central air was blasting, but he still felt closed in wearing the suit and tie he’d worn to the funeral.
“You’re right, Janice. I should have been here for Frankie. He needed me, and I failed him.”
“I’m glad you know it! Too bad it’s too late.” Janice glared at him before cutting her eyes.
“Janice, stop that! This child is grieving just like we are. It’s not fair for us to put this all on him. It’s not fair, and it’s not right. He did all he could for Frankie. We all did.” Grandma’s voice cracked, and she started sobbing again.
Darius wrapped his arms around her and held her as she cried. He held her together and tried to keep everything he felt inside from tumbling out.
He could just see someone with a fancy cell phone or digital camera shooting a video of him breaking down. And he could just see the video showing up on YouTube if he gave in to what he was feeling and cried—if he let the pain take over.
The tenuous street cred he had as a so-called positive rapper-turned-Hollywood-movie-star would be gone if someone caught him slipping and he ended up bawling like a little baby on the Internet.
He shook his head and frowned.
Street cred.
That’s the reason Frankie was dead. He hadn’t wanted to leave the hood behind. He’d wanted to show that he was still down. There had to be a way to be down and not end up in the ground. Hell, he didn’t want to forget where he came from any more than his cousin had. He’d given back financially to lots of good causes and charities in the hood.
He threw money at the hood, the same way he’d thrown money at his cousin.
“Can’t talk now, Frankie, I’m on set about to shoot a scene. I’ll call you later. Hope you like the new wheels.”
“Gotta hit the studio, man. Tell your moms and Grandma I said hi. I’ll try and call y’all this weekend.”
He wasn’t even going to think about all the times he’d let calls from his cousin go straight to voice mail because he was busy with a sexy model or Hollywood starlet. He had dropped the ball, and his cousin had paid the price.
“I’m going to stick around for a little while. I’m between films, and I can put off the studio for a min—”
“Oh, don’t stick around now! We don’t need you now! Go back to Hollywood. Go back to your busy life!” Janice choked out in an angry hiss. “Frankie needed you. You couldn’t make time for him….” Her voice trailed off and she bit back angry tears.
He wasn’t mad at his aunt. She needed someone to blame. Hell, even he blamed himself. So why should he expect any different from her?
“I’m thinking about devoting some time down in the old neighborhood, some time in East New York. There are a couple of youth centers. I could spend some time… I could try and honor Frankie’s memory.”
He had to do something.
“Oh, son, you don’t need to be down there. It’s dangerous. Anything could happen. You should just go on back to your life where it’s safe.” The worried expression on his grandmother’s face tugged at his heart.
He knew the last thing she needed to worry about was the possibility of burying yet another child.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Grandma. I’ll be fine.” He wanted to say that he wouldn’t be involved with the kinds of things that his cousin had been involved in. But he knew that would have set his aunt off unnecessarily.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter what Frankie had been involved in. Darius had failed him.
“The old neighborhood? Why would you want to be down there? No one wants you down there. Go back to Hollywood, Darius! I can’t believe you’re going to use my child’s death as a part of some bullshit publicity stunt!” The ugliness of his aunt’s voice and the distrusting glare in her eyes shook him to his core.
When had it gotten this bad? When did his own family actually forget who he really was? The fact that his aunt could even accuse him of such a thing let him know that he had really dropped the ball where they were concerned.
“That’s not what I’m doing, Jan… You should know that. In spite of everything… You should know…” He shook his head. The basement was starting to close in on him and that sinking about-to-cave-in feeling in his chest had him thinking if he didn’t get out of there soon he really would end up broken down and sobbing on the floor. He took a deep breath. He needed air, so he walked away from them.
“Son, don’t go. Don’t let Janice upset you like this. We know you, son. We know you! We love you.” His grandmother’s voice trailed off as he walked up the stairs.
Even though he knew he could never make things right for his cousin, the tragic loss demanded that he try, demanded that he do something.
Chapter 2
Two weeks after helping Amina clean out the attic, the woman Karen thought of as her “other mother” moved to Myrtle Beach. Karen had gone out to dinner with Amina the other night and said her tearful goodbye. Even though it felt like her connection to her deceased best friend was gone, she still had the youth center to hold on to.
It was Monday, and Karen walked up to the Shemar Sunyetta Youth Center with the same sense of optimism she started each week with. Her building was two stories of prime Brooklyn real estate—two stories of space, opportunity and possibility.
No matter how things had gone the week before, she started each day of the week with a continued steadfast belief in the change she could evoke in people’s lives. Her mother had always called it her stubborn streak. But Karen thought of it as sheer determination.
She was determined to make a difference all day, every day.
As Karen lifted the gate at the entrance to the youth center, Dicey “Divine” Stamps walked up and lifted the gate to her storefront palm-reading spot, Divine Intuition. It was right next door to Karen’s youth center. Ever since the quirky woman opened up the store a year ago, she had been trying to get Karen to come in for a reading.
Karen always said no. While she might have embraced a sort of eclectic style when it came to hair and clothing, she was really traditional when it came to certain things. She didn’t do the woo-woo stuff! Period.
“My offer to read you still stands. I’ll give you half off my normal rates.” Dicey hefted up her gate with a smile. The tall, almost Amazon-like woman had deep, dark skin and wore her long curly hair in thick goddess braids. The braids were wrapped around her head and had an almost crownlike appearance. She always wore African-print goddess gowns. Today she had on a short-sleeved long dress made of mud cloth.
“Girl, you know I don’t believe in all of that.” For some reason, she thought about the journal that she had taken from Amina’s house and how she had felt so compelled to take it with her. She hadn’t picked up the journal since she took it, so she had no idea why it popped into her head at that moment.
“Don’t you want to know?” Dicey said in a way that almost made Karen think she knew what was going on in Karen’s head.
Confusion
