Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Author:Nic Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2017-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

On Tuesday, Manny and Jared are both missing from Societal Evolution.

Lunch too. Justyce sees Tyler, Kyle, and Blake—who scowls at Jus but keeps his distance—huddled around a table in the senior lounge, whispering.

As the day goes on, there’s an ever-increasing buzz, though Justyce never catches what people are murmuring because they go quiet whenever he gets too close. So when he’s walking to the dorm after classes are over and he sees the bros huddled around Jared’s car without Manny, he knows something is up.

Especially when Jared turns to give Jus the evil eye, and Jus sees his face.

Now, Jus knows he and Jared came to blows, but could he have caused that much damage? Dude looks like half his mug got attacked by a swarm of angry hornets.

When he gets back to his room, Justyce does the unthinkable: he calls Manny.

Of course the guy doesn’t answer.

There’s a knock at the door. “Come in,” Jus says, dropping down into his desk chair. As he pulls out his notebook to skim the letter he wrote Martin after Blake’s party, he hears the door open and close before the bedsprings squeak.

When he turns around, he almost falls out of the chair. “Dawg!”

Manny is stretched out on Justyce’s bed with his hands tucked behind his head. His left hand is all taped up, and it appears one of Jared’s hornets got him in the upper lip.

“Whoa,” Jus says.

Manny just stares at the ceiling.

Something pops into Jus’s head: Manny pushing open the passenger door of the Range Rover and telling him to get in.

“Hey, man, I—”

“Save it. I know you didn’t mean it.”

Mmmm…“Actually, I did,” Jus says.

Manny shifts his attention to Jus and lifts his eyebrows.

“I just didn’t really consider the bigger picture,” Jus says. “That’s what I’m apologizing for. Not putting myself in your shoes or whatever.”

Manny turns back to the ceiling. “I didn’t really have your best interests in mind either, so let’s call it even and move on.”

Jus nods. “Cool.”

After about half a minute, the silence gets awkward. Jus cracks his knuckles. “So what happened to your lip?”

“I woke up.”

“Okay…” Jus decides to take a page from Doc’s book: “Care to expound a bit?”

Manny smiles but then grimaces in pain. After a few seconds, he sits up and turns to face Justyce. “You know why I couldn’t really get mad about what you said? You were right. I knew you were right the moment the words came outta your mouth.”

“Oh,” Jus says.

“Saturday night, I went to a festival with those clowns. Four times, man—four—I had to grit my teeth to keep from knocking Jared’s punk ass out. Every time he made fun of somebody, it was like sandpaper being dragged over my eardrums.”

“Dang.”

“When we saw this black lady with four kids, and this fool called her Shaniqua and made a joke about baby daddies, I couldn’t take any more, Jus. I called him on it, and he rolled his eyes. Told me to ‘stop being so fucking sensitive.’ ”

Jus doesn’t say anything.

“All day Sunday, I sat in my basement, just fuming.

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