“Quan didn’t do it.”

   Jus has no idea what makes him say it out loud. In fact, now that it’s out of his mouth, he’s sure he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Especially not his upper-middle-class Jewish girlfriend and a hella rich, hella white former denier of systemic racism. What the hell is Jus doing?

       Too late now, though. They’re both staring at him.

   “Huh?” Jared says as SJ says, “What?”

   “He’s innocent.”

   “How do you know?” from SJ.

   “He told me. In his latest letter.” SJ and Jared both know about Quan’s letters, though he’s never really spoken of their contents. Until now, apparently.

   “And you believe him?” Jared asks.

   SJ turns fully around now. Jus can’t see her face, but whatever expression she’s wearing makes Jared literally put his hands up. “It’s a legitimate question!”

   “No it isn’t, you entitled son of a bi—”

   “I do believe him,” Justyce says. “Wouldn’t have brought it up if I didn’t.”

   “See?” SJ rotates back forward. “Idiot.”

   “My apologies, Justyce. I wasn’t thinking—”

   “What else is new?” SJ grumbles.

   They sit in a jittery silence for a minute before Jared says: “Forgive me if this next question is also rooted in privilege”—there’s another dollar for Justyce—“but if Quan didn’t do it, why is he in jail?”

   Justyce: “It’s complicated.”

   “Does he know who did do it?” Jared goes on.

   Jus nods. “He does.”

       “Then why doesn’t he just tell the cops?”

   “Sweet lord, you are so obtuse,” SJ says.

   “Dudes like Quan don’t snitch, man,” from Justyce. He remembers Quan’s first letter. How bothered he was by Jus dissociating himself from “those” black guys in Jus’s own letters to Martin. “Dudes like us, I should say,” Justyce corrects. “If I were in his position, I wouldn’t snitch either.”

   Jus expects Jared to fire off another oblivious white dude question—“But like, I mean, why not?” would be fitting.

   But Jared doesn’t.

   “So what do we do?” he says instead.

   “Huh?”

   “Like…to help him. All three of us are prelaw students at two of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world.”

   Neither Jus nor SJ responds. They do glance at each other in surprise, however.

   “I mean, we do care about dismantling injustice, right? Should a young black man—a BOY, even!—who did not commit the crime be doing the time?”

   Now Justyce smiles. He can’t help it. “Couldn’t’ve said it better myself, dawg,” he says, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to smirk at SJ.

   She huffs. “Fine. I swear to god, though, Jared, if this is an attempt to pad your resume, and you try to take credit—”

   “You have my word that won’t be the case,” Jared says.

       The silence that follows feels electrified. Charged with…hope.

   It makes Justyce’s fingertips tingle.

   “So we doing this?” he says, meeting eyes with Jared in the rearview before kicking another look at SJ.

   Jared’s giant head appears between the front seats. “Whattya say, Sarah-Jane? Huh? You in?” He pokes her shoulder, and she swats his hand away.

   “Could you be any more annoying?”

   “He could,” Jus says. “And so could I. You joining this mission or what?”

   “Of course I am,” she says.

   “Yesssss!” Jared sticks a fist forward, and Justyce reaches out to bump it.

   “Just do me a favor?” SJ continues to Justyce.

   “Anything for you, baby girl.”

   She puts a palm against Jared’s forehead and shoves him back into what Jus knows she would say is his proper place. “Keep your pet WASP away from me.”

   A single argumentative essay separates Quan from his high school diploma.

   As such, he’s sitting in the block study room across from Doc, brow furrowed. The only sound is his scratchy pencil, covering his lined white paper with the little graphite symbols that’ll seal his fate.

   “I love your assertion,” Doc says. “And I agree: changing the rhetoric used when talking to and about African American youth could change their trajectories. But I need you to expound.”

   Quan grunts his assent.

   In truth, he ain’t in the best of moods. It’s been three weeks and two days since he sent that letter to Justyce, confessing a thing that he’s literally told no one.

   Not that he hasn’t been tempted to. Especially as of late. Matter fact, just yesterday Tay was explaining what happens to the brain when membership in a group or organization is achieved through mental or physical hardship (“everlasting loyalty, often misplaced”), and Quan almost spilled the beans then. He’s been having nightmares again, this time about his own arrest. Not that said arrest was especially traumatic—cops showed up at Mama’s house during dinner a few nights after the incident, and Quan didn’t resist when they Mirandized and placed him under arrest—but the looks on Mama’s and Gabe’s faces (Dasia was at a friend’s house, thank god) will likely haunt him forever.

       Quan had known the police would come for him. From the moment he and Trey got to the house of Martel’s Trey sometimes slept in, and Quan realized he no longer had his gun, he’d been 100 percent sure of where things were headed.

   So he went home and read the rest of Daddy’s letters. He wrote Daddy a letter of his own.

   And then he

              waited

     for what

     he

     knew

     would eventually

     happen.

   Then came the dilemma. Because while he would never snitch, the fact remained that he was being detained for a crime he didn’t commit. He held his tongue for a while, but the more time he spent alone in that holding cell, the more his wheels spun. No, the ballistics of the bullets pulled from Castillo’s body wouldn’t match those of Quan’s firearm and they’d have to release him…