had in his letters seemed so open and reflective, now acted as if he had something to prove. When I asked Aries about whether his time in jail had been difficult, he seemed dismissive, telling me that because he’d been associated with a gang, he felt protected. Ashara rolled her eyes. He seemed self-conscious, and at one point said, “The good that came out of it, me and her had a friendship.” I’m not sure Ashara heard that. I think she had pretty much checked out by then. From her purse she pulled out a small plastic bag containing two honey buns and dropped them in front of Aries. “From my mom,” she said, and then she stood and walked outside.
Aries and I continued to talk for another half an hour, mostly about the details of the shooting, most of which I already knew. I could tell it was exhausting for him. “It is what it is,” he said in resignation, knowing there was no way to rewrite that moment. I knew from Ashara that beneath the bluster he had trouble making sense of what had happened, that he thinks about it every night when things are quiet, when there’s nothing to distract him, that he wonders how much he’s to blame, and wonders about Joseph Brewer, who like him had a young daughter.
We got up to leave, and when we walked outside, I couldn’t find Ashara. Aries nodded toward her car. She was sitting behind the wheel, and he went by her window to say goodbye. She stared straight ahead. She was fuming. Aries stood there making faces, trying to get her attention. Finally she rolled down her window a few inches, just enough so Aries could hear her. “See you,” she said. She rolled the window back up, and we drove away. I realized she’d been crying.
I asked if she was okay. She shook her head. She wouldn’t talk. We turned the corner, headed south on a side street, and in front of us a woman had stopped in her car to back into a parking space. Ashara left her little room to maneuver, and so we sat there in a standoff, the woman in front of us honking, yelling out her window, “Move, bitch!” while Ashara refused to budge, despite my suggestion she back up a few feet. “She can get in,” she muttered, her lips pursed, her ire now with a clear target. Soon we had a line of cars behind us, honking as well. Five minutes passed. More epithets were hurled. Finally the woman ahead of us carefully maneuvered into the parking space, and as we passed I could hear, “Fuck’n bitch” hurled at us. Ashara was crying. We rode in silence to her mom’s apartment, where my car was parked, and when we got there, I asked if it was something I had said. No, she told me. It was Aries. It was being back in Chicago. It was remembering that she didn’t fit in anywhere. She told me that when Aries was in jail, when they exchanged letters, she had felt like herself for the first time. She felt she understood Aries and TJ and Kyle. Even her father. It was, she said, as if Aries had pulled off his mask. And hers fell away as well. She told me that when she’d read those letters in the privacy of her bedroom, it was as if “Aries brought me back to my roots. In a sense, I was wearing a mask, too. Aries was saying, ‘You could be Ashara again. You can be just you.’ This is me. I’m North Philly. I’m South Side. I didn’t feel afraid anymore.”
She was gripping the wheel so tight her knuckles had whitened. She looked straight ahead, into the distance. The Aries she had just seen wasn’t the Aries she saw in those letters. Vulnerable. Playful. Thoughtful. Reflective. “I didn’t think it would be so hard,” she said between tears. “It’s crazy, because I love Aries, but I love what’s beneath all the extraness. He really is a cool guy. If I could get him outside of him trying to front, then we’re good. I think he’s still trying to prove himself to people.” She paused, shook her head. “I’m on his side.”
Chapter 11
Day of Atonement
JULY 15…JULY 16…JULY 17…
Eddie Bocanegra, who’s thirty-seven, scans the flowers in the floor-to-ceiling cooler: the red, orange, and white roses, the red and yellow tulips, the white lilies. He tells