He spun around and reached for me. The next thing I knew, I was falling, then sliding down the metal wall into a trash pile of potato chip bags and candy wrappers on the elevator floor. He stared down at me, and said, “Mind your fucking business.” Stacia looked at me, her face rippling with fear. When the door opened on six, he walked off, then looked back at Stacia with a little smile before walking away. I slipped on sticky dirt, trying to get up. We were the only two people in that box, and all you could hear was the elevator moving down, a rattling like a metal snake.

Stacia buttoned her pants with shaky fingers, her face completely wet from tears. I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but I knew she wasn’t. I thought about rubbing her back like Mama did when I cried, but I figured she’d hit me. I didn’t know what to do. The door opened on five, and this other man tried to get on before Stacia could get off, but she pushed past him. I ran off too.

On the way downstairs, I felt sorry for what just happened to her. I paused and looked up through the stairway rails and saw a small hand sliding up the banister.

The next day, when I saw her in the school cafeteria for breakfast, she looked embarrassed and snatched her head away trying to stay tough. I wasn’t scared anymore. She was becoming a whole person, someone who could be hurt, a kid who had feelings, like me.

I wondered if she was acting all tough because she had problems back at the building. I didn’t know if she had to deal with that man all the time. That’s when I had the thought that maybe she needed some friends.

I called her name, and she turned around and looked at me, but instantly, I could tell that she felt shame and didn’t want to talk to me. “My name Fe Fe, your name Stacia, right?” It was stupid; we knew each other’s names from attendance.

“Yeah,” she said, looking away and putting her head down a little.

“That’s Precious,” I said, looking back and pointing toward Precious seated at another table. She knew that too. “We play rope on the three. Can you jump?”

That’s what I thought about on the way down the stairs after running from Stacia, figuring that it was all for nothing, that now, we’d never be friends again, because she thought that I was teasing her for what that man did to her in the elevator. I guess it didn’t come out right, so our lives from then on would be just like our hands on those banisters: moving fast in opposite directions.

Fourteen
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