CHAPTER 15 #2
High school sat on the horizon. My freshman year should have been a monument, a grand opening of a new chapter. I tried to build it up in my head, to give it the weight it deserved. But the block was a stain on my heels; a reminder that I was never out of the reach of the concrete.
One day me and Mia walked down to corner store to grab some sugar. We had ran out a few days before and the boys was bugging me about making some Kool-Aid.
“Yo, what’s up witchu?” she asked.
“Jus’ been workin’.”
“Girl, you look exhausted,” she said, studying my face a little too close.
“I’m fine, jus’ a lot on my mind,” I answered quick.
She didn’t push, but Mia notices everything.
I never told her about Mama though. Not directly.
I couldn’t. Some things sound crazy when you say them out loud.
They sound smaller, or worse, heavier. Besides she wouldn’t understand this, not really.
So, I kept it. All of it. Carried it between work and home, between who I was supposed to be and who I had to be.
Every day, I got up and did it again. Because on my block, you don’t get time to ‘figure it out.’
You step into it. And hope you don’t get crushed under the weight of it.
NEWBIE
The first day of high school I played in the mirror that morning, adjusting my clothes, fixing my hair, telling myself this was a fresh start.
“You got this,”
I said under my breath.
Overbrook High School towered over everything around it.
Four floors of old red brick, like some kind of fortress.
Tall windows that spit sunlight back across the cracked front steps where kids crowded in clusters before the first bell.
Inside, the hallways was chaos. Bodies moving in every direction.
Lockers slamming. Voices bouncing off the walls.
Like somebody shook an ant farm and let the ants run wild.
I moved through it, trying to match it. Trying to look like I belonged there.
I was in the main hallway clutching my schedule so tight the paper wrinkled in my hand. My brain kept repeating the same thing over and over.
Just walk. Don’t look lost.
One thing the block taught me early, show no fear. People smell fear like sharks’ sense blood in the water, and once they catch that scent, they start closing in.
Mia slid up beside me smooth as always, bamboo earrings swinging against her neck, like little gold pendulums.
“Girl, you look like somebody dropped you off at tha wrong damn school,” she laughed.
“Whateva, I’m trynna find my class,” I mumbled.
She snatched the schedule straight out my hand.
“Relax,” she said, scanning it quick.
“We got homeroom togetha.”
“Come on,” she said, hooking her arm through mine.
High school had its own ecosystem. The seniors moved through the halls, like they owned the building.
Loud. Confident. Juniors was already halfway out the door and into the world.
Sophomores walked around like they cracked the code after surviving freshman year.
And freshmen like us? We tried not to get eaten alive.
Lunch rolled around, and the cafeteria was worse than a subway station during rush hour. Trays crashing. Chairs scraping. Music leaking out of headphones. People yelling across the room like the person they was talking to wasn’t three feet away. Mia spotted an empty table and dragged me toward it.
“Come on, sit down before somebody else grab it,” she demanded.
We barely got settled when she leaned toward me.
“Yo… you see him?”
“Who?”
She gestured toward a group of boys sitting by the windows. Tall. Fresh haircuts. Fly athletic gear. They stood apart from the rest of the room.
“Dat’s Malik,” Mia whispered.
“He’s starting varsity already.”
“And?”
She stared at me, her expression saying I had lost my mind.
“And you needa stop actin’ like you blind.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m ain’t worried ‘bout no boys right now.”
Mia snorted.
“Yeah, everybody say dat.” She grinned.
“Until tha right one walk up and start talkin’.”
Malik was leaning back in his chair, long legs stretched out under the table, laughing at something one of his teammates said. Broad shoulders. His eyes drifted across the cafeteria, right in our direction.
“See?” Mia said, catching it instantly.
“Girl please.” I grabbed my milk carton just to give my hands something to do.
“You always bein’ extra.”
Across the cafeteria a boy started pounding beats on a table.
A crowd gathered. Laughter rising. The whole place start buzzing, like a live wire.
High school was a just another version of the block.
New rules. New players. New dangers. Everybody trying to figure out who they wanted be, before somebody else decided it for them.
Teachers talked about college, assuming it was already written in our future.
Like you automatically just walked out of high school and straight into something better.
Guidance counselors passed out glossy pamphlets, with smiling faces, big campuses, scholarships and SATs text printed in bold.
I didn’t have time to sit around daydreaming about what I wanted to be.
Part of me liked school. The quiet of the classroom.
The feeling that maybe, just maybe, there was a world bigger waiting for me past the edges of Parrish Street.
A life that didn’t reek of poverty and struggle.
And another part of me felt guilty. Like me wanting something better meant leaving everything behind. Like I was wrong just by sitting there.
While the teachers ran their mouths about careers, my thoughts stayed stuck on the block. I couldn't focus on some distant ‘tomorrow’ when today was so cramped. Walking away from Mama and the twins was a fantasy I couldn't afford to chase.
When the final bell rang, the building emptied fast. Kids poured out into the streets, like the building had been holding its breath all day.
When I got home, the twins was outside. Saiyd running full speed up and down the street, sweat darkening his shirt, ball slamming hard against the pavement.
Two older boys stood near him, laughing, talking, showing him little moves like they was training him for something bigger than a pickup game.
Sinceer claimed his spot by the curb. His paperback under his arm remained closed, but his mind stayed wide open.
I tracked his stare. He was clocked into Saiyd, but Saiyd’s head wasn’t in the game. His focus kept snagging on the corner, where the hustlers ran shop. Those boys held the keys to the city, and Saiyd was looking for a way in.
“You should tell him to stop hanging around them,”
Sin suggested, keeping his eyes on the street.
“He jus’ watchin’,” I argued. He sighed.
“Yeah, that’s how it starts.”
I stepped into the house and the tension stayed outside. Mama was on the couch, worn down but holding her ground. She clear and sober. That effort alone outweighed every mistake she had made all year.
“Hey Sum, was tha first day good?” she asked.
“Yeah, it was aight I guess.”
She nodded hard, like she needed that answer more than I did.
“Stay focused in dat school,” she sat a plate in front of me.
“You hear me?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She looked at me a little longer than usual.
“High school is tha beginnin’ of your life,” she spoke with a desperate certainty, like she was trying to force the world to bend to her will.
I nodded again, an accomplice to her hope. We knew the stakes. High school offered a glimpse of a different world. But the block was right outside the door, counting our breaths, waiting for a slip up.
THE GOOD WITH THE BAD
Mama was taking an afternoon nap. Ms. Janine kept an eye on the twins from her front steps, fanning herself with yesterday’s newspaper while she watched the block, as she always did. I told her I was running to the corner store for milk. She agreed without looking surprised.
The bell above the bodega door rattled when I pushed it open.
The place smelled the way corner stores always do, fried grease, cheap candy, and stale air.
The cold buzz of the refrigerator coolers.
I grabbed the milk, and I froze for a minute, my eyes locked on the candy rack.
The twins was still small enough to believe a sugar rush could outrun the collapse of our house.
I mean I wasn't saving the world. I was buying five minutes of quiet.
Blue Skittles for Sai and a Hershey chocolate bar for Sin, he’s so plain.
I handled dinner that night. I didn’t want to, but someone had to. I served up a struggle meal. Hot dogs, mac and cheese, and a few bruised apple slices. The twins didn't utter a word. They recognized the effort for what it was, a temporary patch on a sinking ship.
After we ate, I checked on Mama. She hadn't moved an inch. I posted in the shadows of her doorway, watching. A pulse. A breath. The bare minimum of being alive, but for tonight, it was enough.
I faced our new normal head-on, and I was proud of myself. When the foundations gave out and everyone else went down, I stayed on my feet. The anchor by default, holding the structure together by sheer force of will.
The house had settled into that late night quiet.
The eerie silence that sits heavy in the corners, like the house itself is tired.
I walked back into the room I shared with the twins.
Saiyd was already knocked out. Flat on his back with one arm thrown across his eyes, like he had passed out mid-battle with sleep.
Sinceer was still awake. Under his blanket with a flashlight glowing against the pages of a comic book.
The beam cut a small circle of light through the dark.
“You supposed ta be ‘sleep,” I whispered.
He lowered the book slowly.
“I’m worried about Mama, is she okay?”
That one question landed with more force than anything else that day. Kids don't go looking for answers unless they already smelled the smoke in the house. He was desperate for a lie to believe in.
“Yeah, she’s aight. Don’t worry Sin. I got us.”
He didn’t answer right away, just studied my face. He was trying to figure out if I believed what I had just said. Gently he closed the comic book.
“Well good. We need her. And you know what else?”
“What’s dat?” I questioned.
“We need you too.”