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whole body on it.
    Soon as I hit the floor, I stop breathing. All the air in me dries up like the blood on our porch. “I can’t . . . breathe.” I’m pulling at the skin on my neck, trying to get air.
    My mother holds me. Whispers in my ear for me to calm down. “You’re all right. Just calm down. Just . . .” She stares at my dad. “Get him up.” She rubs my chest. “Mann. The blood’s all gone.” She’s talking to my dad again. “You don’t get my boy off this here porch right now, I’m gonna carry him off myself, and when I’m done, I’m coming back for you.”
    Air sneaks into my lungs. I take a long, deep breath, coughing hard and trying to get up. My father and mother carry me. “It’s okay,” they say, together. “You’ll be okay.”
    Mann!
    I turn to see who’s calling me.
    Play soldiers with me .
    My hands and feet get ice-cold. “Jason?”
    My father looks around. My mother does too.
    Catch me. Okay?
    I ask my parents if they hear Jason. If they see him.
    My dad looks at me. “See what happens when you smoke that dope?”
    I close my eyes tight. But I still see blood. And I still hear him laughing, just like that day when he got shot. Mann , he said, when I went for the hose. What you get when you cross a pickle with a pencil?
    Little-kid jokes ain’t never funny. So I told him I didn’t know, didn’t care. Then he walked over to the steps and sat down. You get , he said, laughing real hard like it was gonna be a really funny joke. You get . . .
    I didn’t hear the answer, because Journey was thirsty. She needed a drink. So I left Jason all by hisself. And that’s how come he got killed.

Chapter 13
    FOR TWO WHOLE weeks, I didn’t go over to Kee-lee’s house. I didn’t smoke no weed or cut class. And when Jason’s birthday came, I didn’t even cry when my mother blew out the candles and my father told him he was always gonna be his son. I left right after the cake and ice cream and went to the stables to see Journey.
    The sign on the gate said the stables were closed until further notice. I climbed over the busted wooden fence anyhow. Walked through the chewed-up grass and hard dry dirt and down the long dirt path. I opened the stable door and got real sad when I saw her. She was skinnier than usual, and her eyes looked sad, like my mother’s. “He took off and left you, huh, girl?” I didn’t try not to step in her mess, ’cause mess was everywhere. So I kept walking—feeling poop squeeze up in the hole in the bottom of my sneaker and stick to the bottom of my pant legs like glue. I took carrots out my pocket and fed them to her. “Hungry?” I patted her face and fanned flies and gnats away.
    Journey was so hungry she bit my hand trying to eat the carrots. So I opened my backpack and took out more food—lettuce, corn on the cob, and zucchini. “You can’t carry me nowhere today, huh?” I said, tickling her chin. Telling Journey her teeth are whiter than Kee-lee’s, then going for the water hose to give her a drink. “Jason’s birthday’s today,” I said, pressing my finger over the hose and making Journey a fountain. “You remember Jason, right?”
    Journey moved her head. She remembered. I knew it. I dropped the hose. Held her face between my hands and stared into her eyes. “You still see what they done to him?” She tried to pull free. “I do.” She neighed, just like she did that day at our house. “I see him all the time. Dead. Him and Moo Moo dead and gone.”
    Journey yanked her face away. Her big lips pulled back over her yellow teeth and wiggled back and forth like she was trying to talk to me.
    “Okay, girl,” I said, picking up the broom and shovel. “Let’s clean your stall and get you some more food.”
    Journey is like me: just regular. Nothing special. But she stands tall with her head up, like she’s one of them horses the Queen of England rides sometimes. Only today, standing tall don’t help her none, because you can still see her