“You know she nasty, right?”

I kissed my teeth, thinking Stacia was making up lies. I grabbed some paper towels, but she snatched them out of my hand.

“I’m so serious, Fee! People gone think we like that too! You don’t know nothing about that girl.”

“I ain’t know nothing about you neither,” I told her, in a much smaller voice. Ms. Pierce would burst in any minute because Stacia’s voice was on boom. She looked hurt, and before she could recover, I rushed out of the bathroom.

It wasn’t entirely true; I knew a lot about Stacia before I asked her to play rope. I knew that she came from a family of gangsters, and people all over the school—every grade—were afraid to have a Buchanan in their class. But I reached out anyway, knowing good and well that she could turn on me, any day, like some pet that was cuddly and a great companion, then up and bit you just because.

She wouldn’t let it go, so at lunch, I told her part of the truth. “She needed some friends.”

“Ain’t have to be us,” she said, still looking at me with her head tilted and mouth open, the way she did when she wanted to keep an argument going. I just ate my lunch and talked to Precious, who couldn’t stay calm and had blushed all red because of our heated discussion. So I looked at Stacia and told her, “I want to be her friend. You ain’t got to be.”

She made a face that said I know, and we left it at that.

That should’ve been a clue.

Maybe I could’ve worked harder that day to change her mind about Tonya. Or maybe I should’ve done what she said, told Tonya that she couldn’t play with us anymore. Maybe I could’ve done something, anything different. But I liked Tonya’s sweet spirit and thought things would eventually work out for our little friend group. Stacia huffed and puffed and screwed up her face the entire lunch period, but she still showed up to play rope that afternoon, so I thought we were good and she’d gotten over it.

Tonya found us just before the streetlights blinked on. Since I’d first invited her a few weeks prior, she’d come to the square almost every day, but you just never knew what time. It was as if she had a full-time job and adult responsibilities to handle before she could come and play with us. I remember exactly when things changed, and I barely saw her anymore; it was the day that these dudes came and grabbed her.