How It Went Down Read Online Free PDF

push it off a hundred times. When Brick and his guys come around—around the few of us who aren’t already in, I mean—you have to act just right. You have to play it cool. They want to lean on you, make it sound real good to be up in something where a bunch of tough guys always have your back. They remind you how rough the neighborhood can get, and they promise to protect you. They’ll teach you to fight, so you don’t have to walk afraid—of the Stingers, of the cops, of the random crazies who go around making trouble. They promise you cash, and spin it so good you get stars in your eyes.
    Even when you know it’s dead-end wrong, it all sounds so right and so safe. You got to learn to blow them off without pissing them off, and Tariq had the magic touch.
    I got real lucky. Tariq made it so I could keep my head down and just do my thing. Brick knew to lay off me, too, or Tariq would be in his face.
    But Tariq’s gone now.

 
    REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN
    The plane hasn’t even taken off before I flag down the flight attendant, ask for something to drink. She brings me a large scotch and soda, on the house. Celebrity has its perks.
    I’m not afraid to fly, nor to enter a strange media hoopla. No rule says I have to weigh in on the Tariq Johnson story; I brought this on myself. It’s going to make national news, soon enough, and I want to be there when it does.
    Yet my stomach is in knots. I can’t even find a way to pray about it, because I can’t stop thinking: I wished for this.
    I was thinking just the other day that my campaign’s been lagging. I needed some magic potion, some pick-me-up to bring me back into the spotlight. An issue to tout, a side to stand on, a moral high ground to stomp with my righteous foot. Ask and ye shall be granted, God says. What have I done, Lord? This time.
    Tariq Johnson is dead, and I wished for it. Not for his death, specifically, but for something a whole lot like it. I have sinned.
    I believe that I have been chosen. Tapped by the hand of God to bring my particular skills to bear on the issues facing blacks in America. I believe in God, that He works in mysterious ways … but this, this is too much.
    The first class seat cushion absorbs my weight as the plane takes off, bound for the small city that will soon be in the spotlight. I shut my eyes, try not think it: I wished for this.

 
    JENNICA
    I put on my waitress uniform, the short tight cream-colored dress and the ironed brown apron. I have to really suck it in to get it buttoned these days. I went for one a size too small. Better tips, I’ve learned, if the fabric hugs your hips and your cleavage crests between the buttons. It makes sense, I think, when I look at myself in the mirror.
    Emmy offered to work for me today, but I said no, I can handle it. I can’t just take a day off and be sad, not when there’s bills to pay at home. My aunt works hard just to keep a roof over our heads, so I chip in as much as I can to help out with everything else. I don’t want to be a burden to her.
    Noodle picks me up and drives me over to the diner, like usual. He has a real old car, one that he fixes up himself to keep it running. It has a bench seat. I slide in, all the way across so I’m sitting next to him, like usual. We don’t talk in the car, though, which is strange.
    “You okay?” he says at the third stoplight, all soft. He has his arm around my shoulders, across the bench seat back. His fingertips brush my bicep and I feel like crying. When he’s not around the Kings, he can be real thoughtful.
    “Sure,” is what I say. Maybe he’ll believe me. Maybe he’ll never need to know that there’s a tiny mirror in my head, like a memory screen, showing Tariq’s body beneath my hands, dying over and over again.
    “They’re planning a service for him, I heard. You wanna go to that?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay, so we’ll go,” Noodle says. I rest my head on his shoulder, leave it there until we pull up at the