person standing next to me.   His face angry.  His hands in a fist.  And I’ve never seen Wren look so serious about anything since I’d first met him.

I’m dizzy a bit.  Drawn out from getting jumped by all these guys.

“You’re here…” I murmur through a busted lip.

I thought he hated me after knowing that I had something to do with what happened with his mom.  

“I got your back,” he tells me.

And the way he says it makes me think that he’s backing me up.  He’s not acting like some white savior but instead he is acting like my friend…

He’s acting like my partner…

“Should have known you would be here…” Andrew states.

It pisses them off.   All you see is red in their eyes.  They aren’t as brave when there are two of us but they aren’t backing down either.    They feel betrayed by their friend and this isn’t the first time.  

And that’s when I see Scott hand Andrew something.  At first I don’t know what it is and then I hear Scott say something shocking to his brother.

“You can’t keep letting this monkey make a fool out of you…” he says.

It’s revealed that Scott hands him a knife.  It also becomes clear just by how Andrew looks when he grabs that knife that today hadn’t been the first time they’d talked about this.  

I’d made a fool out of them.  Every last one of them.  That is why they targeted me during the riots.  That’s why they had me in this corner.

“Get out of here,” I tell Wren.

“No.”

“You should hate me.”

“After this we are gonna walk away from each other,” Wren explains but then adds in, “But the key word is walk.  I’m not leaving you to these clowns…”

It’s bittersweet, knowing that Wren was standing by my side but also knowing that none of this meant anything in the end.  

“Neither of you motherfuckers are walking away from this,” Andrew threatens me.

He comes at us.  His eyes beaming with anger.  There was murder in his eyes and I just had this shaking feeling that none of this was going to end well.

Something was about to go horribly wrong.

And just then we hear the bullets ring through the air!

Bang! Bang!

“Get down!” I hear Wren scream.

He grabs me throwing me to throwing me to the ground to a voice a bullet but we realize at the same time it’s just a warning shot.  The shot comes from the other end of the alley.

“Where you boys goin?  The party just started,”  Taz laughs with a gun on his hand after firing the shots.  

He’s alone and he has that same blank look on his eyes.   This time it’s worse.   This time it’s like Taz has completely flipped.   Sure,  I guess I’d always known Taz was dangerous but maybe it’s because a part of me was dangerous.  A part of me wanted all of this to happen.  Even seeing the look on these white boys’ faces felt good.

Everything was easy for them.   They’d always gotten everything they wanted but the look of fear when those gunshots ring out means something.

“Scott!” A voice calls out.  

At this point I’m on the ground with Wren not too far from me.   I open my eyes and realize Andrew is down.   His brother Scott, who was literally instigated this entire thing gives Andrew a look.   Then he runs.

He leaves his brother there.

Wren and I get up and I start making my way over to Taz when Wren says, “Don’t…”

It’s a slow warning but a warning nonetheless.   He seems confused on what is happening right now too but his suspicions seem right when Taz stands over Andrew.

I don’t say anything but in my mind I’m praying that he can’t be this cold.   He can’t be this fucking cold.  

But he is.

Bang!

The gun goes off and Taz kills Andrew.   He shoots him right in the back of the head.   I swallow my spit at that moment when I see it happening.  

“Look who it is…” Taz finishes up with Andrew, as though it meant nothing, and then he turns his madness to Wren.

I turn to Wren as well.  He should have run.  He should have.  Why hadn’t he taken off?   It didn’t matter.   Now it was too late.  Now Taz had his hand on a gun and he had it pointed at Wren.  

And I know that this is what Taz wanted.   This was why he gathered all these people here in the first place.   He wanted Wren and I was the only one standing in between Wren and death.

“Let him go Taz.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he barks,  “You don’t tell me what to do.  Sell out.”

The way he spits this words makes me think he is still hurt by me refusing to join his movement and walking away earlier.   He’d never talked to me like this before.  Not really.  The adrenaline is kicking by now.   I’m on edge.  He’s on edge.   Wren is quiet and still as he should be.  Right now was not the time to make Taz even more mad.

“Violence isn’t going to help.”

“It’s too late.  Already got one of them,” he says looking at Andrew, “What’s one more dead boy?  Nothing to me.   But to this country the right white boy might make a difference.”

The right white boy.   Wren was the son of McHenry.   The right had raised McHenry to be some sort of hero.  George Zimmerman 2.0.   Every right leaning station was clamoring with talking points to defend him.  If his son died it might just spark a race war nationwide.

And that’s exactly what Taz wanted.

“You can’t save this country through violence.”

“This country was built on violence dumbass.  For too long people like you tried talking to these racists about peace.  They don’t understand that.  It’s time to speak to them in their language.”

He takes a few steps towards Wren.   He wants to be sure he doesn’t miss no doubt.   Wren doesn’t shake.  He doesn’t cry.  If he’s nervous I can’t tell.   He’s just completely still and handling this better than I could in a million years.  

I’m nowhere near as composed. I shake my head and desperately look over at Taz.  Tears are in my eyes.  You don’t think about how much you care about someone until it happens.z

“I love him,”  I say to Taz.

It was probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.   It just spills out of my mouth.   I don’t realize if I’ve made this worse by admitting I loved Wren.   The truth was I didn’t even know I loved him.   Not until that moment.   Not until I was about to leave him completely.  

Surprisingly Taz smiles.  Not a pleasant smile but one that was crazed as though he was being pushed to the edge.  

“You would beg for the life of the man who killed Coin?  You don’t know what love is.   You didn’t Coin…”

I’m confused,  “Coin wouldn’t want this...”

“Stop fucking saying that.  You didn’t know Coin.  Not like me.   With you—-he was some smooth cat that just wanted to have his first fucking boyfriend.  With me he was himself.   I met him at 6.   He was a revolutionary from the day he was born.  And his FATHER took that away!”

He points at Coin.  There is all this anger in his face.  

Wren asks out of no where, “How’d you know about Coin’s sextape?”  

Taz is stalling.   I think he’s nervous to shoot Wren.  I think it’s a lot different shooting someone in the back then it is shooting them in the front.

“He showed it to me,” Taz responds,  “We share everything.   I knew about Dijon.   I knew about everything.   Coin and me went way back…”

I remember the first night I let Taz.   I remember how we bonded.   I remember how we ended up clicking because we had something in common.   That thing was Coin.   And I realized just in that moment Taz and I had something else in common too.

Wren seems to beat me to it,  “You were in love with Coin.”

They shared everything.   The weird sex life.  All of it.   It all made sense now how he bound Andrew in the way he did.  Him and Coin clearly had that Dom/submissive thing in common.    And then all of a sudden it hits me that perhaps that’s why Taz wanted to be around me in the first place.

I was the one thing they hadn’t shared.  And he was looking to change that.  

Taz doesn’t deny it.   He gives himself away.

He raises his gun at Wren,  “And that’s why you have to die right now.”

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