I walk upstairs quietly, afraid someone is in the house. When I get to Chico’s old bedroom, I pull open the closet where he broke his wrist, imagining him huddled in there trying not to make a sound. I see something lying on the floor in the corner of the closet. I’m shocked to see it’s a silver bracelet just like the one Chico used to wear. Maybe he left it on accident? I hold it up and inspect it. Wow, I think to myself. Still here after all this time. I slide the bracelet onto my wrist and turn, looking around. The emptiness of the room unnerves me. How can something that was once full of life be so static and unused? The house has moved on, but I haven’t. I’m clinging to past memories again, trying to siphon the life out of them. I wonder how long I will keep revisiting dead places trying to rebirth them.

I want to be on the other side of my past, I decide. I can’t live among these skeletons anymore. How do you move on from the past? I wish Jennifer were here to tell me.

I toss the bracelet and all its memories back into the corner of the closet, close the doors, race back down the stairs, and sit on the porch trying to process this experience. My deep thought is interrupted by another familiar voice from my past, Ms. Patty, who has lived next door to us in the front of the building since before I was born.

“What you satin’ ova dere fa?” Ms. Patty yells from her porch. “Don’t nobody live dere. Welcome home from dat big fancy college.” She chuckles to herself and takes a drink from her famous purple cup.

“I thought they tore this house down,” I yell back, trying to appear concerned, yet calm.

“You ain’t been gone dat long, girl. It was here fo you left. Dat lil house ain’t went nowhere.” She drinks again from her purple cup, whispering loud enough for me to hear, “Lord, dey go away to dem colleges and get so uppity. Don’t know nothin’ or nobody no mo. Mmmm, mmm, mmm.” She shakes her head in disapproval. “You have a blessed day now.” She smiles, syrupy and fake, then disappears again behind her drink, which is her shield from the world.

It’s all off. Everything. The sun circles the sky at the wrong angles. The neighborhood is restored as if it’s the early ’90s again, but shining. Buildings that were gone, here again. Even the fence around the Tolver Baptist Church, which the pastor had removed five years ago after a drunk driver crashed into it, now encircles the parking lot, untouched. I run my fingers through the springy interlacing of the metal fence. The church is closed and the parking lot is empty, but the fence stands risen, reborn.