Yours,
Nick
Dear Jay,
Day three and these cops have gotten out of control. I had a conversation with a guard today and he kept calling me “boy” and I don’t like that.
It makes me want to cling to you even harder because if I’m being honest this is all getting scary! If you’d like to come back as a ghost, I’d be willing to accept that.
It hurts to think the soul stops existing when the body dies, so I will not accept that.
We should have kept it at friendship. I wouldn’t feel this pain so hard if we did! But I also think that would’ve been less fun. I’ve never wanted to be so close to someone that I stopped existinganymore, at least half of the way. I guess that means I love you.
You’re still seeing my every word and reading this over my shoulder and stretched out on the bed telling me to come nearer. You are all of this matter around me, and I see you all the time.
Death is no ending! I can still hear your thoughts. You’re saying you love me.
I love you too, in a way that death cannot stop.
Yours,
Nick
I only just finished signing my name when the guard arrived to take me into a room for questioning. I sat at the other side of a silver table, under an intense spotlight.
Cannon walked into the room, in his new uniform, and sat across the table. “I was sorry to hear about Jay.”
I stared at him. “Okay.”
It was as if Jay’s death was a stunt—a joke.
I couldn’t accept he was gone. He could come through the doors at any moment, cracking jokes with the cops. I would be angry at that, and he’d grasp at justification for his light-skinned behavior, but it would all sound very privileged.
“The charges that Buchanan intends to press are for robbery and attempted murder,” Cannon said. “But there’s a way you can get out of it. And that’s by telling us the name of your boss. Who put you up to this, Nick?”
“Nobody.”
Cannon raised an eyebrow. “Do you not care that you may be in prison forever?”
“Why would I? I’ll have every meal I need to sustain me. I’ll have a gym too. It will be nicer than West Egg.”
Cannon seemed to shiver at the words. Then he started fidgeting. The room picked up every noise and made it echo tenfold—so I could hear the tapping of his fingers on his pants.
Cannon had to be some kind of plant. A spy sent by that new government bureau to shut down movements for Colored people. Only problem was he was Colored himself. Was this the point of the white man’s violence? To make us just like them? This would never do.
“Wasn’t starting the fire enough for you?” I asked.
Cannon took a deep breath and looked at me, poker-faced, but said nothing.
I leaned in closer, just in case they were listening. “Why are you destroying UNIA rallies? Burning down our housing?”
“The UNIA’s ideas are nonsensical,” Cannon said, rolling his eyes. “And dangerous. It’s much more sensible to just get a job and fix it from the inside than boycotting the entire system.”
“People who try to change the system from the inside end up turning into agents of the system themselves.”
“We’re fourth generation removed from Africa—you really think they’d want you frolicking around their countries dressed up like a lady? You’re an American.”
“I know I’m an American. I can make no claim to anything else.”
