The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds

church right after we put Nancy’s casket in the back of the hearse. Instead of hopping in and riding in the parade to thegravesite, I decided to just walk home. Mr. Ray understood, and gave me thirty bucks for the day, and thirty for the day before. Not bad.
    As I’d walked home, I’d started thinking about life, and friends, and how things had just been crazy with Mom being gone, and everything being flipped upside down, and how this just wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. It was all supposed to be smooth. The most uncomfortable thing I was ever planning to experience was picture day. That’s it. Now here I was, by myself, coming back from being a pallbearer at a funeral of a girl around my age who had no idea she was going to go. And to make it worse—oh man, here it is—I liked being at the funeral! Yeah. Weird. But it was like, I felt better there than anywhere else since my mom died. Stuff like that can make you feel crazy, and I just wanted to be around a friend. So, yes, I blew Chris up.
    â€œMan, whatever,” I said to him now. “Look, I got some money. You trying to get something to eat?”
    I flashed the cash. Tens and twenties. My mother would’ve tripped if she knew I was showing off like that. Chris tripped too. His eyes bugged out.
    â€œMan, where you get that from?” he said, as if he expected me to say I was pushing drugs or something, even though he knew me well enough to know that I got it in some legit way. I just wasn’t that type of dude.
    â€œWork, fool,” I said, folding the bills in half. “So we eating, or what?”
    â€œStill not cooking?” Chris asked.
    â€œForget it, you don’t wanna eat.” I stuffed the wad back into my pocket.
    â€œI didn’t say that! I’m just not used to you not whipping stuff up in the kitchen. You the only dude I know who knows how to burn.” Chris swung his umbrella at something I didn’t see.
    â€œI’m just not in the mood,” I said, pushing the sleeves of my suit jacket up. That thing was getting hot. “Y’know, that was something me and Mom used to do. Our thing.”
    Chris looked down, now tapping the stupid umbrella on the sidewalk as if he were smashing an ant. “I got you. It’s cool,” he said, looking up. “So, where we going?”
    I thought for a moment. Chris rubbed his baldy like he was trying to shine it, which he usually did when he was thinking, too. But we both knew what the answer was. It was what it always was. Cluck Bucket.
    We started up the block, our cement world of trash cans blown into the street, stray cats begging, stoop sitters dressed in fresh sneakers smoking blunts in broad daylight, old ladies sweeping the sidewalk, tired nine-to-fivers walking slowly on the final stretch before home. The buses, and cabs, and bicycles, and skateboards. The shop owners hollering out their two-for-one deals. The little girls singing, the older boys laughing, the babies crying, and the two of us moving through it all.
    â€œHold up,” I said, patting my pockets as we got to the corner where the bodega is. “I gotta stop in here right quick. I owe Jimmy some cash.”
    â€œGood to know you’ll pay your debts when you get rich,” Chris said, laughing.
    I pushed the door open. The cat jumped from on top of the soups over to the paper towels.
    â€œJimmy, how much is two D batteries?” a woman dressed in business clothes and sneakers asked.
    â€œTwo-fitty.”
    â€œTwo-fifty! That’s ridiculous. For two damn batteries. A’ight, well forget the batteries. Just give me two Wheel of Fortune scratch-offs.” She tapped the thick plastic case to make sure he knew which scratch-offs she wanted.
    â€œFive dollars.”
    â€œFive dollars! Jimmy, these are two-fifty a piece now too?”
    Jimmy noticed me come in.
    â€œMatty, what’s good, my man?”
    The lady slapped a