Now the leaves talk very little, or I just don’t hear them as much as before. Soon they’ll all go away and I can walk on lighter feet. See some sky. Never hear them voices again. Never. I’ll shut them up like the guys tried to shut me up. They didn’t want me to say nothing. And even Metro didn’t know nothing until it was too late. I didn’t realize it either until the voices came back with bodies when they locked me up to wait for trial. The bodies and the voices attacked me this time, and I had no room to hide in or get away to. No fucking where to go.

“It wasn’t just me,” I said when the doctor wanted me to come clean. “It wasn’t just me.” And I must have talked out of my head because the next thing I knew Cuddles, Max, and Lou was filing into the precinct with their sweatshirts pulled over their heads and hiding their faces from photographers. Then before the TV cameras they showed themselves off proud. Camera lights blared everywhere, and you’d think that the tiles and linoleum floors had lights on them too. Blinding lights. The officer said he was Detective Stone. I told him my name—all of it. He said it was first-degree murder and bail would be pretty high. Then they brought Moms in and she wailed up and down the halls like I was her precious somebody who ain’t never been in trouble before. Which was really a lie, ’cause when the judge set the bail that high she said I’d be better off in jail anyway than home with her or out in the streets, where I’d be, mostly. The others came later and even they couldn’t pay bail. Not Cuddles, Max, or Lou. But they never signed their names like I did, which started all this shit. Which had started for me when the leaves was talking, and what was I gonna do but talk back. Tell them everything. The others said they wasn’t guilty. That I’d done it by myself. But when some doctor said there was too many stab wounds on Metro to come from one person and that even though he was drugged up with Valium and Librium and shit to calm him down, he died of the stab wounds from different knives. You know, knives of different lengths. Not the clean knife I dropped running out of there. So it wasn’t just me, I said. In fact, I don’t remember it being me at all.

It was just a blowjob. Just a crazy running in the streets. My knife was clean. They must know that. It was clean. My fingerprints, if there was any, was on his head, holding it, and in his thick hair when it got to feeling good and I couldn’t stop myself. Then his voice made the air thick. He was screaming. But I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t stop hearing him crying or touching the red coming out of him bent up with Max and Lou at his back. Then I was alone with him. Metro. I found my feet and used them. Shit. I made room for myself. I got the hell out of there.