I wandered around the house deep in thought until I heard a familiar sound coming from outside: the tick-tick-tick-tick of a double Dutch game. I ran to the window and saw a handful of girls jumping. They were new to the block. I had one friend who lived directly across the street, but she was visiting family someplace else for the summer.

I watched the unfamiliar girls jump, missing my friends back home. One of them saw me in the window, staring, and she waved me over. “You wanna play?” she called. I nodded.

“You can get Erica’s end,” she said. I turned, and they jumped, and we played for a while. Everything was cool until somebody asked, “Don’t you live in the projects?” Before I could answer, another voice said, “The projects?” Then she looked me up and down and said, “But you so clean.” And just like that, I was mad and ready to fight.

“I’m supposed to be dirty?” I said, a hand on my hip, neck stuck all out, mouth open, channeling Stacia.

The girl had a list and tried to count out several insults, poking out fingers from a curled fist while saying, “I bet you on public aid, you don’t know your daddy—” I looked past the girl at the neat colorful homes that lined LaSalle Street. Those people lived in houses owned by their families. I lived in the projects, where no one owned anything, where we paid our rent with government checks that came in the mail on the first of the month.

I didn’t hear what else she had to say. I just asked her, “You want your ass whupped?” because that’s what Stacia would say.

“What?” she asked, getting in my face. I pushed her. Then when she ran up on me again, I pushed her so hard that she hit the ground. Before she could get up, somebody stole off me, right in the jaw, and I stumbled backward. It looked like the houses on the block were moving, but really, I was falling. The girl who called me dirty was cursing me out, and someone kept kicking me in the side. I felt something wet hit me and was pretty sure it was spit. My cousin and his friends appeared and tried to break up the fight, and everybody from porches and the baseball game down the street came over to see the action.

Other people jumped in the fight, and in the confusion, I got to limp away. Before I made it to Auntie Nora’s porch, I heard someone say, “Cause she from the projects.” That hurt more than those kicks to my side. I wanted to go home. Even though there were bullets popping all over the place and police constantly banging at our door.