“Don’t be,” she says, and then we slip into a movie, but it is already halfway through, and I can’t really make sense of it. Everyone in the theater is crying, and when I look at Akila, she is crying, too. On the way to the bus, we argue half-heartedly about what we think the movie meant. For the rest of the ride, we are silent, and when we get to the house, Eric and Rebecca are not home. As Akila is looking for her keys, a patrol car pulls up behind us. As it has become common in the last week for a car or two to make rounds at night, I assume it will proceed around the cul-de-sac, but when two officers exit the car, this assumption reveals itself to be mostly hope. Evening, one of the officers says, and when I say it back, it sounds so weak that I clear my throat and say it again, though the second time it sounds worse, forceful, and I feel the error in this overcorrection, the officers silent, recalculating.

I should know better. The effort to appear casual is never a casual act, but in front of the police I don’t know how I can be expected to act like myself. I don’t know how not to assume the posture of defense. I look at the officers, and then at all the lit windows around the cul-de-sac, and in one of the windows, I see the old woman’s face. I ask if there is a problem, and this time I don’t try to correct for the tremor. But when they ask if I live in the house, I hesitate, and Akila crosses her arms and says that she does, her tenor markedly less reverent than mine. One of the officers turns to look at her, and I can feel the impending spiral of this exchange, my fear of the officers’ increasing proximity tempered somewhat by the oddness of our shared incredulity at Akila’s departure from the script. I can’t tell if it is defiance or if she simply doesn’t know the words. I step in front of her and tell her to go around the back. But she won’t, and there is a part of me that sees her ease, her self-possession, and is frustrated for what she hasn’t been told. But when I see how she is resolute, casual in her claim of what is hers, I am envious. When the officers ask me to show ID, I look for my license, but my hands are shaking and my purse is full of stolen perfume. This is my home, Akila says, and I know that the moment between when a black boy is upright and capable of speech and when he is prostrate in his own blood is almost imperceptible, due in great part to the tacit conversation that is happening beyond him, that has happened before him, and that resists his effort to enter it before it concludes. I know that the event horizon is swift because of the gulf between the greeting and the pavement, but in real time, as they press Akila to the ground, every second is long.

* * *

As it happens, everyone involved is denied some kind of dignity, the officers’ brute force sincere and absurd, the exertion rendering them small, and Akila, surprised and clumsy and afraid, so conspicuously a child that I run over without thinking and try to get them off, the whites of her eyes bright in the porch light before an officer lifts me into his arms and presses me down into the grass and says Stop resisting, which my ears receive as Greek but also as déjà vu, because not even in what is feasibly my last moment can I be free from the internet and the digital hall of mirrors in which orders are issued unironically to dying women and men. When I stop resisting, it is because I can no longer hear Akila’s voice. For a moment, I only hear geese, and somewhere, an ice cream truck. But then Rebecca is calling out from the end of the driveway, and when I turn my head, her truck is parked sideways in the middle of the street, smoking, and she is running in her scrubs and Docs, waving her arms and saying words I can’t make out. The officers’ retreat is almost coordinated. Rebecca hurries over to Akila, and as she gets to her feet, the officers straighten their clothes.

“We wanted to touch base with the owner of the house. Per the incident earlier this week.”

“The dog.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Akila gets up and goes around the back, and when I try to go with her, she pushes me away. “Do you know Ms. Moynihan?”

“Not well, no.”

“Do you have any firearms inside the house?”

“Of course not,” Rebecca says, and our eyes meet briefly before I go around the back.

* * *

Inside, Akila has shut herself in her room. I knock on the door, and when she answers, her lip is bleeding. When I draw her attention to it, she is surprised. I can’t feel it, she says, covering it with her hand, and when I get the first aid kit and tend to the cut, she says it again in a small, disembodied voice.

“I shouldn’t have talked back,” she finally says. “I feel—” She pauses, collects herself. “I feel really stupid.”

“No, there’s nothing we could have done. It was always going to go that way.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she says, her voice low, tight. I remember when my parents tried to tell me this, the only time in their miserable marriage they were ever united. It must be strange for every black kid, when their principal authority figures break the news that authorities lie. Ironically, I didn’t believe them. I had to find it out for myself.

“You’re not going to feel better about this,” I say. “You’re going to feel angry, for a long time, and that’s your right.”

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” We sit in silence for a while, and then we resume our video game—a collaborative multiplayer where we have to prepare burgers for a ravenous fast-food crowd. But we are out of sync. She can’t get the pickles down in time and I keep dropping the mayonnaise. As the level reloads, the screen goes dark and reflects our faces back to us, and though we continue to play, our reflections, our stricken expressions, remain in the room. During a level interlude, I turn and put my arm around her and she accepts my embrace, briefly, before we turn back to the game.

* * *

It is the first night we all have dinner together. Eric and Rebecca watch Akila as she eats, and she takes a few bites and asks if she can go back to her room. Eric tries to follow her, and Rebecca simply places a hand on his arm. Later, I try to paint. When I can’t, I sit in front of the mirror and do a quick graphite study of my face, and for the first time in my life, there I am. Or, at least, something about it is recognizable, but the timing is bad. Because among the dumb, insufficient platitudes I might offer to Akila or myself is the truth. And the truth is that when the officer had his arm pressed into my neck, there was a part of me that felt like, all right. Like, fine. Because there will always be a part of me that is ready to die.

* * *

Later, Rebecca lingers in my doorway until I motion for her to come in. After two months of her pointed intrusions, this propriety feels absurd. She closes the door and glances at the two garbage bags where I have packed all my things. She sits on the floor and removes her shoes, leans back against the door.

“You’re okay.”

“Yeah,” I say, and when I look over at her, her eyes are bright and still.

“Sometimes, I hoped something bad might happen to you.” She laughs. “Isn’t that monstrous?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I say, and as the room darkens, her face slackens and becomes novel, almost inanimate. I draw it quickly before all the light is gone, and once it is night, we sit in silence until I am asleep. When I wake up, she is stretched out on the floor. But something is wrong. I go to the bathroom and when I turn on the lights, I am covered in blood. My first impulse is to wash my hands, but as I’m doing it, I see myself in the mirror and stop. There isn’t enough toilet paper, and when I reach for the showerhead, I feel the beginning of a terrible abdominal cramp. I wake up Rebecca, but none of the words that come make any sense. I am both grateful and horrified to find that she wakes up promptly to a fully alert state, like a grim little computer, and after she clocks the bloodied pajamas in my arms, she gets me clean sweatpants and ushers me downstairs and into the truck with a box of sanitary pads. The seats, I say, which is the first coherent thing I’ve said since waking up, and she pulls out onto the road and gives a dry, mirthless laugh. Dawn is breaking and the road and sky are in and out as we drive, the dark behind my eyes softer and warmer than the car and the AC that Rebecca has directed right onto my face, but in the dark, I don’t have to feel it, and I don’t have think about it, what is happening inside of me.

* * *

As she is helping me through the parking lot, I can hear the day becoming whole. Traffic and avian chatter and wind in the trees. We enter urgent care, Rebecca lowers me into a smooth, green chair, and I remember that I don’t have health insurance. I close my eyes again, and when I open them, she is doing paperwork, writing my birthday in her sloppy, right-handed script. I don’t ask her how she knows. I know I have been vetted and carefully observed, and I know Rebecca does not like to be surprised. But when she fills out the details of my medical history, sends the paperwork back with her credit card, almost as if it is nothing, I feel held.

* * *