IT WAS TRULY October in Chicago, because when Nakesha and I stepped outside the school building we shivered under the white sun. That time of the year, noisy blackbirds all joined wings like loud, excited schoolkids on a field trip holding hands. Normally, I didn’t even notice them. I looked up, and there they were, making the only letter of the alphabet seen every year in the sky, all over the world. We were walking north, because the V pointed behind us. It was the first time I had looked up at the sky in what seemed at that moment like years.

“Damn, I forgot my sweater,” I suddenly remembered, knowing I would have to explain its whereabouts to Ma if she noticed.

“You wanna go back and get it?” Nakesha asked me.

“Girl, I ain’t going back in that tired building.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulder and pulling me in close.

We walked together like this beyond the three-story school building that consumed half a block, past the schoolyard disintegrating to a junkyard, and onto a busy city corner holding over a hundred kids who either had nowhere to go or did not want to go where they could. The hour after school was a chaotic and dangerous maelstrom, a time when disagreements sparked during the day were able to finally escalate into fullblown physical confrontations. Luckily, police cars remained until the multitude thinned. It was a tense hour, but if anybody had learned how to watch their back it was me. More than a few kids had been shot and killed over the years. Their shredded faces and chests were enough to frighten the innocence out of us, but weren’t enough to earn a sound bite on the evening news. Perfect, permanent maroon circles on the sidewalk marked the most violent victims’ falls, and after a few sorrowful weeks of reverence everybody usually forgot and started to walk over the circles again like they weren’t even there.