“On the way up the stairs, I kept running our stash spots through my head: milk box in the kitchen pantry. Hall closet in flowered sheets. Wall behind Gail bed? Peach kept a shank in the mattress, but I knew she had it on her that time of day. I tried to hop up them twelve flights of stairs without stopping, but my chest started burning. And anyway, I knew it was too late.”

She stopped and looked over at me and said, “I always thought that if we got raided, I could do my part to keep everybody safe and out of jail. Maybe then my family would treat me different.”

We both stared out the car window for a second, lost in our own reflections. It was sad to think about living in a family with so many siblings and none of them spent any time with you, expressing affection. I thought about my one brother, and how before he left us for the streets, he was kind. I felt his love. Stacia’s childhood was full of rejection and hurt. Thinking about it all in my car that day, I was grateful that she didn’t end up like her siblings.

She cut into my daydream when she said, “Police was all over our living room and blood splashed on the back of the couch. Then I see him; Sweat laying on the floor, on top of the glass that used to be a table, and he dead. His arms all off to the side, a leg bent back behind him. His white tee soaked red like it ain’t ever been no other color. Eyes looking at the ceiling. I want to go over there and put him back together, make him come back to life. I hear the police hollering shit like ‘Get her out of here,’ and ‘Kid! There’s a kid!’ but I’m stuck to the floor and thinking in slow motion. I get my head to turn and everywhere I look, police all in our shit.

“They in the pantry, they at the hall, they coming back from our bedrooms with bags of drugs. One of them got a sawn-off shot gun. I know it’s Gail’s, and that if she alive, she ain’t coming out of jail no time soon. I try to look back at my big brother over there laying in all that blood, but somebody pushing me out the door, out of my home, again, and that was the last time I was in 1502.”

My eyes were moist with tears, but her entire face was wet. I reached across her and grabbed some fast-food napkins out of the glove box for her. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. I tried to stare straight ahead because I didn’t want to embarrass her.

When she finished wiping and blowing, I tried to look over at her, say something comforting, but she started up again.