To Qway, one of the most important things one could do was to know why exactly it was that someone could dislike you.

He hadn’t visited Patience’s house in over a year, even before she had passed. Neither of her parents were fond of him, and they couldn’t be bothered to hide it. If he thought about it, James really could have been considered the more cordial of the two - he didn’t shoot dirty looks at Qway the way Shanice did, but he also just plain didn’t acknowledge him. He knew why.

He was okay with that, or at least he’d learned to be. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d get an invitation. He had his own plan; he’d already rented a suit, had it hanging up in his closet by a cheap wire hanger. Patience hated flowers, so he had instead opted to bring her a copy of Twilight. He and Emoni would take a day sometime after the initial burial and together they would travel to her grave and lay the book near her tombstone. They’d spend the day reminiscing about the several years she’d been obsessed with the series, hopefully dispelling some of the dreariness that the day was sure to bring. That was their plan. He hadn’t even expected Patience’s family to reach out to him at all. Since that day in the corner store, he hadn’t seen high nor low of Isaiah and he didn’t expect to. The boy was likely laying low, and Qway didn’t think he would be high on his list of folks to speak anyway.

When he opened his front door to see James on one wet morning towards the end of April, he almost thought he was having a stroke.

The two stared at each other.

When he didn’t say anything, James shifted his weight and clapped a hand onto the back of his neck and smiled tightly, as if it were Qway himself who had brought the awkwardness of the moment upon them and he was the one being forced to cope.

“Aye, son. You mind if I come in right quick? I just got some - I just need to talk to you.”

Qway’s uncertainty showed on his face. Why was this man here all of a sudden, getting rain water all over his mother’s good couch? Why hadn’t he called first? How big were the balls that he was toting around that he felt that he could just show up after virtually deleting his existence from his mind?

He said none of this. Instead, his hand tightened into a fist around Patience’s, his fingers sinking through her palm.

Finally, James cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck again. “Look, I know we ain’t had the best relationship in the past but…” His voice shook and he paused to steady himself. “Ain’t nobody know my daughter like you and so I just had to ask. I know it’s over and done with, and it ain’t nothing I can do, but when you have -” They made eye contact, James clearing his throat again. “When you a parent, sometimes you just know something ain’t right, aight? So I came here to give you this and to ask you about her. Like I said, ain’t nobody know her like you did.”

He pulled out a rectangle of paper from the inside of his jacket, lifting himself off the couch to hand it to Qway where he sat on the edge of the coffee table.

The paper was thick and glossy. He knew what it was before he even looked at it, but when he did, he felt a tickle in the back of his throat. The cover was the shade of melted vanilla ice cream, outlined with a border of black. The top half was taken up by a photo of Patience that Qway could immediately tell one of her parents had taken; her smile was too calculated, like the one you’d give a school photographer. Stiff. The bottom half was taken up by a request to join them for a celebration of her life, followed by the date, time, location, and a number to call to RSVP. He thumbed through it.

Inside, the pages were dominated by more artificial photos of his best friend and people with the same last name who would be speaking about her at the event. Patience read over his shoulder and as if he could feel her ire, Qway pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He knew she didn’t care to have most of those people at the funeral at all.

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you, sir.”

“You got to know something. I done already talked to her other friends, what they names? Asia and La-something? Shanice had they numbers but not yours, otherwise I would’a called instead of just showing up like this. They ain’t talked to Patience,” He winced. “in years. The police gave us back her phone when we identified her but it ain’t work no more. I guess it broke, being in the snow an’ all. But I know ya’ll talked more than we did.”

Qway tried to find it in himself to be ashamed of the pride that he felt about that fact.

 He couldn’t. 

“I understand that but with all due respect, it ain’t really my place to tell you anything she ain’t want to. That doesn’t change just because she…” He trailed off, swallowing hard.

James released a laugh. It sounded like paper being crumpled. “And with all due respect son, my baby girl is dead. I understand keeping little secrets between friends and such, but it don’t really matter no mo’, do it? This ain’t little. I’m burying my daughter by the end of the month and I just need to know why. So please. I’m begging you. If you know anything, please tell me.”

He looked more tired than Qway had ever seen him.

Qway felt his mouth screw to the side and sighed. It was just like her to leave the difficult conversations to him. He didn’t even know where to start.

“Sir, I hate to tell you, but you ain’t really know yo’ daughter like that.”

James was always an easy man to lie to. This fact was made up of a number of factors, the first being that he was one hundred percent sure in his belief that his daughter was not capable of such an action. He and Shanice had placed a special emphasis on it when Patience had been younger, stating with all the authority and wisdom that a child assumes of a parent that God knew exactly when she lied and would, in His own way, act out a hefty punishment against her as a result. God didn’t like ugly, and lying was one of the ugliest things one could do.

He was up often before the sun was and back long after the street lamps were turned on, so it often happened that he was too tired to puncture holes into whatever illusion she conjured; there was always some project that needed just a few more hours after school, some teacher that needed her to come in early to decipher her chicken scratch handwriting in lieu of a failing grade. There was really no reason to question her either; Patience hadn’t brought home anything lower than a B- since elementary school. She’d gotten good at concealing her exhaustion, lightening the bags underneath her eyes with makeup and padding her consciousness with sugary energy drinks and coffee that allowed her to get through the day.

All to conceal a job at the twenty-four hour Starbucks about a third of a mile away from her school. It was perfect, if not because it was so close to the school then because it was so far from home. She kept her employment close to her chest; with James just barely treading water when it came to supporting his family, she didn’t want to send any more dogs to eat at him.

It was easy to claim that she was off to stay the night at Qway’s if her father needed an excuse, and just as simple a thing to not say a word at all if he didn’t. If her mother noticed that her excuses weren’t adding up, she kept it to herself after Patience began giving her extra money every other Friday.

Most mornings were spent manning the small cafe alone or with Atiq, an older foreign man with wispy graying hair that thinned at the crown of his head who wasn’t much for words. Just as well; Patience reveled in the silence, in the comfort that hiding behind the large espresso machines brought. Customers looked at her through half lidded eyes or not at all, glued to the screens of their phones, unperturbed by the lack of lively staff.

That day the connection between Patience’s body and her mind was fuzzy. She’d spent several hours the night before starting and finishing a PowerPoint presentation due for her world history class, and the names of different Russian Tzars periodically mixed themselves into the names of the drinks that came and went. A voice attempted to break through, and without looking up, Patience promised that the drink would be out soon, though there were none in queue. Instead, she continued to scrape away the gunk on her steam wand with the back of her name tag, listening to the humming that she wasn’t aware was emanating from her.

“What? No, Patience. It’s me, Emoni!”

The name tag clattered onto the bar top. She blinked, surprised to find herself at work.

The person that Patience gradually began to recognize grinned, and she vaguely thought it too early to be so expressive. That was Emoni though; she’d made herself a permanent fixture in Patience’s mornings for the last couple of months, the two of them spending the few precious minutes before the bell rang awkwardly twisted and bent as close to one another as the desks would allow, heckling the newest book their teacher had assigned, The Scarlet Letter, and before that, Romeo and Juliet.

“I didn’t know you worked here. Why didn’t you tell me you could’ve been bringing me free coffee this whole time?” Her eyes were narrowed playfully, and she pursed her lips as she waited for a response.

Patience cleared her throat. “Since sophomore year. Why you up so early? School don’t start for another-” she glanced at the clock on her phone, “-two hours. And I would never give you free coffee. You already too excitable for me.”

“Honors Art club meeting. We’re decorating the school for something, I don’t know to be honest. Spirit week maybe? I wasn’t really listening.” She waved a handful of loose brushes. The tips were crusted with old paint, giving off a faint aroma that mixed with that of the coffee.

The bell at the top of the entrance jingled. Someone asked for a venti cup of water, then left just as quick. “You should get going then.”

She shook her head. “You know, you could just say you hate me and get it over with. But I actually did order a coffee.”

Patience was prepared to jab at her for any number of requests; frappuchinos, upside down nonfat caramel macchiatos, iced macha lattes made with soy milk, splenda, and classic syrup, but her order was simple. She requested whatever the house dark roast was with three packets of raw sugar on the side, plus a little cream only if Patience didn’t mind retrieving it for her.

“What kind of old man is you, drinking dark roast?” The grin that stretched across Patience’s face was real, just barely restraining a few peals of laughter as she pressed down on the tap. Steaming dark liquid poured into the cup. She made sure that it was hot; it was Atiq’s job to brew the coffee, but had it been an older batch, she would have grabbed a pour over to make a fresh cup.

Patience focused on that so that she would have something else to look at besides Emoni.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah? And what about you? How long have I known you, what, three months? I haven’t seen you drink a single drop of water in that time. At least mine is mostly water.”

A beat of silence passed between them. Patience’s lips puckered. “Aight. Imma let you have that one.”

The sun finally made an appearance, streaming through the wide front windows. It hit Emoni at just the right angle, illuminating her still damp hair so that it appeared to be a glowing crown. Patience tipped a swallow of cream into the cup and capped it, holding it out.

“If that’s all, you can gon’ head and leave and stop distracting me.”

Their fingers brushed as she took the cup, a smile lifting the corners of her mouth once more. She was always smiling. Patience’s stomach flipped. She snatched her hand back and made to look busy, though even Atiq leaned against the counter, his back to the front door as he stared at his phone.

“I know you love me. See you in first period.”

It was only after the door smacked shut behind her did the shame set in. It was enough to force her into the back of house area to hide in the dishes to collect herself. Most of her classmates had no need to work. They often rolled in when school was over, after Patience had cut her last class of the day in order to make it to a shift, giddy and so loud that they set her teeth on edge. Even those that had jobs didn’t work them at the same capacity as Patience did, opting to work only on the weekends or over the summer. She doubted they knew the feeling of having a check bounce at the checkout line; the intense desire to recede into oneself so that you wouldn’t have to walk past all those folks in line behind you with full carts. How hot and tight the skin on your face felt, the way a phantom set of fingers tightened around the circumference of your eyeballs, squeezing and squeezing them like oranges but you refused to allow the release of any liquid because somehow that would’ve made the public shaming ten times worse.

There was no possible way for her to know that even with the addition of Patience’s meager paycheck they were barely scraping by, that the fridge just sometimes went empty for a week until her father could pull together enough to get the essentials, but that didn’t stop her cheeks from heating. She’d long since adjusted to the reality that her family just wasn’t as well off as those around her, that her shoes would literally have to be falling apart before she would drag herself to spend the tiny reserves of money that she’d been squirreling away since she’d been hired, that sometimes she just wouldn’t be able to eat until she punched in for work and got a free meal. It hardly had anything to do with her, but logic just wasn’t a sharp enough blade to breach the impenetrable shell of the kernel of chagrin that she’d swallowed ages ago. It had taken root, wormed its way into her limbs right down to the tips of her fingers and toes until it dictated almost everything she did.

Wiping her hands off on her apron, Patience adjusted the green strap and clipped her name tag back onto the top left corner before returning to the bar, where two new drinks waited.

Opinions, feelings, and pride wouldn’t pay the bills.

Next Chapter: 24