I stared out the window, watching people move out of the other building on our block, 4947. I had to look through those child-safety bars, and it made me think about Meechie again.

I could see all the way downtown to the Sears Tower. Its bunny ears pointed straight up and listened to the city. Usually, when the White Sox hit a home run, you could hear the fireworks, but by the end of August, after everything in our lives had fallen apart and none of 4946 remained, I could actually see the colors popping up in the sky.

It was strange to have a view of these things: skyscrapers from downtown and fireworks from Comiskey Park; they didn’t belong in my neighborhood. You were supposed to get on a bus and go see these attractions, but downtown seemed to be moving closer to us.

On the porch, I’d look at the beautiful skyline and the playground and people moving around, but not without that gate in my face; at Robert Taylor, we were always watching the world through those bars. Like we were in captivity and wouldn’t ever be free.

By the start of the new school year, all remains of 4946 had vanished, including Tonya’s mother. Rochelle wasn’t the kind of tenant who got a Section 8 voucher; so she was probably squatting in another building. I hoped that Tonya—somehow—had a foster family and was living in a better situation.

The construction workers vanished too, heading north on State Street to begin demolition on another high-rise while we vacated our building. As people moved out of 4950, I marveled at the long semitrucks that rolled up, some days two or three at a time. More windows were boarded up with black wooden slabs, replacing colorful, flowing curtains. Hypes and gangbangers and random strangers from God-knows-where snatched them down, lived and worked in those vacant apartments.

Entire floors went quiet, sometimes pitch-black. This is how my block turned into a ghost town. This is how 4950, full of laughing kids and music with too much bass, became a haunted house, the essence of the families who occupied those apartments still floating around the wide-open spaces of the playground and the porches. I could almost hear Stacia screaming, “First!” Precious, “Second!” and then Tonya mumbling, “Third,” just happy to be in the game, not caring that she had the last spot. This is how I left Robert Taylor: in the state of a haunted mansion.

The new school year started, and I began the seventh grade. I had Ms. Pierce again, because she kept her classes for three years, sixth, seventh, then eighth grade, graduating students she’d molded for three consecutive years. She wouldn’t give Stacia’s seat away. Maybe it was because she missed her; maybe it was because there were no other students she needed to watch so closely.