I wanted to tell him it was a lie. Not the rape. That part was real. But that I’d used him to push it out of my head. I had wanted to be close to him so much. I still wanted so much to just take his hand, to put it against my heart. But I couldn’t. I had trusted him and he had left, he had hurt me so deeply. I couldn’t tell him that this lie I’d just told him was the most hurtful thing the meanness inside me could think of.

“Go, Jaden,” I said. “Go.”

He walked from the room. He walked out of the apartment. I could hear doors slam. I could hear him walking away.

A few minutes later, watching from the window, shaking as I’d been shaking for days, I saw Jaden’s form bike away from the building. I stood and I waited, and I waited for him to come back. Those twenty-five minutes felt like the longest I’d ever lived through. I began to bargain in my head. If he made it back, I would apologize. I would tell him the truth. I would tell him that I loved him. About the lights that came on inside me when he’s around. I would be real, I would throw away the nails act, I would collapse in his arms and let him hold me.

But when he came back into my view, I could tell right away there was something wrong. He was leaning forward, pushing his bike with all his strength, racing away from . . . something. When the cob roller on a bike came into view behind him I wasn’t surprised. Jaden was beating him, though. He was going to win. He was the fastest biker, he always had been. My heart was beating so fast I thought I would faint. Jaden was so close, he would be fine, everything would be okay. It had to be.

Then the cob roller ditched his bike and aimed his gun. Jaden fell to the ground. Then I dropped to the floor, screaming. I didn’t stop screaming. I felt like I would never stop.

Part Fourteen Evann—May

PART FOURTEEN

EVANN—MAY

1 My dad’s apartment buildings were not his number one asset, but he had a lot of them, and they made him a lot of money. They didn’t buy my chou little apartment in the East Village, and they didn’t buy my art, but my dad often said before Bernice that they were my nest egg. That anything I needed in the future when he wasn’t around would come from them. I guess he didn’t know how right he was.