Excerpt from Witness by Jamel Brinkley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

One afternoon, during a balmy October weekend, the five of us assembled for the first time since school had started up again and took a walk, something we used to do frequently. Call it an act of nostalgia. We stopped outside of the new store just across from the street of brownstones that always placed decently well in the annual Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest, and stood as one, peering in through the clouded windows. A sign said the store was open, but it truly looked nowhere near ready to welcome customers yet. Inside, among towers of large, haphazardly stacked boxes, were intricate arrangements of junk, each of which was surrounded by four low unattached grids of metal wire leaning precariously against one another. A strong sneeze could have sent them all clattering to the floor. Each arrangement contained variations of the same stuff: plastic bins, downy cushions, blankets, bowls, and pellets of dirt. A trio of white people—two women and a man, all wearing tan aprons—moved around slowly within the delicate maze of cardboard and metal, carrying large bags of what appeared to be desiccated grass. As they began to toss the twirling grasses here and there, everything around their feet twitched into motion, the entire floor leaped to life. The cushions weren't cushions at all, we saw, but living things, animals—rabbits—grouped inside of rickety makeshift cages.

We stared as we realized how many there were. About twenty cages, each housing two or three rabbits, so maybe fifty in total. Most of them were hopping around or furiously nibbling, but some settled quickly back into absolute stillness. There was something striking about these in particular, the assurance of their repose, the serene confidence that everything they wanted would eventually and inevitably arrive.

In response to all of this, we slipped easily into our trademark goofiness and banter. Riffing on our old script felt like a form of solace. When Walidah, incredulous, expressed her opinion that the animals were too large to be rabbits, that the somber droop of their ears meant they were something else entirely, Roni told her to shut up. "We all know your ideas about the world still come from cartoons," she teased.

"They are plump, whatever they are," Antonio said, putting his arm around Cherise. He eyed her with the overwrought expression of hunger he had developed during the summer. "You should find out what they eat," he added. "We can put you on their diet."

Cherise, who had always been self-conscious about how narrow she was, watched with a slight frown as the animals ate. She seemed uncertain whether Antonio's words amounted to criticism or encouragement. "Guess they do look happy," she said finally, and then slipped the pleasing fat of her bottom lip into her mouth to suppress a smile.

"They are indeed rabbits," a man's voice announced, "but actually there are guinea pigs and chinchillas too." The voice sounded peculiar, like something massive pressed densely small, both loud and restrained at the same time. The white man with the apron was peeking his head out of the open door. "Come on in, kids," he said. "Let's introduce you to them."

Shrugs. When we followed him inside, the two women were cheesing maniacally at us, and for reasons we couldn't discern they kept nodding their heads. As we separated and looked around, the man explained that the place was actually a rescue, and then he began rattling off the names of the animals ("That's Oreo, that's Marshmallow, Sasha's over there, and that's Balthazar…"), but he spoke too quickly for us to keep up. He had a pronounced underbite and a highly suspect chin beard that might as well have been a glued-on strap of mangled pelt. His face and skull were captivating, to be honest, but it was in our best interest—in the best interest of us—to focus on what made his features hilarious, to imagine his onrush of words as, say, a waterfall flowing over the jagged precipice of his bottom teeth. After naming all the animals for us, he mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that his own name was Cyan. He neglected to introduce the women.

Excerpted from Witness by Jamel Brinkley. Copyright © 2023 by Jamel Brinkley. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.