CHAPTER 4

Twitter:

@jamesgodfreyjunior please follow me on Twitter!

@jamesgodfreyjunior to throw the first ball at Cubs game

My personal inbox:

EMPTY.

I had already got a two-inch-thick file on James Godfrey, but no call from his PR contact.

Today was planned with my mother a no-go too.

I was supposed to meet her to show our support for our community’s End the Violence campaign, but she calls to say that she was not going to make it. Her boss asked her to cover for someone. “I’m sorry, darling. Why don’t you ask one of the girls to go with you?”

“Don’t worry, Mother, I will. Take your insulin, okay?”

I knew she took it, but I couldn’t help mentioning it every time we called. I obsessed about her like that.

In fact, I worried about my mom so much, Chloe and Brenda worried I was going to make myself sick over it. I wanted to get a big cushion of savings so I knew I could take care of her insurance and be sure she had a good home and good healthy food, and good care, too. I wanted to give my mom everything she had given me so she can retire and finally do what she loves. Everybody deserved to do what they love. Her love for me and her desire to provide for me as much as she could have held her back. I wanted to do well enough that she can now follow her dreams.

This exposé could lead to so many more opportunities, that one door opening to a plethora of new ones.

I was clicking James Godfrey links like crazy when Chloe finally padded out of her bedroom in her comfiest outfit.

“I told you it needs to be something you won’t mind getting paint on,” I reminded her. “Aren’t those your favorite jeans?”

“Oh fuck, I heard that! Why did I forget when I went into my closet and saw these?” She thumped back into her room.

An hour before noon, at a corner of the park near the basketball courts, Chloe and I—along with what looked to be several dozen people—finally gathered in anticipation of slapping our paint-covered hands onto a mural-size canvas.

“We’ve all lost someone to this fight. Our loved ones, our grocer, a friend . . .” one of the organizers was saying.

I was two months old when I lost my dad.

All I knew was from my mother’s account: that he was an ambitious man, hardworking, and full of big dreams. He swore to her that I would never have to work . . . he was obsessed with giving us the ideal life. We didn’t ask for it, but it didn’t matter to my dad.

All it took was one gun, and none of it happened.

I didn’t get to have a memory of his eyes, gray, supposedly like mine. Never heard his voice. Never knew if, in the mornings, he’d be grumpy like Chloe’s dad or sweet like Anne’s. I remembered the neighbors bringing pie for years as I grew up. Their daughters coming over to play with me. I remembered playing with other people’s kids too, my mother taking me over to play with other children who had lost someone to violence.

Now, twenty-three years after my father died, every time something terrible happened I wished we could make it stop, and I never wanted to forget how it felt, this wanting to make it stop.

We’ve been criticized over our methods of pleading for a safer city—some say we were too passive, others that it was pointless—but I thought that even the quietest of voices deserved to be heard.

Per one of the organizers’ instructions, I poured half an inch of red paint into my oversize plastic tray, and then I planted my hand on the surface. Thick red paint spread to my fingertips.

“We’re putting our hands on this huge mural as a symbol to stop the violence in the streets, in our communities, in our city, in our neighborhoods,” the organizer continued.

My phone buzzed in my left butt-cheek pocket.

“All right, now,” the woman hollered.

On the count of three—one, two, three!—I pressed my hand to the wall, while Chloe did the same, her hand red like mine and a little bit bigger.

Once we had all left our prints, we hurried to the water fountains to clean up. Chloe leaned over my shoulder and I yelped and tried to ease away.

“Dude, you’re getting paint all over me!” I cried, laughing as I dried my hands and stepped aside to let her wash. While she scrubbed off her paint, I plucked my phone out.

And my stomach took a dive because I had got a reply.

James Godfrey—

Ms. Vale, this is Dan, Mr. James’s press coordinator. We have a ten-minute opening today at 12 p.m.

So I got that notification right now, Saturday, at like 11:18 a.m.

“Shit, I got it!” I told Chloe as I showed her the message. But instead of high-fiving me because I freaking landed this and I rocked, she glanced pointedly at my coveralls.

“Oh no,” I groaned. “I can’t see him like this!”

“Okay, take my belt.”

“OMG, really? I look ridiculous!”

She tied it around my waist and cinched it. “Vicki, focus. There’s no store around, you don’t have time to go change.”

We shared panicked looks, then we both surveyed my clothes. I was now wearing a jean coverall with a tank top beneath and a red belt, with paint splats here and there. “I look like an absolute slut on a washing day!”

“You have paint on your cheek,” said Chloe, wincing on my behalf.

I groaned and whispered to the universe: Next time you make one of my dreams come true, can I please be dressed for the occasion?