Chapter 1: Bottle of Nesquik, Bottle of Long Since Forgotten 1 Bottle of Nesquik, Bottle of Long Since Forgotten
Here’s the situation:

Two teenagers go to a convenience store.

Actually, two different convenience stores.

Kid A is in a car that pulls up outside one at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. Music’s bumping. Got “Beef” by Lil Reese, Lil Durk, and Fredo Santana cued up on the playlist.

Kid B walks into one on a busy street near Boston, Massachusetts. Headphones on. Head bobbing to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” Yes you can, he mouths along as he pulls open the glass door.

Kid A’s there with three friends. One of them goes into the store to grab some snacks and a bottle of something long since forgotten.

Kid B’s there to get a bottle of Strawberry Nesquik.

They’re just two kids, two kids loving their music and going to the convenience store—but then everything changes.

Kid A’s waiting in the car. “Beef” blasting. He’s out with friends. They’re having a good time.

Kid B, though, grabs his bright yellow bottle of Nesquik and slips it into the folds of his puffy down coat. Yes you can! Then he strolls right out the door without looking back. He hasn’t paid for the Strawberry Nesquik. He’s stolen it. And he’s done this before. He’s got a crush on a girl who loves Strawberry Nesquik (even though it’s gross—and it is—it’s gross!), and he loves giving her a bottle in the hallway before homeroom because he likes the coconut smell of her hair and the way her high-sprayed bangs rise off her forehead like a flag. He likes the way roller coasters run wild loops through his gut whenever their eyes meet. He gives her one of these stolen bottles of Strawberry Nesquik about once a week, maybe more, and he’s been doing it for the past month.

He hasn’t thought twice about the people in the store.

Or anybody else, really.

Just the girl with the bangs climbing toward the sky.

More than one thousand miles south on Route 95, Kid A’s bumping to the music with his buddies, still waiting for the friend in the store, when a car pulls up beside them. The two adults in the car start giving the friends dirty looks. The clock starts ticking. In three and half minutes everything will be different. Lives will have changed. But when the car pulls up, Kid A has no idea. All he sees are the scowls. Scowls he’s seen before. He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s just a kid and his music is loud. And if the adults would just take a breath and let it go, let this boy be a kid and let his too-loud music thump, only a few minutes later his car would be gone, the music would be gone, and there’d be no story to tell.

Instead, the woman in the car opens her door, and before she leaves to go into the store, the man who’s with her turns to her and says, “I hate this thug music.” This man, the scowler, starts yelling at Kid A and his friends, starts calling them names. One of Kid A’s friends turns down the music, but Kid A’s sick of the scowler’s scowls. Sick of the way this man, this adult, keeps talking to him, so he turns the music back up and tries to drown him out. Tries to drown out everything the man’s saying. Those scowls. Those kinds of arguments. He’s all too used to them. He’s heard it all before, and all too often, he’s heard the slurs and the name-calling that follows. He’s heard it all before and he’s heard it enough—so up goes the music, bass rattling the car doors. Up goes his voice too, yelling back at the man, matching him insult for insult. But the clock is still ticking.

The clock is still ticking when Kid A’s friend comes out of the convenience store and gets back in the car. The clock’s still ticking as Kid A and the man keep yelling, their voices loud enough to climb up and over the music. The clock’s still ticking when the adult man shouts at Kid A, “You aren’t going to talk to me like that.”

And it’s supposed to be kids driving around through the night, shouting their lyrics—In the field, we play for keeps/I’m out here, no hide-and-seek—like kids all over the country do, are doing, will do later. The clock is still ticking when the man reaches into his glove compartment and pulls out a 9 mm pistol—and then everything goes into hyperspeed.

He fires.

The man fires and fires. Bullets crash through the door beside Kid A. Bullets rip through the car around and into Kid A. Bullets explode and crack open the night as the kids throw the car into reverse, try to escape, but the man steps out of his own car, crouches in a shooting stance, and fires and fires and fires. Ten bullets in all.

The clock only stops ticking when the kids pull into a nearby parking lot and find Kid A gasping for air. Losing his breath. No chance to drink that bottle of who-knows-what soda or whatever as his blood spills across the car seats, down onto the concrete, where it stains the parking lot, the whole town, the whole state, the whole country, because Kid A’s blood is the blood of another innocent, unarmed child who has been called names, called all kinds of things, like a thug, and who hasn’t done anything illegal, hasn’t done anything wrong, except be a kid—and murdered all the same.

Kid B’s the one who did something wrong. Kid B’s the one who did something illegal. Kid B’s the actual thief.

But nobody’s ever called him one. Nobody knows he is one. Because nobody’s ever even suspected he’s one.

In fact, later that spring, when Kid B is working for a talent agency in Boston, auditioning to model for a series of magazine ads, the casting director will lean forward and say to Kid B, “Hey, yeah, we definitely want you. You look like the kid next door. You look like the all-American boy.”

Now let me tell you more about Kid A.

He was someone’s son. He liked Jacksonville, where he lived. He liked to play basketball and PlayStation. But his singular passion was music. All the music. In the field, we play for keeps… Making mixes for his buddies. He had dreams and family and friends.

You might say he was just another “all-American boy,” except I fear not enough people told him that. The adults who pulled up in the car beside him certainly didn’t. That man took one look at Kid A and suspected… assumed… profiled Kid A as a “thug.” As someone who was up to no good. Even though he wasn’t. The man prejudged Kid A—and his prejudice did all the thinking. And Kid A paid the price for it.

But Kid A wasn’t a thug. He wasn’t a thief.

Kid B was the thief. The way Kid B acted, you might call him the thug.

But here’s what else I have to tell you:

Kid A was Black.

And Kid A was a real person. His name was Jordan Davis.

And Jordan Davis was murdered because of racial prejudice—because of racism.

Kid B was white.

And Kid B was a real person too. That kid? He’s me. Brendan Kiely. I’m the thief.

And I’m alive because… well, we’re going to get to all that.