he expect any different from her?
“I’m thinking about devoting some time down in the old neighborhood, some time in East New York. There are a couple of youth centers. I could spend some time… I could try and honor Frankie’s memory.”
He had to do something.
“Oh, son, you don’t need to be down there. It’s dangerous. Anything could happen. You should just go on back to your life where it’s safe.” The worried expression on his grandmother’s face tugged at his heart.
He knew the last thing she needed to worry about was the possibility of burying yet another child.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Grandma. I’ll be fine.” He wanted to say that he wouldn’t be involved with the kinds of things that his cousin had been involved in. But he knew that would have set his aunt off unnecessarily.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter what Frankie had been involved in. Darius had failed him.
“The old neighborhood? Why would you want to be down there? No one wants you down there. Go back to Hollywood, Darius! I can’t believe you’re going to use my child’s death as a part of some bullshit publicity stunt!” The ugliness of his aunt’s voice and the distrusting glare in her eyes shook him to his core.
When had it gotten this bad? When did his own family actually forget who he really was? The fact that his aunt could even accuse him of such a thing let him know that he had really dropped the ball where they were concerned.
“That’s not what I’m doing, Jan… You should know that. In spite of everything… You should know…” He shook his head. The basement was starting to close in on him and that sinking about-to-cave-in feeling in his chest had him thinking if he didn’t get out of there soon he really would end up broken down and sobbing on the floor. He took a deep breath. He needed air, so he walked away from them.
“Son, don’t go. Don’t let Janice upset you like this. We know you, son. We know you! We love you.” His grandmother’s voice trailed off as he walked up the stairs.
Even though he knew he could never make things right for his cousin, the tragic loss demanded that he try, demanded that he do something.
Chapter 2
Two weeks after helping Amina clean out the attic, the woman Karen thought of as her “other mother” moved to Myrtle Beach. Karen had gone out to dinner with Amina the other night and said her tearful goodbye. Even though it felt like her connection to her deceased best friend was gone, she still had the youth center to hold on to.
It was Monday, and Karen walked up to the Shemar Sunyetta Youth Center with the same sense of optimism she started each week with. Her building was two stories of prime Brooklyn real estate—two stories of space, opportunity and possibility.
No matter how things had gone the week before, she started each day of the week with a continued steadfast belief in the change she could evoke in people’s lives. Her mother had always called it her stubborn streak. But Karen thought of it as sheer determination.
She was determined to make a difference all day, every day.
As Karen lifted the gate at the entrance to the youth center, Dicey “Divine” Stamps walked up and lifted the gate to her storefront palm-reading spot, Divine Intuition. It was right next door to Karen’s youth center. Ever since the quirky woman opened up the store a year ago, she had been trying to get Karen to come in for a reading.
Karen always said no. While she might have embraced a sort of eclectic style when it came to hair and clothing, she was really traditional when it came to certain things. She didn’t do the woo-woo stuff! Period.
“My offer to read you still stands. I’ll give you half off my normal rates.” Dicey hefted up her gate with a smile. The tall, almost Amazon-like woman had deep, dark skin and wore her long curly hair in thick goddess braids. The braids were wrapped around her head and had an almost crownlike appearance. She always wore African-print goddess gowns. Today she had on a short-sleeved long dress made of mud cloth.
“Girl, you know I don’t believe in all of that.” For some reason, she thought about the journal that she had taken from Amina’s house and how she had felt so compelled to take it with her. She hadn’t picked up the journal since she took it, so she had no idea why it popped into her head at that moment.
“Don’t you want to know?” Dicey said in a way that almost made Karen think she knew what was going on in Karen’s head.
Confusion crossed her face as she looked at Dicey.
Dicey chuckled as if she were amused with herself. “Don’t you want to know what’s in your future, dear one?”
Karen laughed. “I already know what’s in my future, lots of irritated teens if I don’t get in here and get things ready. The summer is a busy time of year for a youth center.”
“I’m seeing love in your near future. Don’t you want to come and find out when you’re going to meet your soul mate?”
Karen stopped laughing then and stared at Dicey really hard. She thought about the journal again and the story Amina had told her about Karla and Daniel. She shook her head, both to clear it and to say no.
“All right then, but my offer stands whenever you stop being afraid and you’re ready to embrace your destiny, dear one.” Dicey offered a melodious laugh before heading into her shop.
Karen unlocked the door to the center and went about her day.
“If you can’t follow the rules then you won’t be able to come here again.” A familiar sadness began to creep into Karen’s heart as she kept her stern frown focused on Clarence.
She had pulled him into her back office after she caught him trying to sell a marijuana blunt to one of the other young men. She went back and forth in her mind about the right thing to do and decided against calling the police. She hoped she wouldn’t regret that decision.
The boy was only fifteen, and already she sensed it might be too late for him. But she didn’t think being sent back to juvenile detention would have helped him either. She knew that she might have been able to reach him eventually. But if he was bringing drugs into her center, then there was really nothing she could do. She couldn’t condone that.
No way.
She leaned back a little in her rolling office chair. The high-end office chair was one of the items in her office that she had spent a little extra money on. The rest of the furnishings were low-end Office Max cherry-stained plywood. But at least everything matched and looked professional. Her office was the only space in the center that she had cut back on when it came to furniture. She really invested all of her money and her time in making the center a nice, welcoming space for the youth, a space where they could come and get away from the lures of the street.
Allowing Clarence to remain at the center would jeopardize everything she was trying to accomplish. And more than just Clarence’s future was at stake. So many young people needed the space that the center offered. Still, anytime she had to sacrifice one for the whole it hurt. She really wanted to save them all.
“That’s cool. Whatever, yo, whatever.” Clarence shrugged his shoulders and twisted his face in a harsh manner.
The bravado he put up didn’t fool Karen at all. She knew that he cared more than he let on. And if she could give him another chance she would have. But he had a long way to go before he stopped letting the wrong folks influence him.
“I’ll tell your parole officer that it just didn’t work out here. But I’m sure he’ll be able to find another place for you.”
“That’s jacked up, Ms. Williams. You pretend like you care and that you want to give us a chance. But then you just throw us out ’cause we mess up. I said I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t mean to get caught. That’s all.” Karen