Jojo's lip shook. "But I said JojoRex."
"I made JojoRex. You want to blame somebody for the name, blame me." Malik wiped his brother's face with the cuff of his hoodie. "And you hit the red button. You know who told you to do that?"
"You."
"Me. And you did it. When nobody was listening. You did it exactly right." He pulled Jojo in again. "You're the reason I know anything."
His mother got out of the passenger side. She looked thinner. She stood by the Lincoln's door with one hand on it, as if she needed permission to come any farther. Behind Malik, the parsonage screen door creaked, and he knew without turning that his grandmother was standing in it.
He and his mother sat on the back steps that afternoon while Lucius taught Jojo to keep a scorecard at the kitchen table.
"I said I didn't want you here," Clara said. She was looking at the crepe myrtles. "I said I need you gone. That was a lie, and I told it on purpose, and that's worse than a lie I told by accident. I picked the thing that would hurt you most, because I knew it would work."
"It worked," Malik said.
"I know."
"You made me feel like I was the problem. I lay in your old bed for a week thinking I was the problem."
She shut her eyes. He saw the words land on the exact place her own letters had come from.
"I'd have stayed," he said. "If you told me. I'd have stayed and stood there."
"I know, baby. That's why."
He was quiet. A mockingbird ran through every song it knew in the crepe myrtle and started over.
"I'm still mad," he said.