HELP me? Quan thought.

   “Nobody should have to live the way y’all were livin’, man. Especially not one of my guys.”

   At this, Quan dropped his chin. Hearing himself referenced in such a way caused quite the unexpected surge of emotion.

       Martel wasn’t done, though.

   “Here.”

   And he held out an envelope to Quan. Who peeked inside.

   It was full of money.

   “Give that to your moms. Should hold her over for a few months. Hopefully by then she’ll have healed up and found some work. Just tell her some community members heard about y’all’s loss and wanted to help out.”

   Quan didn’t say a word. Couldn’t.

   “Next time you got a problem, I need to hear about it from you, not Montrey. You hear me?”

   Quan nodded.

   “Ey, look at me.”

   Quan did. Though he wished he could look away.

   “The safety of our members and their families is one of the highest priorities of this organization. Any person or thing threatening that safety will be swiftly taken care of,” Martel said, steel in his eyes, his voice, the set of his shoulders. “You got me?”

   Quan nodded again without breaking eye contact. “Yes, sir.”

   “Now get on outta here. I’m sure your mama could use her baby boy at home tonight.”

   And Quan stood and walked to the door.

   Numb.

       Just as his hand wrapped around the knob, Martel spoke again from behind him: “Hey, Vernell…”

   Quan looked over his shoulder.

   Martel was staring at him, eagle-eyed. “You don’t have nothin’ else to say?”

   “Huh?”

   Martel just stared. And stared. And just as Quan started to feel like there were spiders crawling beneath his skin, he caught on. His gaze dropped, but he forced it back up.

   Gulped. Drug the words together and shoved them off his tongue: “Thank you.”

   Martel smiled. “That’s better. See you tomorrow at Morning Meeting?”

   An order cloaked as a question. Met with a single nod. “Yes, sir.”

   “Excellent. You be good, all right? All shall be well.” And Martel turned and disappeared back into the living room.

   It all feels like a joke now. Be good.

   He’s been good since he got out. He’s done all he’s supposed to. Stays out of trouble. No drugs or alcohol or skipping school or letting his grades slip.

   That other kind of good, though? As Quan looks around, he knows that his life has gone the way of this playground: once bright and bouncy and filled with ways to take flight (both real and imaginary), now beat down and broken. Hopeless.

       Now there’s nowhere to run to. No places to hide.

   Quan looks down at the misspelled cussword again.

   That’s how he feels.

   Because his rocket ship is gone.

   His escape is gone.

   Now there’s no way out.

   It was supposed to be a quick drop. In fact, Quan was determined to make it quick because he had something important to get back to: while cleaning out the front closet, Mama found a box full of crap that belonged to Dwight.

        Inside was a beat-up shoebox.

          Inside the shoebox was a stack of manila envelopes.

     Inside the manila envelopes…

   were letters.

   From Daddy.

   Like over a hundred of them.

   For a while, Daddy had written once a week. Then once every two weeks. Then down to once a month.

   The first letter was sent in April 2012: four months post-arrest, and just after he’d been sentenced and moved to the maximum-security facility in Reidsville, Georgia.

   Final one was postmarked September 27, 2016.

   Fo(u)r YEARS Daddy wrote to Quan. Consistently.

       And duck-ass, Count Olaf-ass Dwight hid his letters. (May his wack-ass, devil-ass soul toil eternally in turmoil. And snakes.)

   He’ll never admit it to anybody, but he cried as he read the first one.

   Anyway, the plan was to:

     Complete his very simple assignment, which involved—

        a. At the predetermined time, picking up the black leather, payment-filled pouch the Black Jihad’s biggest client left where he always left it: in the mailbox of a house Martel owned. (Turns out he also owned the one Trey slept in when not at his girl’s house. Martel owned quite a few houses in the neighborhood.)

    b. Counting the contents, and

    c. Delivering said pouch to Martel’s.

   Again: simple.

        Then once he was done, he planned to:

              Head straight home to continue reading his letters, taking notes so he could respond in a way that would let Daddy know he’d read every.

        a. single.

    b. one.

       Which felt a little bit corny, but whatever: the realization that Daddy had tried to stay in contact made Quan feel like…well, he couldn’t even put it into words.

   The pickup and cash-counting proceeded as planned. Which was a relief. Quan held his breath with every bill that passed through his fingertips, low-key expecting one to be missing—looking back, that was a common thing for him: presuming something would go wrong at the times he really needed everything to happen without incident.

   But it was all there.

   It was the delivery that went south.

   Martel was having a birthday party. About a month prior, he’d gotten pulled over in Alabama, and since crossing a state line is a probation violation, he’d been sentenced to twelve months of house arrest. So he brought the party to him.

   It’d been going on for maybe an hour and a half when Quan arrived. The music was loud (where it was coming from, he couldn’t tell), and there were people everywhere the eye could see: front lawn, porch, driveway. Quan had to do a good bit of bobbing and weaving to reach the front door.

   Everything was cool at first. Martel saw Quan come in and summoned him over to where he was kicked back in a new round bamboo-framed chair with a giant cushion that looked like it was wrapped in dashiki material. Quan even pulled the envelope from the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie as he moved through the room—it was quieter and there were fewer people inside the house, thank goodness—so he could just hand it over and bounce.