When Auntie Nora saw me, with my jaw and lip all puffed up, clothes dirty and disheveled, and scratches on my arms from the concrete, she leaped up from her sofa and squealed, “Fish! Baby, who did this to you?” The concern and care melted my hard facade, and the tears gushed. I couldn’t get the answer out. She scowled at her son and asked him the question.

“These girls she was jumping rope with,” he said, hunching his shoulders.

While Auntie Nora patched me up, Meechie stumbled through the door, his friend holding him up; he was in worse shape. I thought my aunt was going to faint. “Oh my God! Tim!” Her voice seemed to fill the entire house then, and Uncle Tim appeared, ready to fight.

He saw me and Meechie, and then he understood the panic in her voice.

I had skinned knees and my side hurt, but my brother’s right eye was swollen shut, his nose slanted a little bit, and he was holding his side. What bothered me the most, though? His Raiders cap was on his head, twisted to the right. It seemed like a hat would be the first thing you’d lose if you got jumped. Auntie Nora drove us to the hospital, and Uncle Tim rushed back to the building to get Mama.

Once we were all at the hospital together, Mama went to Meechie’s room, and I stayed back in the waiting room with my aunt, uncle, and cousin.

“Why weren’t you two together?” Auntie Nora asked her son.

“He didn’t want to play the game with us,” he told her. And it was true, Meechie wasn’t really into video games.

“Why didn’t you stay with him?” Auntie Nora asked. TJ looked at his shoes.

Uncle Tim rescued him, and said, “Meechie was probably on Perry with Manny.”

TJ didn’t say anything, just stared back at them, not giving Meechie up. I didn’t know what Perry Street or Manny meant, but it seemed to answer something for them all.

“Did they jump Manny?” Auntie Nora asked.

“No,” Uncle Tim said.

TJ’s face wanted to say so much, but even though he and Meechie weren’t tight, no one wanted to be called a snitch. Mama appeared in the waiting room and told us that we could come see him. Meechie sat up on a thin bed, his chest bandaged, nose wrapped, an eye still closed and purple. We just looked at him, like a creature we didn’t know. Only Mama and Auntie Nora dared to touch him and throw sympathetic looks his way.