“What did Akio say to you earlier?” I asked Imani an hour after school ended, spotting Akio walking to his car with his hands clasped around his backpack straps and his glasses sitting low on his nose. He was going home late. “Anything about what his father wanted?”
When we had been out yesterday, getting s**t for Landon’s place, and Imani told me that she spotted Akio’s father in one of the many aisles, I had searched every last inch of that store for him but couldn’t find him anywhere.
He wasn’t there to shop, like he had said. He was there for her. He’d wanted something.
“Nothing much. Just that his mother came home with blood on her the other morning. He thought that she had …” She trailed off, her cheeks paling. “That she had killed me, especially after we didn’t show up for school
