Patty-Cake stopped cold this time. My obstinacy alone was enough to make her second-guess herself. She tried, unsuccessfully, to bring the ball back to her court.

“Why her shoes leaning over like trees ready to fall down?”

“Timber!” Wally shouted, melting their tension into comedy. But I remained still. I sensed the chink in my opponent’s armor and used it as my fortress. We stared each other down like the first to fold would implode. I cried inside; the fight had been defused before it began, yet more troubling than a catfight was the fragility of remembrance. How quickly confidences, jokes, and conversation shared—even if only over a lunch break—could become moments too insignificant to dig up compassion. Patty-Cake and I stared at each other like we were strangers. A single tear slipped out of my eye. I raised my hand to slap it away—hard. So hard a couple kids winced. When I saw their reactions, I slapped my face harder in the same place again. And again. And again, until I felt a handprint smarting on my face. The boys howled while the girls just frowned.

“Oh hell no … that bitch is crazy,” one girl hissed through Bubblelicious.

“Come on, baby, she ain’t even worth it,” Tyshon finally declared, jamming an Afro pick into his scalp after wielding it like a harpoon. He grabbed Patty-Cake’s arm and led her, finally, past her two targets. Sensing the curtain closing on her latest performance, she began an encore. She flailed her arms and tried to wriggle her torso out of Tyshon’s tight grip.

“Naw, don’t hold me back. Don’t hold me back!”

“Let the bitch go!” Nakesha suddenly screamed, and again the mob faltered. I still had not moved one inch. My balled fists remained tight, my back stiff. Its point made, the handprint’s sting vanished swiftly as a poltergeist. I wanted to smile because I had swept them away with just one funnel of my mind energy. It took the short yelp of an approaching CPD car to break the spell the mob had woven on me. The crowd hurried on. Rightfully demoted, Patty-Cake now lagged behind rather than in front. Patricia had not a shred of good-home training left in her bones. She suddenly turned around and spit at the ground. Nakesha and I just stood there with our hands on our hips, daring any one of them to look back, until the crew became a rambling speck against the horizon.

I had been dealt the hand of a life that left the living wondering why they had ever been born. It was a life choked by collision and battles: one after another, rolling up on me as forceful and determined as tides eroding a small island. I wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen.