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I know what you’re thinking. How can a whole person, a kid, disappear and no one say a word? Like, if the sun just up and left one day, you’d think someone would sound an alarm, right? But Ma used to say, not everyone circles the same sun. I never knew what she meant by that until Monday went missing.
If Monday were a color, she’d be red. Crisp, striking, vivid, you couldn’t miss her—a bull’s-eye in the room, a crackling flame. I saw so much red that it blinded me to any flags.
Rumors are born with legs that can run a mile in less than a minute. Rumors eat up dreams without condiments. Rumors do not have expiration dates. Rumors can be deadly. Rumors can get you killed.
Can I tell you a secret? I knew she was dead. I just hoped she’d be in the trunk of a car, chopped up, and buried somewhere. Not in a freezer, hiding in plain sight. That aggravated the pain felt by anyone who ever laid eyes on her. Once red, she became a starless sky, an endless midnight, a hole in the universe swallowing up the world, leaving everyone blind. Onyx, ebony, jet black. A part of me was glad Monday wasn’t named Friday. It would’ve been too tragic.
Don’t you get it? You’re the one that knew something was wrong all along. You saw what folks didn’t see, which means you’re smarter than everybody else—including all those folk working for the city who got fired. Just ’cause you got a little trouble reading don’t mean you ain’t smarter than everybody else.” “Oh,” I muttered, glancing out the window at the library, wishing to hold a piece of it with both hands to keep me grounded. “Man, you should’ve seen your face,” Michael said with a small laugh. “After you put everything together, you were about to roll in that house guns blazing. I don’t
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“Well, I think it boils down to one question: who’s really responsible for your well-being—your family, the government, or your community?”
