CHAPTER 10 #4
“Mama—” my voice caught. Her head snapped quick.
“Where they at?” Panic kicked the door down.
“Mama, I had them—” I started.
“Summer, don’t play wit’ me!” her words strained. Before the sentence landed she pivoted, her body cutting a path back through the noise. Shay spun around too.
“Whatchu mean they gone?” she hissed, eyes scanning the crowd.
The world redlined, like a deafening white noise that somehow hollowed everything out. Cold panic claimed the space.
“Sinceer!” Mama called.
“Saiyd!”
Dead air. The crowd kept its mindless rhythm, a human tide that didn't care who was missing. Shay didn't wait for permission, she shoved into the current. Pushing people and getting aggressive, like a mama bear.
"Move," she commanded. She was a blur of motion, her eyes sharpened to a point, stitching a path through the noise. I stayed close to Mama, heart beating out of my chest.
“Check ova there,” Shay called back, pushing through a group near the vendor stands.
“I don’t see ‘em either!” yelled Mia over the chaos. Mama’s fingers dug into my skin, anchoring me to the spot.
"Don't you move," she commanded, her eyes darting through the faces in a desperate rhythm. She was hunting for them, and pleading with a god she hadn't spoken to in years.
“I see ‘em!” Shay’s voice hit us, grounding the panic and pulling us back from the edge.
We spun around. Shay had them both, one hand clutching Saiyd’s collar like a lifeline while her other hand held Sinceer steady.
Saiyd was smiling, unbothered, exactly what you would expect from a kid who didn't know how close they had come to the fire.
“I was lookin’ at tha basketball stuff!” he confessed while pointing, to him nothing happened.
Sinceer stayed hushed, a small point of stillness in the chaos. His grip on Shay’s hand so tight, you would have thought he was trying to fuse their skin together.
“I told him to stay with me,” Sinceer affirmed calmly.
Mama didn’t waste the breath. She hit the concrete hard as she dropped, her arms sweeping both of them in to shield them against the world.
“You don’t eva run off like dat,” she spoke gentle, but her voice was rattling.
Saiyd gave a sharp, frantic nod,
"Yes ma’am. I'm sorry."
Mama didn't let go. She kept them pinned there for an extra second of borrowed time. She stood up, pushing a long, tired exhale into the hot air. Shay’s gaze tracked between the boys and Mama.
"Okay enough wit’ tha mushy stuff. I got ‘em, they good." she stated.
Mama mouthed, a slow, rhythmic acknowledgment.
"I know."
With that exchange, they shifted. Not back to normal, but close enough.
The fireworks didn’t wait. The first one tore through the black, a violent snap and the sky was busting apart at the seams.
BOOM! BOOM!
Saiyd’s fingers tracing the white-hot trails in the dark.
Sinceer didn't move an inch. He was decoding the sky, mesmerized by how something that sounded like a war zone could look like a masterpiece.
Shay drifted back into our orbit, her eyes still scanning with cold precision.
Me and Mia took it all in from the stairs, the courthouse concrete warm against us as the sky went loud and bright.
“Did you see that?” Saiyd’s little voice ripping through the static.
“I saw it,” Sinceer’s tone was cool as he answered. Like he was absorbing the impact.
Mama’s mouth twitched into a grin, it carried a warmth that felt earned after the heat of today. More fireworks exploded, reds, blues, gold spilling out across the darkness. People gasping, cheering, kids pointing like they was trying to grab the light right out the air.
I leaned back, eyes tracking the fire above, my chest full of the city's vibration.
For a second, the world’s gears stopped grinding.
Even Shay let a razor-edged smile cut through her usual mask.
I took it all in, every part of it. The panic, the lifeline, the fragile thread holding us together.
That’s the city for you. My city. Philly.
Breathtaking in its light, but always holding a cold reminder of how quickly the dark can snatch it all back.
We made the haul back home, feet dragging and sweat-soaked clothes.
The bus fell into a weary silence, a temporary sanctuary for the exhausted.
But the block was still breathing, and it greeted us with its familiar roar.
That noise that told me I was home. Kids owning the sidewalk and fireworks still punching holes in the night air.
“Summer, come on!” Mia hollered over the roar.
Mama let out a long, heavy exhale.
“Stay close to tha house!” I didn't wait for the echo, I hit a full sprint.
Sinceer and Saiyd took off in a blur of motion, dashing through the heat before Mama could say anything.
“HEYYY—!” she called after them.
“Don’t run in dat street!”
Too late. They was out there screaming and chasing each other through smoke and sparks, for them life was a game.
Mario’s older cousin was lighting things way too big for the block.
“Move back eerbody!” he yelled, lighting another one.
It shot sideways, straight toward the sidewalk. The herd scattered. I tripped over my own feet, nearly eating the pavement before I snapped back. A stuttering laugh spilled out of me, not because anything was funny, but because the adrenaline had nowhere else to go.
Shay grabbed my arm rough, her grip the only thing keeping me from dissolving back into the noise.
“You goofy, watch where you goin’!” She scowled with a heavy-lidded roll of her eyes.
Mia held the perimeter, tracking the chaos from a distance, ensuring she stayed outside the blast radius.
“Girl they crazy,” She let the words fly.
Another firework popped, too close this time, sparks hitting Mr. Jenkin’s steps.
“AYEE!”
He erupted from the chair, his body snapping upright in a fraction of a second. I never seen him have that kind of speed.
“Y’all burn my house down, I’m callin’ ya’ mama!”
The whole block erupted in a raw, riot of laughter. Even Mr. Jenkins cracked, a rare, rough-edged laugh that hadn't seen the light in years.
The pressure dropped and none of the wreckage mattered. Not the concrete, not the bills, not the gaps in our lives. We wasn't counting scars or empty pockets, we was just there. It wasn’t much, but we had that pulse. A small, bright fuse burning in the dark.
Saiyd tried to grab a sparkler too early,
“Ahh!” he yelped, shaking his hand in the air rapidly.
“You gotta wait!” Shay complained, snatching it from him.
“You don’t jus’ touch stuff!”
“I’m okay!” he responded quick, trying not to look scared.
Mia added with a half-smile,
“Yo’ he’s wild.”
“Always girl.” I gave a small lift of my shoulders.
A firework fractured the air right over the twins’ heads. They dropped to the ground, a synchronized flinch that spoke of too many loud nights on our block. Before the echo died, they surged back to their feet, the laughter bubbling up through the haze. Fear was a ghost that couldn't catch them yet.
Up on the steps, Mama was a statue, her eyes burning holes in the dark as she kept us locked in her sights.
“Okay now! Time for the boys to come inside,” she called out. Arms crossed in a heavy-duty ‘don't even try it’ pose.
The night was a collage of sound, shells breaking and the overlapping mess of the street.
I looked at the faces around me, Shay, Mia, the block all lit up in a spectrum of red and gold.
It was a rare, perfect alignment. Whatever storm was coming didn't matter.
For those few hours, the world was ours.
Just kids in the smoke. And that was more than enough.
HARD LABOR
Mama worked third shift, so when she was gone Shay was in charge. Or at least that’s what it was supposed to be. Shay’s kind of ‘in charge’ wasn’t the same as Mamas. Mama had rules and consequences for breaking those rules. Shay had unspoken understandings.
“You do whatchu want,” words falling flat as her shoulders gave a lazy shrug.
“Jus’ don’t have me lookin’ crazy.” Her posture giving heavy, who cares? vibes.
Which really meant don’t get caught, and if you do, don’t say her name.
The house was looser when Mama wasn’t there, like the walls relaxed a little.
Shay let the TV scream past its curfew. Snacks was ransacked, and the front door kept a rhythm of their own.
Sinceer and Saiyd claimed the hallway as their own personal racetrack, pushing the limit until Shay threw a warning their way.
“Sit down somewhere,” a practiced bark that meant she had done her job. They never listened.
Shay would ghost us periodically, her ‘one minute’ breaks on the stoop stretching into an hour of dead air.
I was stuck in the middle, half-babysitting and half-faking like I wasn’t waiting for her return.
It wasn’t Mama’s playbook, it was way more reckless.
A fragile freedom that only worked for Shay if the silence held, and everyone stayed in their lane.
I knew Shay wasn’t going to check, wasn’t going to call Ms. Keisha, wasn’t going to ask too many questions. So, I told her I was staying the night at Mia’s. Her eyes stayed glued to whatever mattered more than me. She flicked her wrist.
“Aight, go head,” she threw lazily, shooing me like a stray shadow.
“Jus’ be back before Mama get home from work.”
Shay took a masterclass in making me feel invisible.
Labor Day on the block wasn’t a holiday, it was a deadline.
The hottest July in city history had faded into a humid, golden September afternoon, and the air smelled of the dusty scent of school supplies waiting in backpacks.
The harmony of ‘Thug Life’ bleeding from a pair of speakers.
Leaves scraped across the sidewalk, caught in the wind, gathering in corners, like they didn’t know where to settle.
We was kicking it on the stoop in front of Mia’s door, she leaned in close.
“Let’s go down tha otha way,” her eyes tracking the street looking for the one loose thread that would pull the whole night apart.
I followed her stare to the next block. The one Mama warned us to stay away from. There was a stillness over there that wasn’t the same, like a predator waiting in the weeds.
“Girl, you know my Mama told us not ta go down there,” I reminded her, although I was thinking about it.
With a dismissive shift of her shoulders, Mia pushed herself off the step.