Chapter 23
Days later…
I couldn’t stand the sight of my apartment, so I had been spending the last three nights at Dream’s.
Her place wasn’t big, but it was always warm and messy in a way that made people feel like they could fall apart and nobody would judge them.
Dream kept music playing low from her Bluetooth speaker like she was trying to soften the room, and Mia was rolling up on the coffee table while Dream poured more tequila into our glasses like she thought enough liquor could rinse grief out of my bones.
They were laughing at something on Mia’s phone, but I wasn’t paying attention.
I was on the far end of the couch with a bottle in my hand, feeling the liquor settle in my chest, and I kept my face blank because my feelings had been embarrassing me lately.
I hadn’t really been sleeping since the funeral, and I damn sure hadn’t been eating right.
My stomach felt hollow all the time like grief had chewed straight through me and left nothing behind but heat.
Rioh and Jaqwon were gone, and every time I closed my eyes I pictured that moment when Kay’Lo lifted that gun, and my mind would slam the door on the rest of the thought because the full picture made me feel like I might throw up.
Everybody kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, but they weren’t the ones watching my daddy crumble behind closed doors, and hearing my mama cry through the walls when she thought nobody could hear her.
They weren’t the ones sitting in a quiet house where everything still smelled like my brothers, and every corner held a memory that wanted to cut me open.
They weren’t the ones carrying the truth that I was the reason they went there in the first place.
I stared across the room without really seeing anything, and the smoke floating through the air made everything feel even hazier.
I wasn’t present. I was sitting in my own head, replaying the same scenes I’d been stuck in for months.
The guilt felt attached to my ribs, pulling at me every time I breathed, and the crazy part was I hated guilt more than I hated anything.
Guilt made you weak. It made you question yourself and look in the mirror and see a monster, and I wasn’t ready to wear that title alone.
Dream glanced over her shoulder like she felt me slipping again. “Echo,” she called, her voice soft as she leaned forward. “You good?”
I nodded even though I knew damn well I wasn’t.
I swallowed hard and took another long drink from the bottle because the liquor was the only thing that turned down the volume in my mind for a little while.
I didn’t even care if it made me feel worse later, because later didn’t matter when right now felt like hell.
People thought grief made you weak, but it didn’t.
The shit made you mean as fuck. It made you cold, and look at everybody living and smiling and wonder why life picked your family to destroy.
It made you sit there watching strangers breathe like they deserved it and your brothers didn’t.
It made you wanna punish somebody for the fact that the world kept spinning like nothing happened. And the world was spinning alright.
I kept seeing the internet treating the Mensahs like they were some celebrity family instead of the psychopaths they really were.
People posted Pressure like he was some king.
They posted Abeni like she was a queen and posted Kay’Lo like he was misunderstood and posted Toni like she was some saint for “standing beside her man” through it all.
Every time I saw Toni post him on Instagram with some corny ass caption about loving her man and supporting him through anything, I wanted to break my phone.
Folks called them goals like Kay’Lo wasn’t the same nigga who murdered my brothers right in front of me.
They talked about Toni like she was strong and blessed and perfect because she was having his baby, and they talked about her glow like it was proof God was on their side.
Nobody on that side talked about Rioh and Jaqwon unless they were making assumptions or actin’ like my brothers deserved it.
Nobody talked about how my family had been ripped apart or how my mama stopped hummin’ in the kitchen.
They didn’t speak on how my daddy stopped laughing at the TV and how the whole house moved like it had a funeral song playing in every room.
Nobody talked about how the guilt sat on me every day like a weight, because it was me who got them caught up in my bullshit with Kay’Lo.
I took another drink, feeling the burn slide down my throat, and Dream and Mia started talking about what went down at the hearing, and I didn’t wanna hear that shit.
I’d seen the video already. Everybody had.
Kay’Lo’s people knocked my brother A’Mii out in the hallway like he was disposable, and the internet ate it up.
They turned it into memes and jokes, and people laughed while my family was dying inside.
I blinked hard because my eyes were stinging again.
I hated crying, and I hated the way sadness always turned into anger inside me.
I could feel it bubbling up again, that tight hot feeling that made me wanna break something, or say something that couldn’t be taken back, or do something that would make everybody finally understand that my pain wasn’t polite.
Mia took a hit from the blunt and leaned back. “Echo, you want this?”
I shook my head without looking at her. I’d smoked earlier, but it didn’t help. Weed made me think more, and I was already thinking too much. My mind didn’t need space. My mind needed a muzzle.
Dream sat down beside me and gently touched my arm. “You gone again,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
Everything…
That was the truth. Everything was wrong, but I didn’t say that. I’d gotten real good at acting like I was fine.
“I’m just tired,” I muttered.
Dream watched me like she didn’t believe it, but she didn’t push. Dream always did that, like she wanted to save me but didn’t wanna get burned.
The truth was I felt like the world left me behind.
My family didn’t say it out loud, but I saw the change in their eyes.
They didn’t look at me the same way anymore, and they didn’t trust me with the same energy.
They didn’t ask where I was going or who I was with.
They didn’t try to comfort me the way they used to.
They moved through the house quietly, trying to cope in their own ways, and I could feel the way my presence made the air tense.
I felt like a stain nobody could scrub out, and Toni didn’t help.
Every time I saw her face, the rage hit me fresh.
She looked happy, and comfortable. She looked loved, like she was living in a world Kay’Lo built for her while my world burned down to ash.
She had the nerve to smile in her pictures like she didn’t know what her man did.
She had the nerve to post her pregnancy like it was the only thing that mattered, like my brothers weren’t still cold in the ground.
And the crazy part was, my hate for Toni wasn’t even logical. That was what made it worse, because I knew I knew I needed to let go and I still couldn’t stop it.
Sometimes somebody left a stain on you. Sometimes a feeling got planted in you so early that even when the situation changed, the feeling didn’t. Kay’Lo had planted it, and Toni was the one who got to live with the results.
Now that jealousy had teeth, it wasn’t just about a man.
It was about everything Toni represented.
She represented getting chosen, being protected and having somebody fight for you and still being able to laugh the next day.
She represented safety, and I couldn’t stand that she got to have it while my family was shattered.
The thought of her baby made something ugly rise up inside me. I didn’t wanna admit it, but I felt it anyway. I kept thinking about how unfair it was, how Toni got to glow and laugh and rub her belly like she was carrying something precious when everything precious had been taken from me.
Sometimes the jealousy hit me so hard I couldn’t even sit still.
I hated that she was having Kay’Lo’s baby.
I hated that the world celebrated them, and that she got to tie herself to him forever while my brothers got cut off from life like it was nothing.
I hated that my mama had to learn how to breathe without two of her kids, while Toni was sitting somewhere actin’ like pregnancy was the hardest thing she ever had to endure.
And in the darkest corners of my mind, I thought things I wouldn’t say out loud, not even to Dream.
I wanted them to feel loss too…
I wanted Toni to stop smiling and glowing. I wanted her to wake up one day and feel the same panic my mama felt, the same emptiness my daddy carried and the same ache that made you question why God kept letting you live when the people you loved didn’t get to.
Dream nudged me again because I was drifting. “You okay for real?” she asked.
I nodded, but my heart was beating like something was takin’ shape inside me. The more I thought about Toni and Kay’Lo and that baby, the more the hatred grew. It felt like fire building in my chest, and it made my thoughts sharp.
I hated Toni’s face. I hated her voice when she spoke on camera like she was some innocent little wife caught in a storm. I hated the way she acted like she won. And I hated Kay’Lo for breathing.
The liquor kept me warm, but it didn’t comfort me.
The weed smell filled the apartment and made my head feel heavier.
I leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling while Dream and Mia talked around me, and all I could think about was how none of this was fair.
None of it made sense, and none of it felt survivable.
People kept saying grief got easier with time, but all I felt was my hatred growing smarter. At first it was just pain, just sobbing and scream-crying in my room and begging God to rewind time. Now it was me thinking about angles, about timing and how to make the world see Kay’Lo the way I saw him.
I’d tried everything to make people see who he really was.
I posted that old video I had of him pacing a hotel floor and talking to himself like he was losing his mind.
I started collecting messages and screenshots and little pieces that could be twisted into something ugly enough to stick.
I stayed in contact with my lawyer, and I stayed close to my parents while they moved their pieces, and I kept my face sad in public because sadness made people trust you, and it made you look innocent.
Behind closed doors, I was angry enough to choke.
I didn’t want Toni to have her happy ending, or her to have a perfect little family with the nigga who ruined mine.
I wanted that picture she kept posting to crack right down the middle.
I wanted her to feel the kind of fear that made you stop posting online and start praying in private.
And the more I drank, the more that truth settled inside me.
People could call me bitter. They could call me jealous or whatever they wanted, but at the end of the day, my brothers were still dead while Toni was still smiling… and to me, that was a problem.