I thought it was an idle threat. I didn’t think about the “we” that she mentioned, and I didn’t believe she’d beat up Tonya, but what I didn’t realize was that Stacia was growing up fast, and that summer, she’d gotten tired of playing kid games with me and Precious, and that she wanted so desperately to be more like her big sisters. I had no clue just how far she’d go to gain their approval and step into her place as a Buchanan gangster.

Thirteen
The Elevator

Around the first week of our sixth-grade school year, something happened to Stacia. It still doesn’t make much sense to me, how I just happened to be with her at the time. It was the weekend. Mama sent me to the store with her Link card and a list as long as my arm, so the bag was heavier than usual. When I got through the breezeway and saw that the elevator door was still open, I ran on, even though it was packed; there was even a boy with a ten-speed bike. I slid into a small space. When I think back to that day, I don’t really know why I got in the elevator. But a couple years later, when I am a teenager, the superstitious side of me will run wild, and I will remember the moment as something spiritual, as if God nudged me toward the open door, led me into that metal box.

Once in the elevator, I asked if someone could press three. So many people kissed their teeth, it sounded like the intro to a rap song. Someone summed up the sounds, and said, “Shit, you could’ve walked.”

No one pressed my floor, and when the doors opened, I was on the nine. I stepped off the elevator to let people out, and before I walked back on, I looked over at the stairs. I could’ve run down them, but I decided to get back on. I didn’t look around at who was in the elevator because even today, most adult elevator etiquette seems to suggest you never make eye contact in small spaces. When the doors opened again on the ten, this old lady took her sweet time walking off. The boy with the bike left too.