Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,58

bag. Unzipping it, she says, “Lamar … I’m gonna need you to be my cameraman for the day.” Turning around, Michelle presents him with a full-size TV camera.

“Oh my God. Can you even hold that thing up?” I ask.

“Pssh.” He dismisses me as he accepts the equipment with straining, spindly arms.

“I’ll start the broadcast,” she says, positioning the camera on his shoulder. “All you have to do is hold it, like this.”

“So, is Flip just not gonna turn his camera on or somethin’?” Lamar asks, shifting his weight to support the load.

“That’s right. He’ll use it to record; it just won’t be live. Yours will be.”

Turning toward me, Michelle contorts her crimson lips into something I assume is supposed to look reassuring, but her wild eyes are just as manic as the cheering, shouting, fist-pumping crowd swelling behind her. She wants this just as bad as they do. Everyone here has lost someone or something because of Operation April 23, including Michelle. That’s why the dream spoke to them, motivated them to pick up their weapons and fight their way down here. The question is, are they here to start a revolution?

Or do they just want their pound of flesh?

“Let’s go!” Michelle grins.

She leads the way, squeezing in between Bonys and housewives and pimps and homeless teenagers. “Excuse me!” she yells. “Michelle Ling! Channel 11 Action News!”

But nobody can hear her, and we’re starting to get separated.

Somebody grabs my wrist just as she and Lamar disappear through a group of old rednecks carrying hunting rifles. I try to yank my arm away, but the grip is surprisingly strong for a hand so small. I follow the skeletal arm it’s attached to up to the face of a woman who’s probably in her early forties but looks about fifteen years older. Everything about her is thin—her body, her skin, the limp blonde hair hanging around her sad, wrinkled face.

“Ms. McCartney?” she asks, a pair of familiar green eyes lighting up in recognition. “Oh my God, it is you!” She wraps her other hand around my forearm. “You saw my boy yesterday!”

Turning her head, she yells to a rough-looking crew of tattooed men and women behind her, “Y’all! It’s the reporter who interviewed my Wesson!”

Her what?

“Ms. McCartney, I’m Wesson Parker’s mama, Rhonda. I saw him on the TV yesterday, and I …”

Her face crumples in on itself, and tears spill down her cheeks as my mind struggles to process the words she just said.

Wes’s mama.

I never really thought of her as a real person before. More like a ghost. A part of Wes’s past that he didn’t like to talk about. All I know is that she was a drug addict who neglected her children to the point that Wes’s baby sister died of starvation, and she’s been in prison ever since.

But here she is, in the flesh. Wes got her eyes, her perfect nose. She must have been so beautiful once.

“You can’t let them kill my baby!” Her voice goes shrill as she clings to me for strength. “Please, Ms. McCartney! Please! You gotta help him! That’s my boy! My baby boy!”

Tears fill my own eyes as I watch the grandmother of my child beg for the life of her own son. Not only because I share her pain, but also because there’s someone else on this planet who loves him. He deserves all the love in the world.

“I’m trying to,” I say, not loud enough for anyone to hear over the crowd noise.

“I’m going to!” I shout, shifting my gaze from her to her terrifying group of friends.

They look like they all just got out of prison, which … I realize … they did.

“I’m going to rally everybody to help me, but I need to get to the middle of the crowd first.”

Rhonda’s eyes—Wes’s eyes—fill with hope. “Really?” She jerks my arm. “Really? Did y’all hear that?” she shouts over her shoulder. “Let’s get her to the clearing!”

Two big, burly men with facial tattoos and necks wider than my thighs step forward and, without so much as a hello, lift me onto their shoulders.

“Ahh!” I cling to their shaved heads as they push their way through the crowd like human bulldozers, the rest of the released prisoners pushing through behind them.

“Hey!”

“Watch out!”

“Ow!”

“Fuck you!”

Fistfights and shouting matches break out in the wake of my ex-con caravan as the clearing in the center of the crowd gets closer and closer.

The tops of Michelle’s and Lamar’s heads come into view, and I exhale.