Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,72

moan. The moan of a mother, a father, a daughter, or son losing someone they love. It’s the sound Jade makes when she runs to my window, her eyes scanning the front yard for both of her brothers. We find them there together. Chaz’s lifeless head rests in Greg’s lap on the patch of grass. Greg’s face crumples, the brows bent with pain, his mouth stretched wide on a wail. He’s covered in the blood spurting life from his brother’s chest.

Jade scurries through the window, rushing across the yard and hurling herself into the grief, pummeling Greg’s shoulders, slapping his head, screaming obscenities. Ma jerks her off, pulls her back and into her arms, eyes full of pain locked on the blood-covered brothers. My Aunt Celia runs up the street and into the small crowd gathering. A cop restrains her, but you can’t hold back a mother’s anguish. We all watch Aunt Celia’s face collapse, her eyebrows buckling over eyes streaming devastation. Her mouth, a gaping hole of torment. She strains, arms outstretched for her dying son, hands clawed to scratch the other. Sobs rack her body, and she is a world of pain.

“You killed my boy!” Aunt Celia’s voice, a dirge, booms over the eerily still street. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you, Greg!”

His mother’s mournful litany bounces off Greg’s head and shoulders as he cradles his brother, rocks him, imprisoned by his own guilt and pain.

I can’t move. My shoes stick to the thin, cheap carpet in my bedroom. The smell of death invades my nose like an enemy, and my heart trills in my chest, hammering a rapid beat. My breath wheezes from my throat, and my head spins. I grasp for consciousness, searching for the words that calmed me moments ago. Moments before a bullet split our world right down the middle.

I mumble the final lines of “Harlem,” even though I’m the only one listening, and I reach the same conclusion Hughes does.

So here in these streets, in my neighborhood, what happens to a dream deferred?

It explodes.

Chapter 5

GRIP

IT’S AS QUIET as a morgue when the song ends. I have no idea what the Prodigy team sitting around the table thinks. Verse one of “Bruise” is written from the perspective of a young black man, verse two from that of a cop. I’m the only black man in the room. As much as I love Rhyson, as close as we are, I’m not sure he can understand the indignity of being stopped for no reason by cops on the regular. Being forced to lie on the ground and get searched without explanation. Targeted. Profiled. Made to feel second-class. It isn’t his experience, but all my life in my neighborhood, it was mine. I infused every line of that verse with the pain and frustration and resentment brim- ming over in my community. I hope I told Greg’s story, too, my cousin who became a good cop. Who had to shoot his own brother and probably saved lives that day. I admire him as much as I admire anyone. Instead of running from the police force, he ran toward it and decided to do his part to make things better, though sometimes the system as it exists feels beyond repair.

“As much as I think it’s a great social commentary,” Max finally speaks first. “Are we sure this is what we want to bring up given how divided our nation is right now? I mean, will you be alienating half your listeners? I’m not sure it’s the right song for the Target Exclusive.”

I shrug like it doesn’t bother me, but it does. Should I push? The song is special to me. I didn’t even realize how much until now when it sounds like it might not make the cut.

“I agree with you, Max,” Bristol says, her tone all business and brusque. “It isn’t right for the Target Exclusive.”

“I’m glad we can agree on something this morning,” he says with a chuckle.

“It belongs on the wide version of Grip.” Bristol has that defiant look she gets when she digs her heels in. “If it’s on the Exclusive, fewer people will hear it, and everyone needs to hear that song.”

She meets my eyes for a second before blinking away all softness.

“I agree,” Rhyson says quietly.

My best friend and I stare at each other for moments elongated with the things we haven’t talked as much about. We have so much in common—our passion for music, the video games we