Once they finish, Mr. Julian clears his throat. “So, Justyce, we invited you here tonight for a few reasons,” he begins.

Justyce picks up his glass and gulps down the rest of his tea.

“The first, of course, is to memorialize the indictment,” Mr. Julian goes on. “We won’t dwell on it, but to us—and surely to you as well—it is something to commemorate.”

Dr. Rivers nods. “It’s not a conviction, of course. But it’s a start. Just a relief to know what happened is being treated as a crime.”

Jus stares at the gilt edge around his plate. “Yeah,” he says. “That is a relief.”

“Moving on,” Dr. Rivers says. “The second reason: I’m not sure if you remember Emmanuel’s cousin—Quan Banks?”

Justyce’s head jerks up.

“He says you went to elementary school together. Is that correct?”

“It is,” Jus says. “But I had no idea he and Manny were cousins until…” He pauses. “Until Quan got arrested.”

She nods. “Well, if you’re willing, Quan would like to see you. You’ve been added to his visitation list.”

“Oh. Okay…”

“Emmanuel’s death hit him pretty hard. You don’t have to visit, of course”—she and Mr. Julian do that married thing where they communicate with a glance—“but he says you’re the only person he wants to talk to.”

“I see.” Though he really doesn’t.

“If you’re interested, I’ll give you the information before you leave.”

Jus doesn’t know what to say. Quan wants to see him? “Okay. Sounds good.” Another lie.

For a minute, no one speaks. Jus can feel Mr. Julian’s gaze, but there’s no way he can look at him. He’s what Manny would’ve looked like if he’d gotten the chance to get older.

“There’s one more thing.” Dr. Rivers’s voice wavers. “Julian?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Mr. Julian gets up from the table and walks over to the china cabinet. Opens it and pulls out a black box. He sets it on the table in front of Justyce. “We intended to give this to Emmanuel for his eighteenth birthday,” he says. “I have no doubt he’d want you to have it under these circumstances, so we’d be honored if you’d receive it in his stead.”

Jus stares at the box, afraid to move, let alone touch it.

Dr. Rivers clears her throat, and he lifts his head. She smiles, though there are tears in her eyes. “Go on.”

Jus takes the box off the table and lifts the hinged top. By some miracle, he manages not to drop the contents on the floor and run away screaming.

It’s a watch. A Heuer with a brown face and gold numbers, on a black leather band. Jus doesn’t know much about watches, but he’s about eighty-seven percent sure this one is vintage and worth more money than Mama’s ever had in her bank account at once. He carefully removes it and flips it over. The inside of the band is stamped with the letters EJR.

“My grandfather bought that watch in the 1940s,” Mr. Julian says. “His name, like Manny’s, was Emmanuel Julian Rivers. It’s been passed to the eldest male for two generations now. We want you to have it.”

Jus is dumbfounded. “I, uhh…I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Dr. Rivers says. “Just knowing it’s in your possession means a lot to us.”

Jus looks back and forth between Dr. and Mr. Rivers, who are both smiling but obviously waiting for some kind of response from him.

His eyes drop to the watch. Which puts a big-ass lump in his throat. There’s no talking past it, so he does the only other thing that makes sense.

He stretches out his wrist and puts it on.

The first thing Jus notices when he pulls into the visitor lot of the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center is how much the building reminds him of a high school. It makes his stomach twist a little. Holding kids deemed menaces to society in a place that would be completely normal if not for the twelve-foot barbed-wire-topped fences seems like someone’s bad idea of a joke. Like, Oh, look at this nice-ass school…HA! GOTCHA! LOCKDOWN, FOOL!

After Justyce puts the car in park, he takes a minute to look around. Let it sink in that he’s really here. That he’s about to go inside a “juvie” and sit down with the guy who killed Castillo, the cop who profiled Jus and started him on this failure of a “social experiment” trying to be like Martin.

He almost can’t believe it.

Once Jus started at Bras Prep, Quan and those other guys became nothing more than reminders of the life Jus wanted to escape. Quan never made fun of Jus the way the rest of them did, but still: hearing that Quan wanted to see him was a little suspect.

But then he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Suspicion finally gave way to curiosity, and here he is.

The minute he steps inside the facility, the guard by the door gives him a once-over before pointing toward an area marked VISITORS. Jus is smacked with a sweat-inducing wave of discomfort. He leaves his ID and keys with the lady at check-in, and a second guard lifts his chin as Jus approaches the metal detector. “Damn, boy,” he says, taking in Justyce’s button-down, pressed khakis, and loafers. “You cleaner than some of the lawyers that come up in here.”

“Uhh…Thanks.”

“Who you here to see?”

“Quan Banks.”

The guard nods. “Go on through,” he says. “Show those boys what they could be like if they got they shit together, ya hear me? She’ll walk you down.” He gestures to the check-in lady now waiting for Justyce to step into the long hallway.

Jus follows her past a bunch of white-walled rooms—classrooms, they look like—until they reach a large steel door with a tall rectangular window that Jus suspects is bulletproof. The room has maybe six or seven young guys in orange jumpsuits inside with their visitors. As the lady punches a code into the keypad on the door, Jus spots Quan waiting for him.

The door opens. Voices spill out into the hallway. Quan lifts his head. He and Jus meet eyes. A smile spreads into Quan’s cheeks, and as it overtakes his entire face, Jus remembers the last time he saw it: the summer before fifth grade when Quan beat Jus at Monopoly for the first time. Seeing Quan smile like that makes Jus even more nervous about being here.

“Brainiac!” Quan says, standing to greet Jus. “So glad you made it, homie!”

“Yeah.” Jus peeks over his shoulder at the now-shut exit door. “It’s been a while.”

“Have a seat, my nigga. Have a seat.”

Quan sits back down, and Jus follows suit. Seeing the other kids in the jumpsuits talking to their visitors makes Jus anxious to leave. Especially since the majority of the guys in the room look like him.

It’s depressing.

“So how you been, Justyce?” Quan asks.

Jus scratches his head. “Truthfully? I’ve seen better days, man.”

“Real fucked up about Manny.”

“Yeah. It is fucked up.” Saying the words is like a weight lifting. “One minute, we’re ridin’ along, and the next…” Jus sighs and shakes his head.