Long Way Down

by Jason Reynolds

but if the blood inside you is on the inside of someone else, you never want to see it on the outside of them.

Even he knew better than to know anything.

IN CASE YOU AIN’T KNOW, gunshots make everybody deaf and blind especially when they make somebody dead.

crying is against The Rules.

ANOTHER THING ABOUT THE RULES They weren’t meant to be broken. They were meant for the broken to follow.

I know you’re young, gotta get it out, but just remember, when you’re walking in the nighttime, make sure the nighttime ain’t walking into you.

People always love people more when they’re dead.

and now I guess I should love him more, like he’s my favorite, which is hard to do because he was my only brother, and already my favorite.

laughter, when it’s loud and heavy and aimed at you, I think can feel just as bad as a bullet’s bang.

How do you tell water ain’t nothing funny about drowning?

UNCLE MARK PULLED ME IN for a hug, but how you hug what’s haunting you?

AND YOU KNOW it’s weird to know a person you don’t know and at the same time not know a person you know, you know?

How do you small-talk your father when “dad” is a language so foreign that whenever you try to say it, it feels like you got a third lip and a second tongue?

THAT SOMETHING that my pop said had gotten into him must be what my mom meant by the nighttime.

AND EVEN THOUGH his face was wet with tears he wasn’t supposed to cry when he was alive, I couldn’t see him as anything less than my brother, my favorite, my only.