Chapter 4
(Back Then)
I knew something was wrong the second the crowd got quiet for the wrong reason.
One minute, I was in the third row with my first cousins Braeden and Truth, joking about how hard the damn stone seats were in the amphitheater. Kids were running around in reindeer pajamas, old folks had blankets over their laps, and Mr. Carter had brought gumbo that smelled too damn good.
The next minute, the speakers crackled, and Shayla’s voice came through loud and clear.
“Baby girl, the only reason he even walked up to you that day in the cafeteria was because Deon asked him to…”
My stomach dropped.
“What the—” Truth started.
“No,” I muttered, already halfway up.
Braeden grabbed my sleeve. “Jay, chill. Mic probably not even—”
Shayla kept talking. Donique chimed in. Every word felt like a brick hitting me in the stomach.
“…you just an assignment he took real serious…”
“Shit,” I hissed.
I was gon’ kill them bitches, I swear. I didn’t feel my legs moving.
I didn’t feel the cold. I barely heard Mr. Floyd yelling for someone to turn the mic off.
All I knew was that I had to get backstage before Kyleigh ran, because she was gon’ run.
That was what she did when she got overwhelmed, usually by retreating inside herself.
I’d watched her pull everything in tight where no one could reach it.
I sprinted down the aisle, barely hearing the whispers starting up around me.
“Ain’t that…?”
“They talking about—”
“Mrs. Amanda’s granddaughter—”
I didn’t stop to look at anybody. I cut around the side of the stage, ignoring some teacher yelling about access, and burst through the curtains just in time to see her tear that headset off and run.
“Kyleigh!”
She din’t turn. By the time I caught up to her, my chest was burning.
I didn’t know if it was from the run or the look on her face when she finally stopped.
I felt like somebody had taken my biggest mistake, put it on a jumbo screen, and hit replay.
Every time I swallowed the truth instead of saying it, every time I told myself I would come clean later, flashed through my head.
I should have told her. I should have told her the week after it happened.
I should have told her the first time she came to my mama’s house and sat on the couch like she was scared to touch anything.
I should have told her on Thanksgiving, when she was lying on my chest listening to my heartbeat like she was trying to memorize it.
And now, I just stood there in the cold, watching her walk away with my heart in her hands.
She disappeared into the trees, red sweater bright against the dark.
I took a step after her, but something made me stop.
The sound of her voice telling me to leave her alone hit me harder than any punch I had ever taken.
I could go after her. I could show up at Mrs. Amanda’s door and beg. I could stand in her yard all night like some weak ass nigga in some movie. But she had asked me for one thing: to let her go.
“Jay,” Truth said behind me, breathing hard from catching up. “You straight?”
I laughed, but it sounded bitter. “Do I look straight?”
He grabbed my shoulder. “Honestly? Nah.”
Braeden jogged up, face tight. “Shayla loud ass gon’ get what is coming to her. You want me to talk to Deon? Because I will. That shit was foul,” he said.
“I’ll handle Deon,” I said, voice flat. “Shayla too. But that’s not what this is about right now.”
“What is it about?” Truth asked.
I stared at the spot where Kyleigh had disappeared. My whole future felt like it used to exist just past those trees. Now it was gone in ten minutes because of some irrelevant bitches, a gossiping ass nigga… and my own bad judgment.
“I fucked up. I thought I could control how this played out by picking when I told her. Should’ve been honest.”
“Granny been telling us that forever. ‘A lie hurts more than the truth,’” Truth mumbled.
I scowled at him. I didn’t wanna hear that shit.
“Bruh, you love that girl. Anybody with eyes can see that. She gon’ calm down,” Braeden said.
“She not like everybody else. She don’t ‘calm down’ and slide back like nothing happened. You know how hard it was for her to even start talking to me? She don’t trust nobody. I just proved she was right.” I shook my head, stuck on how badly I had fucked up.
Truth shoved his hands in his coat pockets. “So, what, you just gon ‘take this L?”
“For tonight,” I said. “She asked me to leave her alone. I’m gon’ respect that. But I’m not done. I’m gon’ give her a little space. Then I’m gon’ show her I’m serious.”
“Better come with your best. I heard that girl stubborn as hell,” Truth warned.
I didn’t answer. I just watched my breath cloud the air and tried not to think about her somewhere all alone crying.
A week later, I was on Mrs. Amanda’s porch with my heart in my hands. Christmas lights were up around her big house, multicolored bulbs glowing in the early evening. The big pine in her yard was wrapped in white lights, too, all the way up to the top. Mrs. Amanda always showed out for Christmas.
I paced anxiously, thinking about the small box in my pocket.
It was nothing huge, just a silver charm bracelet I had saved up for, the little book charm dangling from the chain because she loved to read, the tiny quill representing her love of writing.
I had pictured putting it on her wrist while she pretended not to cry.
Instead, Mrs. Amanda stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, looking at me like I was both her favorite person and the biggest headache she had.
“Baby, what you doing out here in this cold?” she asked. “Come in this house. Your lips getting chapped.”
“I’m good,” I lied. “Is she here?”
Her eyes softened with something that looked like pity. My heart dropped.
“She went back to Houston that Monday. She told her parents all about it Sunday night while you was probably still out there at that amphitheater, trying to be hard. She wanted to go home, and they wanted her there.”
I stared past Mrs. Amanda’s shoulder into the foyer behind her, like Kyleigh was just going to appear out of thin air in one of her big T-shirts and fuzzy socks.
“So, she just… left?” I asked.
“Well, she cried first.” I could hear the slight judgment in her tone.
“You know my baby. She tried to hold it in, but it was a hurt too big. I tried to talk her into staying, but I’m not gon’ force her to sit around town feeling like people laughing at her.
She deserves better than that. Her heart was broken, and that’s not how you heal.
Her parents thought it might be best, too. ”
“Yes, ma’am. I tried to call. Everything bouncing. Messages not going through. I thought maybe her phone was off or…”
“Or she blocked you. She told me she needed a break from all of it. From you. From this town. From being Mrs. Amanda’s little rich girl out of place. I told her I understood.”
“You mad at me? For how it started?” I asked, voice ashamed.
She sighed and leaned against the doorframe.
“Baby, I been your Granny Amanda since you was knee high. I know Deon. I know Shayla. I know how this town gossip. I’m disappointed in how y’all handled it, sure.
Hurting behind seeing my grandbaby cry like that.
But mad at you? No. You a good boy who did a foolish thing.
Chyle, that’s every man I know at some point.
Shoulda been honest, but a bought lesson always hits harder than a taught one. ”
“I messed up, Mrs. Amanda.”
“It’s a life lesson. Yeah, it cost you, but sometimes that’s the only way we learn. You love my baby?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, no hesitation.
She nodded. “Okay. Then love her enough to let her be mad. Let her figure out who she is without you pulling on her sleeve. You keep pushing, you just gon’ remind her of the hurt.”
That got me, that my baby associated me with pain, with hurting.
“So, what, I’m just supposed to wait? Hope she come back?” I asked.
“Hope if you want,” she said. “But don’t put your life on hold. You hear me? Finish school. Go to college like you planned. Make something of yourself. If she comes back and y’all paths cross again, you let her see you standing tall, not stuck on that night behind the amphitheater.”
I didn’t want to leave, felt like leaving would be walking away from her, from us. But Mrs. Amanda was right. Standing here begging wouldn’t fix what I broke. I pulled the little box out of my pocket and opened it. Silver glinted under the porch light.
“Give this to her if you want. Or throw it in the bayou if she say she never wants to see nothing from me again. I’ll respect it.”
Mrs. Amanda took the box and squeezed my hand. “She don’t hate you,” she said. “Not really. It’s a new hurt, and I’m sure her parents not helping—don’t want that girl to grow up. She just hurt. Maybe one day that won’t be the first thing she feels when she hears your name.”
“That’s gon’ take what? Ten years?” I said, trying to joke and failing.
She smiled a little. “Hopefully less.”
That less turned into more. I finished senior year without her.
Everything, every classroom, every hallway, every desk, felt wrong.
At first, people talked, like they do. It was all whispers and side-eyes for a while.
Then it faded into other drama. I beat Deon’s ass…
twice. I didn’t put my hands on Shayla, but I made sure she understood there were some lines you didn’t cross if you wanted to keep living a pretty little life around here.
None of it changed the fact that the one person I wanted to talk to most in the world acted like I didn’t exist. I went off to college that fall like Mrs. Amanda told me to.
It should have been a fresh start. New campus, new faces, new everything.
But every time I saw a girl with straight hair and a red sweater, I thought about her.
I would drive home from LSU on weekends, sit in my parents’ kitchen, and hope she might come home.
That Christmas the year after she left, I parked my truck outside Mrs. Amanda’s house and waited.
I didn’t get out. Part of me knew if Kyleigh was inside and wanted to see me, she would have said something.
Another part of me knew she was probably in some mini-mansion in Houston, pretending Emancipation didn’t exist.
Snow flurries started falling—rare for north Louisiana.
They were just little white flecks that melted as soon as they hit the windshield.
I sat there until I was shaking with cold, then finally turned the key and drove away.
Back at my parents’ place, my mama was fussing with Zahara about her hair for the church Christmas program.
My daddy had the game on. Aunt Alayna stopped by with some food and paperwork, talking about town council business and how the Grindley land made so many of the holiday decorations possible.
“You know Mrs. Amanda letting us use them trees is a blessing,” she said, piling sweet potatoes on her plate. “Not everybody with money that generous.”
It hurt to even hear Mrs. Amanda’s name.
I realized I needed to put some distance between me and everything that reminded me of Kyleigh.
College wasn’t doing it. I sat in classrooms full of people and felt like I was wasting time.
At night, sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it came with nightmares of her walking away from me, over and over.
By spring, the recruiter’s card that had been sitting in my wallet since junior year was more and more appealing.
“You thinking about enlisting?” my dad asked when he found me sitting at the kitchen table, the card in front of me.
“I’m thinking about doing something different. I feel like I’m floating, Pops. I need… I don’t know. Structure. Purpose.”
He made a thoughtful sound. “You got purpose right here. You got a family and college paid for. You smart enough to do whatever you want. You don’t have to run off and let somebody yell at you for a living.”
I thought about Ms. Ola Kate, my great aunt, the way she told stories about my granddaddy’s service, the pride in her voice. I thought about being somewhere Kyleigh’s name wouldn’t be attached to everything
“I’m not running,” I lied. “I just… I don’t know, Pops. I need to feel like I’m moving forward. I’m tired of being stuck.”
He studied me for a long time. “You got your mind made up?” he asked.
I nodded.
“All right,” he said finally. “Then, we gon’ pray hard and support you. But understand something, son—no matter where you go, you taking yourself and everything about you, with you. You can’t outrun your mistakes or memories. You just learn how to live with them.”
He was right. I went through boot camp. Training.
Service. Selection for an elite, secret team—the government wouldn’t acknowledge our existence, much less our legitimacy.
More training at Quantico. A world of orders and secrets and missions that didn’t make the news.
I learned how to carry a weapon, how to move in silence, how to make my face blank even when my body was on fire.
I learned how to do the kind of work no one would claim in public.
What I never learned how to do was forget the girl who broke up with me behind an amphitheater at Christmas.