On Sunday after church, I head to see Dean at work. Dean rings up a customer, then joins me in the corner where I have my favorite view to the street. Steve is out doing interviews, so I don’t mind waiting for him at Evans Antiques. I’ve got my laptop pulled up, searching online for anything around the dates the photos at the Pike were taken and catching up with what I missed after we were all kicked out of Mandy’s party—at least all the Black kids.

“Party didn’t last much longer,” Dean says. “Everybody knows I’m cool with you, so no one said much to me.”

“What about Mandy?”

“She kept to herself. Seemed relieved when everyone started leaving. Scott and Chris stuck around, helping her clean up, but she was jumpy with them.”

“Mandy doesn’t think Jamal had anything to do with killing Angela. She thinks the micro SD card got her in trouble, and all the questions she was asking.”

“You find anything on there?”

“No.” I share a copy of the photos out at the Pike. “Does this spur anything?”

Dean shrugs. “Just a bunch of guys out drinking. The only thing weird is they’re from different cliques. Don’t usually see them all together.”

Dean gets up to help the next person in line. What Dean doesn’t say is that they do have something in common—they’re all white. Just like how the party last night was pretty much segregated. He can’t see it, but the absence of color is striking to me. It also gives me a thought. I search online, up and around a few days before the photo was taken.

Eventually, I see one small reference to a Black Lives Matter peace rally against a hate group planning on marching an hour away. It ended up being a mob of around forty guys. A girl who was part of the peaceful march was shot by a stray bullet that hit the crowd.

I covered the march in “Tracy’s Corner.” It started a debate in history class when white kids asked why it’s not racist to say Black Lives Matter but a problem to say White Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter. What they don’t get is that those lives have always mattered. Ours are treated like we’re less than equal. Like we don’t deserve the same respect. A school shooter can come out alive but a Black kid in handcuffs on the ground can be shot, unchecked. An AK-47 in a white hand has more rights than a Black kid with Skittles.