“Hello, Mrs. Nadinsky,” I answer, from the surreal space. Some things come automatically. “May I take that to the chute for you?”

“Well, aren’t you the gentleman,” she says, stretching the trash bag out to me. “Such a dear. Such a dear.” She pats my shoulder, then retreats into her condo.

And suddenly I’m standing there holding Mrs. Nadinsky’s trash. Silent in front of Steve, who is seeing the real me for the first time, my heart in a bag on the hallway carpet. I feel exposed and dirty and cold.

Words fail me. Steve stands silent, too. I grab my backpack by the top handle. Where I go, it goes.

The trash chute is down the hall, behind a little door. Near the elevator. When the chore is done, Steve is right behind me.

“It’s beautiful art.” Not what I expected him to say.

“Thanks.”

“It worries me that you’re breaking the law.” Yup. Now he’s back on the parent track.

“To make a point,” I say. “It’s resistance.”

“It’s vandalism.”

“Call it what you want.” I slide my arms into my backpack straps.

“Your mother wouldn’t—”

“So don’t tell her!” This isn’t about her. It’s us. Right here. Right now.

“I haven’t. But I think you should tell her.”

“Pssshhh.” I move past him, toward the elevator.

“I can’t let you keep doing this.”

I spin around. “Let me? You’re not my dad!”

Silence. There’s no going back. It’s been, I don’t know, years now since I threw that at him. He is my dad, and we both know it. There’s nothing I can say that will hurt him more. I didn’t even mean it, but I’m too mad to take it back.

“I know that.”

“I—” I want to say I’m sorry, but I can’t. “I have to go.”

“Come here,” Steve speaks in this tight, controlled voice, like a spring pressed down hard. I know that feeling.

“Screw you. I’m outta here.” I stride toward the elevator. Pound the button with my knuckles. With my fist.

“I said, come here,” he demands. “Come here now.” His voice fills the hallway like thunder. I turn toward the storm, because I can’t help it.

Steve strides toward me. My whole body tenses. I didn’t even know I had other levels of tightness left, but I do.

It’s rare, one of those moments when I feel like he could hurt me. Like he becomes the black man the world fears, a vicious metamorphosis right before my eyes.

When he reaches for me, I’m actually scared. He’s never truly scared me before, not once. My arms go up, protecting my face. He grabs my shoulders, and I punch my forearms outward, against his arms, breaking the grip.

“Stop,” he says. “Come here.”

His hug is strong and soft. If I was anything but stone, I could melt into it. But I am stone.

“We love you,” he says. Bringing my mom into it is some ninja shit. But the warmth blows around me like wind. “You’re not alone.”