Prologue
“Hi, Gram!” Dumping my unzipped backpack in the entryway, I kicked off my shoes, then reached for my music book, but Gram didn’t holler back.
That fast-breathing thing started.
Forgetting about the music book, I yelled again. “Gram, I’m home!”
No answer.
For one second, I stood there, listening.
The next second, I was running.
Sliding across the hardwood floors in my socks, tripping over the area rug, I ignored the empty hospital bed in the living room and went straight for the kitchen, but she wasn’t there. “Gram!”
“In here, boy.”
I whipped around.
In the dining room that we never used, Gram was sitting at the table with her back stiff, but that wasn’t the worst part.
Not even close.
Two guys with guns wearing no kinda uniform I ever saw stood on either side of Gram, and I knew in an instant—it was happening.
Pretending like I didn’t know I was the reason they were here, I stood tall like Mom taught me and looked from one scary guy to the other, right in their eyes. Then I looked at Gram like I wasn’t scared of nothing. “What’s going on?”
Both men were staring at me, but the bigger one spoke up first. “Son, we need to talk.”
I didn’t take my eyes off Gram. “Who are these guys, Gram?”
“U.S. Marshals,” the younger guy answered. “Why don’t you have a seat.” He nodded at the chair in front of me, the one that would put me opposite Gram and make me face all three of them like this was some kind of firing squad.
“I don’t need to sit.” I was fifteen and almost as tall as one of them. They couldn’t make me do anything in Gram’s house that I didn’t want to do. Unless they were here to arrest me, but I doubted that. “Say what you came for, then leave.”
Gram’s face turned even more stern. “You tell these men everything they want to know. You hear me, boy?”
Something thick stuck in my throat.
Gram had never used those words on me, and she didn’t speak mean—not unless she meant business, and she really looked like she meant it this time. But no one was going to make me say something I didn’t want to say. Not even men with guns.
Especially if this was about what I thought it was, because I’d made a promise.
It didn’t matter that Mom had made me swear. Truth was, she wouldn’t have had to. I’d have promised her anyway just for asking because Mom never asked anything of me, except to smile hard, forgive easy, and be bighearted.
So that last day, when she was lying in that shitty bed, so sick she couldn’t even sit up anymore, and she told me I had to swear to never tell anyone what she was about to tell me, I didn’t hesitate.
I swore.
Then, using her shaky voice that’d come on the week before, she said the reason I couldn’t tell a soul was because bad things would happen if I did.
But she said I deserved to know, so she was trusting me with the truth.
Except she said the truth always came at a price, and that’s why I had to swear to secrecy before she even told me what was so important.
It didn’t matter to me then what I was swearing to. She was dying, and I wasn’t going to say anything no matter what because she was my mom, and until we’d come to live with Gram two months ago, she was all the family I’d ever known.
So I promised her I’d never tell a soul.
Then my mom laid out the truth.
All of it.
I got sick in my gut. So sick, anger made my eyes leak, and I wanted to throw something, but I didn’t even know who to be mad at. The whole world, maybe.
But Mom got a tone in her voice, kinda like the one Gram had now, and she straight-up told me not to ever cry again over it.
Then she warned me that when they found out I knew the truth, this would happen.
She’d said men would come.
She’d said to expect them.
But I was to never, ever let on that I knew anything, no matter how many times they asked. But Mom didn’t use the word ask. She’d said interrogate. And if that happened, if I was asked about any of it, her instructions were clear.
So clear, I remembered them like it was yesterday.
“You don’t blink, you don’t look away, you don’t so much as breathe funny. You look them in the eye, and you lie.”
“Mom—”
“You deny everything. You hear me? Everything.” Using all her strength, Mom raised her head off the pillow and gave me a look I’d never seen before. “It’s time. You need to be a man now.”
My heart stopped, and I almost vomited. “No. NO.” I wrapped my arms around her too-thin body that felt like bones and skin, and those tears she told me not to ever let loose came anyway.
“You are NOT dying now, Mom.” I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t ever going to be ready. “You said you would wait until I graduated. You said—”
“Boy,” Gram scolded, coming up behind me. “You leave her be. She needs her rest now.”
“I’m not leaving her.” No way.
Mom slid something small into my hand, then whispered, “The number’s in there. If you ever have a real emergency, the kind we talked about, you make the decision. But don’t call until you’re eighteen.”
“Mom,” I cried.
“I love you,” she whispered, her hand falling away from mine.
“MOM!”
Gram grasped my shoulder. “It’s okay. She’s just going to sleep.” Her voice cracked. “Go get your mama some water.” She pulled me away, and Mom’s head fell back on the pillow at an awkward angle. “It’s okay, boy. GO.”
It wasn’t okay.
And I didn’t wait until I was eighteen.