Daddy slipped a penny under my bridge hand. “Don’t let it roll.Steady hand, steady mind.”
“What if my mind too fast?” I asked. Mama always said my mind ran ahead of my mouth.
“Then your hand is gon to teach it,” he said.
Darren wandered off to the pinball machine. I stayed at the table. The green felt didn’t care that I was small. It didn’t care I was a girl. It cared if the aim told the truth.Plunk. The balls said yes or no and then waited for you to try again. I liked that a lot.
That night, under my covers, I played the sound of the backdoor over and over. I replayed Mama’s shoulders, Daddy’s tired eyes. I tried to map the pieces, the plans they’d named like stars we missed. I didn’t understand adult things yet — how love could crack, how comfort could offer shelter and hold you invisible at the same time — but I understood the shape of a thing when it broke.
So I made a rule, because kids make rules even when grown folks don’t notice.
I wasn’t gonna be the kind of love that let you stand in your own kitchen and disappear. I wasn’t gonna be homework checked off at bedtime.
I’d play other games.
Pool was fair. Pool told the truth. Miss, and you knew why. Line up right and breathe, and the table would give you another chance. Pool never lied.
Quentin
Donnie and Letitia Hale—my parents—were gone like somebody snatched the tablecloth out from under us and left me and Jada standing in the wreckage, watching everything break.
The crash didn’t end that night. It lived in me. Every siren that tore through the dark. Every flash of headlights too bright in the rain. Every silence after the phone stopped ringing and the house went still.
I was thirteen. Old enough to understand words like “impact,” “fatal,” “no survivors.” Too young to know what to do with them.
For months, I didn’t say much. Couldn’t. Words felt dangerous, like if I opened my mouth, the wrong one would slip out and make it true all over again. So I sat in classrooms with my head down, homework half-done, the boy who’d gone from gifted to ghost overnight.
Most teachers gave up on me. The kid who used to know every answer now staring at the board like the numbers had turned into fog. But two didn’t.
One was Ms. Lopez, English. She kept putting books in my hands, even when I didn’t crack them. Said stories save people, whether you finish the page or not.
The other was Mr. Buchanan. Science. Dark brown skin, serious eyes, generous laughter, balding head, thick black-rimmed glasses, and a voice that filled the room without ever needing to shout. He looked like a man who’d seen plenty, but still believed the world ran on more than luck.
One afternoon, after the final bell, I stayed behind without meaning to. Sat there while kids poured out, my desk empty except for a worksheet I hadn’t touched.
“You missed number five,” he said, strolling past my row, hands clasped behind his back.
I didn’t lift my head. Didn’t care.
“Funny thing about number five,” he went on. “It’s the kind of problem you’d never miss before.”
That made my jaw clench. Because he was right. I used to be that kid—the one who solved things fast, who finished early, who liked the way answers fell into place. Notanymore.
“You know why you missed it?” he asked.
I shrugged, my eyes on the desk.
“Because you don’t care,” he said. Matter-of-fact. No judgment. Just truth.
Something in me flinched. I wanted to deny it. Wanted to tell him he didn’t know me, didn’t know what had been ripped out of my chest. But I stayed quiet.
He pulled up the desk in front of me, turned it backward, sat like we were just two people on the same side of a table.
“I had a boy in here last year,” he said. “Smart as you. Sharper, maybe. He lost his sister. Couldn’t find his way back. Know what he told me once? He said life felt like chaos. That nothing meant anything anymore.”
My throat tightened. That was it exactly. Like the universe was some cruel dealer, throwing cards without rules. My parents one minute, gone the next.
“I told him what I’ll tell you,” Mr. Buchanan said, leaning in, eyes behind those thick frames steady on mine. “Some things are unpredictable. But not everything. Science exists because patterns exist. Laws. Principles. Equations. Not to erase the chaos, but to show us where order still lives.”
