Jalen immediately asked where he got the deck.
The boy stared.
“My uncle.”
For one strange second, Jalen heard Holloway.
He stopped.
Not because the question itself was wrong.
Because he recognized how quickly context could attach itself.
“Nice uncle,” Jalen said instead.
The boy smiled.
“He skates.”
They talked about the trucks.
No drama.
Jalen later told Isaiah what happened.
Isaiah asked whether he thought every question about ownership had become forbidden.
“No.”
“Good.”
Jalen understood the real lesson.
A first thought could happen.
A suspicion could even be reasonable.
Responsibility began in what you did with the next fact.
That principle had become Isaiah’s favorite description of bias.
Not that humans could prevent every assumption.
That evidence had to retain the power to change them.
Holloway had received new information repeatedly.
Ownership sticker.
Minor’s explanation.
Complaint history.
Hands visible.
Board on ground.
Each fact arrived.
His conclusion barely moved.
Pride then joined suspicion.
That combination produced the shove.
One summer afternoon, nearly ten years after the incident, Isaiah and Jalen returned to Harrison together.
Renee came too, though she claimed she was only bringing lunch.
The bowl had been repainted.
Most of the graffiti visible in the old video was gone beneath newer layers.
The exact place Jalen had fallen looked like every other section of worn concrete.
That surprised him.
He had imagined memory would preserve geography.
It did not.
Children skated over the spot constantly.
Nobody knew.
A white police officer stood near the entrance talking with a recreation employee.
Jalen noticed immediately.
His body still registered uniforms before his conscious mind did.
The officer eventually walked toward the bowl.
Jalen watched.
A teenage boy had left a backpack near a bench.
The officer picked it up.
“Anybody know whose this is?”
Three skaters pointed toward a kid on the ramp.
The boy raised one hand.
“Mine.”
The officer held it out.
“Cool. Somebody thought it was abandoned.”
The teenager rolled over.
Took the bag.
“Thanks.”
“Yep.”
The officer walked away.
Nothing happened.
Jalen smiled.
Isaiah noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”