Page 113 of Grown

Bodies bump into me. Security. Panic. Mayhem. A blond woman in a uniform. She’s looking me in the eye. Is she trying to kill me too?

“What—”

“Take this,” she whispers, stuffing something in my pocket, then passes by quick. Too quick for Mom to notice before I’mwhisked away to the elevator, and up to our room.

Mom is on the phone with Dad, hysterical, and I slip into the bathroom to retrieve the ripped notebook paper.

Meet at 421 Broadway for a KA meeting. Friday,10 a.m.There are others.

You’re not alone.

Chapter 79

Funeral

Rain roars hard against the roof, lightning sparking through the gray fog. A flash flood warning sounds off. Every phone in the diner wails of it.

Including Derrick’s.

“Thanks for risking your life to come visit me.”

He chuckles. “Anything is better than being home right now.”

Derrick and I sit in a booth in the town’s staple diner, sipping chocolate milkshakes. The place is classic with a bar counter, mini jukeboxes on the tables, and decor they haven’t changed since the eighties. I don’t come often, but their fish sticks and sweet potato fries are pretty on point. I’ve had themhere with Gab after school. The very Gab they say is a figment of my imagination.

I glance outside at the rain pummeling the fresh spring flowers, puddles turning into lakes.

The perfect day for a funeral.

“Figured you’d want some company today,” Derrick says, hinting at the box TV mounted above the pumpkin-haired woman at the register, set on CNN. No sense in asking to change it. Almost every news station is showing the same thing.

Korey Fields’s funeral is a massive A-list event being held at Madison Square Garden, the largest convention center in the city. Lines started forming before five a.m.

“I heard he got a gold casket. Like Michael Jackson,” Derrick quips.

“Kinda fitting, right?”

“Ouch. Too soon.”

I chuckle, throwing a fry at him. “You didn’t want to go to the funeral?”

“My dad wanted me to. But... I’d rather stick glass in my eyes. Ain’t no way I’m going to celebrate the life of that asshole.”

“We are of the minority.”

He shrugs. “Fine with me.”

“So you’re cool hanging out with an alleged murderer?”

“Man, if you really did kill him... I wouldn’t blame you. I saw you in that house. No one else did. But I saw.”

We stare at each other.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” he admits.

“Why?”

“He hurt you. He hurt those other girls. He hurt... everybody.”