I pat Dre's face. "Dre, wake up! C'mon, man! Wake up!"
He don't move.
He don't answer me.
He'll never answer me again
"They put a white sheet over him and left him on the street. He wasn't a person no more. He was a crime scene."
When Faye asks Mav if, after seventeen years of throwing away her whole life for him, she has failed him.
"Have I failed you, Maverick?"
Her soft voice hit me hard as a brick. I swallow the lump in my throat. "No, ma'am".
"You're sure? Because it feels like it. I've tried my hardest, God knows I have, and yet here we are. Two babies before you're eighteen. It's bad enough your father convinced me to let you join a gang for protection." She shake her head. "Some mother I am. Loving you isn't enough. I haven't been enough."
When King pushes his gun in Mav's chest, and Mav knows that he has just lost his best friend:
"I don't know the person staring at me. It damn sure ain't my best friend."
"I think I'm losing another brother, and this hurt just as bad as putting one in the ground."
Especially the way they fall apart. There's no declaration of "You're not my friend!". Time passes, you slip away, and then one day, you just know without a word. Just like in real life.
Seeing Brenda, Khalil, and Dalvin years before the former got addicted to crack and the latter two were murdered is bound to make readers of The Hate U Give shed a few tears.
It’s even more bittersweet when you note how Brenda’s described as “the life of the party when there ain’t a party.”
