“Fuck,” Asa said with an angry scowl. Maybe his choice of word was more productive. I should try cursing instead of calling on a God who had ignored me thus far in life.

  “Are they coming this way?” I asked, unable to keep the trembling out of my voice. He didn’t know my momma. I was terrified.

  He didn’t respond right away, and I was beginning to think he wasn’t going to respond. Then the lights turned off the road and more followed. I watched as they, too, turned and sirens mixed in the night air as we got closer. “You haven’t been gone long enough for a police search, and there would be no need for an ambulance. Something else has happened.”

  I thought about his dad but said nothing. He seemed to know what I was thinking, though, because he said, “They’re turning on 101. Not my road.”

  Lawton was small, and sirens of any kind drew attention. An ambulance wasn’t too out of place, but the police cars following the ambulance were concerning.

  Asa’s cell phone rang. He glanced down at it. I watched him grab it and put it up to his ear. Would it be his dad or maybe his mom? Was he still going to run away?

  “Yeah,” he said gruffly into the phone. Then he listened. I could hear a deep voice on the other end of the line, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. When the other voice went silent, Asa said nothing. He pulled back onto the road, driving faster than before. The other voice said something else.

  “I’m on my way,” he said simply, then ended the call.

  I didn’t ask, but he was my ride home and there were ambulances and cop cars still flying toward us, then turning on 101. I expected him to say something, but he didn’t. He slowed and glanced down the road as we passed 101, then gave me a quick glance. “I’ll take you home first,” as if that was all the explanation anyone needed.

  There was a darkness in his eyes. Or maybe sorrow or pain was a better explanation. Even in the cloak of night, I could see it. Whoever had been on the phone had told him something bad. “Is your mom okay?” I blurted without thinking. My imagination went to his father doing exactly what Asa feared he’d do eventually.

  Asa lifted a shoulder and sighed. “Yeah, I mean I guess,” he said.

  I felt relief wash over me. That was good. He didn’t seem equally happy about it, though. He also didn’t seem to want to tell me any more. I tried to think of several ways to ask him about the news he’d received on his call but could think of no way to ask that didn’t appear nosy. He wasn’t telling me, so it obviously wasn’t my business.

  The truck pulled in front of the store, and I saw my mother and father inside talking—no, make that arguing. I was the topic and I was about to walk inside to face the brunt of it all. My getting out of this truck wasn’t going to help matters at all.

  “Thanks,” I said to him, not sure if that was an adequate response to what had happened tonight.

  He nodded, staring straight ahead. His mouth was in a grim line. I wanted so badly to reach over and touch his hand. To ask him what was wrong. What had happened. It just felt unwelcome. I was a stranger. One who had possibly saved his life, but still, I was no one to him.

  “I hope everything is okay,” I said finally as I reached to open the passenger door. I waited one more second to see if he was going to respond but knew I had no more time to sit here. My parents would notice the truck and me any moment, and all hell was going to break loose. Asa had other things to deal with and he needed to go.

  Just as I started to climb out, he spoke. “They aren’t. My friend is dead. An accident. He’s dead and didn’t want to die. He didn’t fucking die at his own hands. Yet here I sit alive. Life isn’t promised, is it? And I took it for granted.”

  I had no words. I knew of his friends because I’d seen them in the store. I had seen him in town with them. I probably knew their parents. It didn’t seem appropriate to ask who it was. I should say something. The sadness in his eyes made sense now. This night was one nightmare after another for him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I was better at this.

  “Thanks for not letting me jump,” he said, then nodded his head toward the store. “Your parents.”

  At the reminder of my angry parents, I turned to see my mother opening the store door, her eyes on me.

  “Bye,” I told him, not having time to say more but wishing I could. Closing his truck door, I hurried toward my mother before she could run after his truck and demand to know who he was and why I was with him.

  My chest was so heavy with all that Asa had to face tonight, my mother’s loud voice didn’t even make me flinch.

  We Weren’t Supposed to Lose Our Friends CHAPTER 7

  ASA

  Ryker Lee was the first one I saw as I walked toward the ambulances and police cars lighting up the field. It wasn’t a bonfire that lit the darkness tonight. We weren’t about to have a party and celebrate a victory. Memories at this field had always been good ones. We had partied here, laughed here, broken hearts here, and grown up on this field. Tonight it was something different. Something none of us ever imagined.

  Ryker’s arms were crossed over his chest as his head hung forward. I wasn’t sure from here if he was closing his eyes to block this all out or thinking about the horror of what he had witnessed. The pain he’d endured as he watched his girlfriend deal with the reality her brother was dead.

  We weren’t supposed to lose our friends. We’d all gone through the darkness of West Ashby losing his dad to cancer last year. It had been awful. We had all felt useless but wished we could ease his pain. Yet, we hadn’t lost West. Nash had gotten close to the new kid, Haegan Baylor, earlier this school year and he’d been killed in a car accident, but he hadn’t been one of us. Hunter Maclay was one of us. He was a Lawton Lion.

  I stopped beside Ryker. His head lifted slowly and his gaze locked on mine. He looked as fucking shocked as I felt. I wanted to say something. Anything. But nothing seemed like the right thing to say. We stood there silent, both feeling the weight of this on our chests. Ryker’s was heavy because Hunter had been his friend and his girlfriend’s twin brother. Mine was a sordid mess. I’d considered ending my life tonight. Walking away from it all. Leaving those close to me in this kind of pain. I hadn’t thought of them once when I stood on that bridge. It had all been what I needed to escape.

  Ezmita saved me, but she also saved those who cared about me from this grief. I wasn’t sure how to repay her or if that was even possible. I didn’t think it was possible to return a favor like this one. Hell, it couldn’t even be considered a favor. It had changed the course of life. Mine and everyone around me.

  No one had been able to save Hunter, though.

  “How did it happen?” I finally asked. The phone call I had gotten from Nash said that Hunter had been killed. He’d been shot. But why? How? This was the field. Who would have a gun out here shooting at people? This was Lawton, Alabama. Crime like this didn’t happen here.

  Ryker took a deep breath and ran a hand over his face. He seemed to be struggling to keep himself together. I’d never seen Ryker close to breaking down before. However, he appeared to be on the verge.

  “It…” He paused and swallowed hard. “The fucking bullet was meant for me. Not him. Me.” He stiffened as he said it, then shook his head and laughed hard. “They were fucking shooting at me. ME!”

  “Ryker,” Nash’s voice called out, and I turned to see Ryker’s cousin headed toward us. He nodded his head at me in greeting, then looked back to Ryker. “They need to talk to you. The officers you spoke to earlier.”

  Ryker looked at Nash, but he didn’t move. “Okay.” He said the words tightly as if he wanted to yell that they could all go to hell.

  “Aurora is here. She’s with her parents. If you can pull it together. They need to hear what happened too,” Nash told him.

  At the sound of his girlfriend’s name, he snapped out of his building rage. He looked as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Why was someone shooting at him? I didn’t understand, but asking more seemed like a bad idea at the moment. Ryker was about to deal with shit I couldn’t imagine.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Nash asked him.

  He shook his head no, then headed in the direction Nash pointed. “I’m here if you need me,” Nash told him. Ryker said nothing in return.

  Once he disappeared around the ambulance, I asked Nash, “What happened?”

  Nash’s jaw clenched, and his hands balled into fists at his sides. “Motherfucking racists happened,” he ground out, then looked at me. His eyes flashed with pain and anger. “Apparently the good white folk don’t like Ryker dating a white girl. Ryker didn’t recognize the guys in the truck, so I don’t think they’re from Lawton, but he also said they were older. He thinks they looked about twenty. There were three of them.” He paused and inhaled sharply. “Fuckers followed them from the service station they stopped in just outside of town. One was in the back of the truck yelling…” He stopped there and closed his eyes tightly. The line of his mouth was grim. “You know what they were yelling. You can guess.”

  I flinched thinking about it and nodded my head.

  “Ryker was driving. He headed for the field, trying to lose them, and when he pulled into the trees, they did too. Ryker kept going until he got to the field and they followed. Hunter had called the police by this point. He told them what was happening. They told them to stay in the car, but the guy in the back of the truck jumped out and he had a gun in his hand. He didn’t point it at them, but it was there. Hunter panicked and jumped out of the truck to talk to them. Since he was white, he thought he could do something, I guess.” He paused and his jaw clenched tighter. “They didn’t wait to let him say anything. Ryker was yelling at him to get back in the truck. The gun went off and Hunter was on the ground. Ryker didn’t get the license plate number because he had then jumped out of his truck to get to Hunter. The dispatcher heard it all because Hunter hadn’t hung up. Ryker screaming at Hunter to not die. To keep breathing. God,” he said with a groan. “He will never get over this. This is going to fuck with his life. The rest of it will be marked because of this pointless, fucking hate crime.”

  “Jesus,” I whispered as the brutality of it all sank in.

  “The only lead they have is the fact Ryker saw the face of the shooter in the rearview mirror and realized he’d seen them earlier tonight at the restaurant they had eaten at with Aurora, her dad, and her stepmom. Aurora had left with her parents because Ryker and Hunter were headed to the field house. Some of the things the guy in the back of the truck was yelling were related to the fact Ryker had been with Aurora.”

  There was nothing I could say to make this better. No words were the right ones. We stood there watching as more cars arrived and more people came to the scene. Cops were blocking it off and no one was getting past the barrier, but who would want to? One of ours was out there covered up and dead. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to think about Hunter being gone. His life taken because of hate. Pointless hate. It was sickening. This was the year 2020. Yet this hate for the color of someone’s skin was still an issue. Why? What was wrong with this world?

  I heard footsteps and turned to see Rifle Hannon and Walker McNair headed our way. They were Hunter’s closest friends on the team. Then I looked past them and saw Brady Higgens also coming this way. Brady had graduated last year. I hadn’t realized he was in town.

  “We came as soon as we heard,” Walker said to Nash, and Nash just nodded.

  “I don’t understand this,” Rifle then said.

  Nash turned to look at them, and his eyes saw Brady headed toward us. “Higgens,” he said as Brady reached us. “Heard you were in town. Didn’t think to call. It’s been…” He shook his head and looked back toward the blocked-off area.

  “How is Ryker?” Brady asked.

  Nash let out a heavy sigh. “Not good.”

  JUNE 15, 2020 You Know Asa?

  CHAPTER 8

  ASA

  Summertime in Lawton looked as different as the rest of the world because of Covid. Nothing was the same. Life had spiraled out of control so quickly, I was no longer surprised by anything. I had been allowed to stay for Hunter’s funeral, and then my mother had shipped me off to New Mexico to live with my abuela. My father refused to allow me to come back to the house they called home. Leaving everyone had been a temporary situation, but then the world shut down due to a pandemic. No traveling to visit my friends. Rare calls from my mother. No way to make new friends in Taos because I was stuck at my abuela’s with three younger cousins. Loud-ass boys, all three of them. My uncle did little in the way of discipline with his kids. Lucky me, they all lived with my abuela too. It had been a long three and a half months.

  As soon as I could travel, I packed my things and headed back to Alabama. My father still refused to allow me in his house, but I wasn’t planning on staying with them. Nash Lee’s parents had said I could move in with him in his apartment over their garage. Keeping in contact with Nash and Ryker had been my only interaction with life outside my abuela’s and had kept me sane.

  Ryker wasn’t doing great. He was seeing a psychologist, and according to Nash, he had decided against taking any football scholarships offered to him. He said that his main priority was Aurora and being near her. Plans hadn’t been made for either of them, and their parents weren’t forcing it.

  I pulled into the grocery store parking lot. I was hungry and didn’t want to arrive at Nash’s starved. His parents were letting me stay there, but I didn’t expect them to feed me. My abuela had given me some money for travel. I’d been stingy with it, and I had plenty left until I could get a job. Opening my truck door, I started to step out when I noticed a lady leaving the store with a mask on her face. I was still adjusting to mask life during the pandemic. I forgot it often and would have to go back to my truck to get it before going inside anywhere. I reached for one of the black cotton masks my abuela had made me and put it on covering my mouth and nose, then headed for the store. I could live off ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches. My list of needs was low.

  As I headed inside, the familiarity was odd. I knew this place. I’d been in here a million times, but seeing it like this with everyone’s face coverings, stickers on the floor that directed the flow of traffic, and large plastic dividers keeping the workers safely away from the customers was all very apocalyptic-feeling. Even my hometown was living this weird alternate life that Covid-19 had forced upon the world. No one was safe.

  Laughter seemed so out of place at the moment, it caught my attention. I turned to look toward the sound that I will admit was so pleasant, it made my shoulders ease and life not seem so gloomy.

  Even with her pink cheetah-print mask on, I would have recognized her. I was positive for the rest of my life I would recognize Ezmita Ramos. I had thought of her a few times during the insanity that life had become and wondered how she was doing. Had she gotten to go off to college? Did her parents lock her up for the rest of her life? Other than the fact she, along with the rest of the world, was quarantined.

  Her long hair seemed even longer, and the way the cutoff shorts she was wearing managed to showcase her legs, butt, and waist all at the same time was distracting as hell. I took in her outfit and the easy way her body seemed to… lean in toward a guy that I hadn’t noticed was standing there. She was hard to look away from, to notice much else. The guy I recognized. I didn’t know him well, but I knew him. And so did Ezmita, it would appear.

  The last time I saw her, she’d been locked away from the world and in trouble for running off without permission and arriving home in a guy’s truck. I hadn’t had a chance to see her after that. Hunter’s murder and funeral, combined with my father’s desire to make me pay for my beating his ass, had been a bit much. Thoughts of pretty girls had been on the back burner. Even the pretty girl who had been witness to my weakest moment.

  Why was Brett Fucking Darby still in Lawton? Why hadn’t he left for UCLA on that stupid tennis scholarship he had anyway? Probably the same reason I hadn’t left for Ole Miss. Covid-19, the pandemic that had changed our lives. Hell, we hadn’t even gotten a real high school graduation. We had all finished the year virtually. Everyone else had done so from their homes in Lawton. I had finished in New Mexico because I no longer had a home in Lawton.

  So how had Ezmita met Brett and when? It seemed hard to hook up during a pandemic. Why the fuck did I care? I realized I’d stood here entirely too long worrying over Ezmita’s personal life. I walked down the first aisle that had a green arrow and followed it. Glancing around, I didn’t see any of the very limited items I needed. I did, however, find coffee and cereal. I decided the off-brand Cocoa Puffs would be a good food source too and grabbed a box.

  Focusing on getting out of there quickly, I headed for the checkout with my basket. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, and I refused to look for Ezmita again. Wasn’t my business. Maybe she’d been kicked out of her house too and been on lockdown with Brett Darby. I seriously doubted that, but whatever. Didn’t matter.

  EZMITA

  He was back.

  Asa was back in Lawton.

  My heart sped up at the sight of him. I had hoped it wouldn’t. I had hoped my silly crush on Asa was gone. Brett had been a nice distraction over the past two weeks, and having a guy give me attention had been nice. Part of me had believed that would put out the little thing I had for Asa, but deep down I think I knew better. His being gone had helped me not dwell on him so much, but seeing him standing there, looking as beautiful as I remembered, with a basket in his hand as he put a jar of peanut butter in it and glanced at the jelly next, proved I was not over my crush.

  Dangit.

  “You know Asa?” Brett asked beside me.