After it’d been several months, she found me online, sent me friend requests, trying her best to get me to talk to her. But I enjoyed her misery. By the second year, it was just too hard to think about what happened in those buildings, so I tucked the journal in a box, put that in a closet, and threw some things on top of it. Time passed, and she stopped reaching out. Then something happened; I started to feel guilt. It pissed me off, but I knew that I had to talk to her, eventually give back her incriminating tales.

Thirty-One
Ed’s House

September 10, 1999

2:02 p.m.

Ed stay on this street of houses that make a U shape, not stacked up like projects.

They say I met him before, but I was a baby. The minute I look at him, I can tell right away he one of us. Quan look like a little boy standing in front of him. Ed, a foot taller, got muscles and tattoos and a head the size of a Rot. Next to him is some chick, and two girls who look my age, but that’s about it. They dressed all dumb, everything covered, shorts too long. Look like they going to a church thing. They got some long hair. It ain’t no good hair, but it’s long, at they shoulders. I decide right away not to like them bitches.

Ed and Quan do that handshake that turn into a hug, but they don’t let go like you supposed to. Quan crying. I don’t know what to do. Ed look over at his girl.

“Take them somewhere.” She grab Moon, Jet, and Ty, and her girls, and look at me. It’s just a look, not bossy, or I woulda snapped. I just turn my head, and she know I ain’t going no damned where. They all walk to this big truck parked outside. Ed look me in the eye, and I tell him with no words that I ain’t no little ass kid. We go in the house and sit down. Quan say, “Sweat dead. Police shot him.”

As soon as the words come out, I see him again, his arms and legs spread all over the place, same way he sleep. Ed drop his head, start rubbing his waves over and over. When he look up, his face wet. I find out Sweat was Ed’s favorite too, that Ed the reason Sweat loved books so much. We talk about Sweat later, after Quan go back to the block where he gone stay with some girl. Quan tell him that everybody else in jail. When he say it, that shit hit me hard. All my sisters, Roady, Gail, all locked up. Gone be for a while cause Quan say they all had weapon on them.