SPILLED.

* * *

   —

   Four days later—a Tuesday—Quan got called to the front office at school.

   His heart

              beat

   in his

   throat

        ears

    skull

       the whole way out the door

              down the stairs

     and up the hall

   from English class.

   He racked his brain trying to figure out what he’d done and how bad it would be.

   He’d missed curfew a few times…had he been reported? Mama was always threatening to call his probation officer…had she done it? Had someone, somehow found out about the vape cartridge he’d forgotten was in his pocket and accidentally brought on campus? (Not that he even used the thing…random piss tests were no joke.)

   How much trouble was this gonna get him in with Martel?

   By the time he got to the office he was mentally preparing for what he was going to say to Tel—if he even got the opportunity to talk to him before they carted his ass back to detention for violating his probation.

   So lost in these preparations was Quan, when he walked in and saw his mama, he literally stumbled backward.

   Especially since she was

              crying.

   The principal—a black dude in his early thirties that Quan wasn’t too familiar with, so intent was he on staying out of trouble—offered a box of tissues to Mama. She snatched a few and blew her nose.

   Quan couldn’t come up with a single thing to say, so the densest silence he’d ever felt coated the air, making it hard to breathe.

       It dragged.

        Thickened.

   The principal (uncomfortably) cleared his throat.

   Quan gulped.

   “Mama?”

   Then she met his eyes.

   Her chin got to quivering and she

   stood

              and threw herself onto Quan.

   It took him a second to catch on and wrap his arms around her—it’d been so long since she’d hugged him.

   As he did, all the fight went out of her. An exhale of respite soaked in a deluge of trembling grief.

   That’s when Quan knew.

   “Dwight…”

   He knew. Man, did he know. In that instant, Quan knew more than he’d ever be able to disclose.

   So he shut his eyes. Waited for the bomb she was dropping to hit the floor and blow up every bit of ground he currently stood on.

   He could swear he felt the BOOM when it did.

“Dwight’s dead.”

       The rocket ship is gone.

   Which Quan knew in theory: he heard somebody OD’d inside it and was discovered by a kid young enough to believe the guy was sleeping.

   But seeing the empty space where it used to be—especially right now when he needs a place of refuge more than anything else in the world—makes him feel like a similar hole has opened up inside him.

   Well…another one. The Dad-hole was already there. So was the youthful innocence one. (“There’s a hole inside me where my childhood should’ve been,” he told Martel once.)

   This hole feels like an ending. A door: closed, triple dead-bolted and then welded shut. No going back through it. No returning to the other side. The rope to Quan’s final sliver of hope for a brighter future, for the fulfillment of some inner potential he didn’t realize he still believed in—for a way UP and out…

   Gone.

   Just like his way into imaginary outer space.

   It’s not even the fact that duck-ass, Olaf-ass Dwight is gone. About that, Quan couldn’t be more relieved. Which he does feel a little weird about: being…happy. Thankful even. That a person is dead.

       (Quan’s never been more thankful in his life for that.)

   He drops down onto a graffiti-covered bench and looks around. Remembering. When life was—seemed—simpler. When he used to come here to actually play. When the rubber ground didn’t have pockmarks and the spiral slide didn’t have cusswords carved into the side. He recalls the night he met Justyce McAllister—who now goes to some white school on the rich side of town.

   When was the last time Justyce came home? Does dude even consider Wynwood Heights home anymore?

   Did he ever? It’s not like he really fit in…What would Justyce say if he saw that the rocket was gone?

   Quan looks at the broken swing. Another way to fly, rendered useless.

   But Justyce got out. Justyce took off. Has Justyce become like Quan’s salmon-on-the-river-eating cousin? (Who Quan hasn’t seen or spoken to since. #family)

   Quan’s gaze drops. Lands on a word carved into one of the bench’s wooden slats in little-kid lettering:

   What are kids like Quan supposed to do?

   He swipes at his dampening eyes and shifts them back to the black hole where his galactic getaway vehicle used to be.

   Dwight is dead.

   And Quan is here. Stuck. Grounded.

       Forever.

   No getting out.

   No flying away.

   No lifting off.

   Because Dwight’s death wasn’t an accident.

   It was arranged.

   Mama doesn’t know it, of course. But Quan does.

   Before Quan came looking for his rocket, he’d left his grieving mother and siblings—half-siblings…who no longer have a dad—and he’d gone to Martel’s.

   As soon as Quan was seated, Martel said, “Your mama okay?”

   “Nah, man. Not really” was Quan’s response.

   Martel nodded. “She will be.”

   Silence.

   And then: “I wish you woulda told me, Vernell.”

   “Huh?”

   “You heard me,” Martel said. “You shoulda told me how bad it was. How am I supposed to help you if you don’t tell me things?”