When Kofi came back from Mt. Herndon for the summer, he seemed frightened, uneasy. His hair was a little too long (“I can’t find nobody … anybody … to cut it around school. There ain’t … aren’t any black people in Stonington, Mama”), and he had lost his taste for sitting outside on the stoop, watching life go by. Both boys had been regarded as oddities at Banneker anyway because of their ambition, but now words Rashid didn’t know the meaning of appeared regularly in Kofi’s speech. Rashid caught Kofi staring out the window for long periods, a lost look on his face. And then on Kofi’s second or third Sunday home, the usual shuffle and run to the apartment’s single bathroom began early and Kofi didn’t join it. “You better get goin’, man,” said Rashid. “You know Mama don’t like us to be late.”

Kofi sat on the edge of the bed. “You know, I don’t know how I feel about Jesus anymore.”

“What?”

“I said, I don’t know how I feel about Jesus anymore. Up at school, we take this course in comparative religions, and there are so many different things a person can believe. I mean, are all Jews going to hell? Are all the Muslims? I don’t know. It makes it hard to sit up there and say this is the only thing I believe.”

Rashid looked at Kofi like he’d just started speaking in tongues. “You better not let Mama or Daddy hear you talk like that. They’ll snatch you out that school in one hot minute.”

Kofi sighed. Rashid noticed for the first time how much older he looked. “Yeah, yeah. And hard as it is, I’m not ready to give up. You don’t know, R. You don’t know what it’s like at Herndon. I feel like … like they have everything and I end up feeling like I got nothing. Like I am nothing—just got in there on some kind of fluke. Don’t know nothing.” He stood up and pulled a tie from the cheap bureau, his voice ragged. “It’s no joke, going to this school, man. It’s no joke.”

Rashid was silent for a few moments. Then, confused, he said, “Well, I won’t tell what you said. About Jesus and all.”

Kofi shook his head and smiled, his eyes still focused elsewhere. “Thanks, little R. Thanks a lot.”

They went to church that day. Kofi sang beautifully as always, his eyes focused on some far-off place, confusing Rashid even more. Three weeks later, Kofi was dead, killed in a holdup as he left a local bodega with a lukewarm Coke in his hand. Rashid sang at his funeral. After that, he stopped going to church.