Fearless by Allana Kephart

Author:Allana Kephart [Kephart, Allana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nadege Richards
Published: 2019-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

The inundation of questions that followed was maddening. It took three hours and a promise to file an official police report to get my dad off my ass about Lincoln. He wanted his last name, address, driver’s license number, plates, everything. And when I told him the honest truth, that I didn’t know those things—not that I would share it anyway, especially after his little outburst when Lincoln dropped me off at home—I thought I’d be driving him back to the hospital for a brain aneurysm.

“You got in a fight with a dirty old nigger, and that’s bad enough, but then you got in a car with another you don’t know! And you didn’t even get his plates or license? God damn it, Riley! He could’ve raped you—or killed you!”

Knowing a license number does nothing to help me with that, and would only prove beneficial in trying him for a crime should he commit one. But letting Dad freak out over that was easier than trying to explain to him that I knew for a fact I wasn’t in any danger, because I know both of those ‘dirty’ boys, and neither of them want to hurt me.

One of them wants to be with me.

Everything inside of me wants to go to Lincoln. My bones ache to stand beside him and scream that this was all wrong, to prove there are white people against racism in the world, too. The night’s still young, I could pull it off. But I still felt wrong, like I’d be stepping on all the wrong toes by raising my voice. Be a witness, don’t take the spotlight. That’s what women tell men, right? To hear our stories without repeating them back as if they could possibly understand what it was like to grow up female?

I’ll never understand what it’s like to go through life as a person of color. I don’t envy them the burden.

Quiet is where I belong—out of the way, silently rooting for them from the sidelines, hoping everything works out and the rest of my race learns to take a seat, too.

“What’re you doing out here?”

I jolt in surprise, the gun nearly tumbling out of my hands. “Uncle Mike,” I gasp, clutching my chest as my heart tries to hammer its way out.

I couldn’t stand being in the house with my dad anymore, so I snuck out. I walked two miles, maybe three, before I caught a ride share to Mike’s property and picked the lock to the barn. I couldn’t sleep anyway, and I needed the normalcy, the peace of routine.

Dismantling and cleaning the guns was something I could do in my sleep, and it calmed me. Like counting sheep, or warm milk for normal people. Unlike being loud, fighting injustice, weapons are my comfort zone.

Idly I wonder what that means about me, but my uncle standing in the barn door keeps me from properly psychoanalyzing myself. I did not expect him to catch me.

He narrows his eyes, but for once, he doesn’t look angry at me.

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