“No, Ayo, now. We can’t let her find out Kingston’s gone and her mom didn’t say anything. We have to fix this for Nai. If we don’t, she’ll be devastated.”

I study his face. There’s something more than casual concern in his eyes. It’s more serious than that. The only time I have ever seen him this worked up was when his autographed Birth of the Cool poster got water damage. This might be even more important than that.

“You really like her, huh?”

He shrugs it off, but we both know he’s falling hard.

“So, can we ditch the last class and go now? Shawn has practice. It’s just us two.”

“For my girl, hell yeah. Let’s go.”

We turn up at Ms. Harris’s apartment, but no one is home. Thankfully, her neighbor directs us to the church a few blocks away. Ms. Harris doesn’t go to church often; she normally only attends during major holidays. She always said, “God is like family—you don’t have to see them all the time, but it’s good to check in a few times a year.”

We peer inside the small storefront of the makeshift church. It’s half full, mostly women. The pastor is saying something about not letting ego stop you from getting your blessings. We scan for Ms. Harris. I find her because, as always, she’s the best-dressed woman in the room. I point her out to Dell and we agree to wait until the service is over before we approach.

When the service begins to clear out, we make our way toward Ms. Harris. Before we even start to talk, she ambushes us with questions about Nai.

“Is she okay? Did something happen? Oh God, where is she?”

It takes a few minutes for us to convince her that Nai is fine and that we just came to speak to her. Once she finally believes us, she makes us go back into the nearly empty church, as the wind has picked up and fall in New York City is no longer charming.

The pastor sees me and comes over. He tells me that the church sent up prayers and that they have been by to visit Mom. He jokes that the line was so long outside her room that there was a waiting list. He leaves after Ms. Harris promises that she’ll lock up. Now it’s just the three of us. On the way here, Dell and I agreed to go slow and ease into what we want to say.

“Yo, why you do’n my girl dirty?” Dell barks.

Wow.