"Hey, kid. You did real good. What's your name?"
"Bryce."
"Bryce what?"
"Just Bryce."
"You got a phone?"
Bryce holds up the flip phone his mom got him at Family Dollar. Daniel writes the number on a small notepad.
"You go to school around here?"
"Carver Elementary, fourth grade."
"All right. You go on home, Bryce. You did the right thing."
The ambulance pulls away. Bryce stands alone at the bus stop with the velvet pouch in his pocket and rain running down his face. He walks home.
The Bennett apartment is on the third floor of a brick walk-up on Booker Avenue. The hallway smells like somebody else's dinner. The third stair from the top creaks; Bryce knows where to step to avoid the creak: second step from the wall, just past the railing bracket.
He turns his key. His mother is home: Tanisha Bennett, 33, hotel housekeeper, tired in a way that lives in her shoulders. She is in her uniform, sitting at the kitchen table, and she is hiding something with her forearm when he walks in.