“Okay. Okay.” Ezra drops my hand and leans forward to kiss me quickly. It’s just a peck, but maybe he feels the little thrill like I do, because he lingers. He presses closer and slips his tongue inside. It feels good and right. I lift my hand to touch the thick curls at his nape.

“Ezra!” Mr. Stern yells from their porch across the street. “I’m not telling you again. Come. Now.”

“Ezra,” Mrs. Stern says, watching us through the open garage door. “Listen to your father. Come home.”

“Okay.” Ezra walks toward his mother, but turns at the last minute and glances at me over his shoulder, his eyes serious.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says softly with his mother standing there waiting.

I nod, a strange feeling unfolding inside of me as my parents’ raised voices reach me from inside the house.

“Okay. Tomorrow.”

Mrs. Stern’s face is tear-streaked and her hair is mussed, unusual because her appearance is always neat. Her mouth trembling, she looks at me for a long moment before speaking.

“Goodbye, Kimba,” she says and touches Ezra’s shoulder, urging him to walk away.

I close the garage and step cautiously through the kitchen door, being as quiet as I can in case I catch fragments of the argument.

“That’s not fair, Joe,” my mother says, tears in her voice. “How could you even…”

It goes quiet in the living room, a listening quiet.

“Tru?” she asks abruptly. “Is that you?”

I sigh and drag my feet from the kitchen to the base of the stairs in the foyer. My parents stand on opposite sides of the room, a gulf between them. My father’s whiskey decanter sits on the coffee table, a rare sight since they don’t drink much. Broken glass litters the bricks in front of the fireplace.

“What’s happening?” I ask. “The Sterns—”

“Are not our friends,” my father says harshly. “Stay away from them.”

“No.” It comes out before I even realize it, but I refuse to apologize. “Whatever you and the Sterns are fighting about, I don’t care, but Ezra—”

“What did I say, Kimba?” my father growls, his face so distorted by rage that I don’t even recognize him.

“But Daddy—”

“Go to your room,” Mama says, her voice soft and firm and unyielding.

“Mama, I—”

“Go to your room!” she screams, tears leaking from beneath her closed eyelids. “For God’s sake, can you for once just do what you’re told and stay out of grown folks’ business? Go to your damn room, Kimba!”