Precious was right: Tonya needed our prayers, and Stacia knew more than she was saying. But me and Stacia weren’t even friends anymore. Everything was messed up, and I didn’t know how to get us back to the way we were, like earlier in the summer, when we were just a group of girls, and I could fix things with hand games and cheers. Somehow, we were all growing apart; I could feel it, but chose to deny this truth.

Eighteen
Salvation

As we crept toward the end of July, it was so hot that both sweat and conflict dripped nonstop. You couldn’t find a breeze, just sun and ninety-degree weather and heat advisories, telling people to drink lots of water and stay in the house if they didn’t have to go out. Since we were kids, we had to go out. Precious and I played rope with blue lips from freeze pops and drank water even though there was no sugar in it. We jumped with just two people again, like it was the earlier days of our friendship, which made me sad, but I knew we’d lost Stacia forever, and I didn’t dare invite another stranger into the square.

After I was getting used to having just one friend around, Tonya returned. She’d been gone long enough to visit relatives in another state, like maybe she got a chance to see her daddy in Mississippi like she wanted. I couldn’t wait to ask her where she’d been.

“My mama wouldn’t let me come outside,” she said, looking at her shoes. I knew right away that either she or her mama lied to me. I’d snuck up to the ten almost every day, knocking on her door. Sometimes Rochelle would swing the door open; sometimes there was no answer at all.

“You was on punishment?”

She shook her head no.

Precious asked, with a frown, “Then why you have to stay in the house that long?”

“Let’s just play,” Tonya said, grabbing the rope. And that’s when I knew that maybe she wasn’t telling us the truth. We started a game and let ourselves enjoy jumping, the exercise smoothing out the awkward tension, the game bringing us back to the joys of childhood. I missed Stacia, who was now spending all her time in the playground with her sisters. She dressed like an older girl with tighter, more revealing clothes and hair extensions. I thought that she’d just found a new friend circle with her sister and her sister’s friends, and that she wasn’t thinking about us anymore, but I was wrong.

The day that Tonya returned, as if they were tracking her movements, Stacia, her sisters Pumpkin and Peach, along with their friends Meka and Valencia, all came to the square looking for Tonya.