Our house sits on a blind curve. Traffic can’t see through the thick stand of trees that guards the edge of our property. It doesn’t matter how many signs we plant or how often Moms yells at them, kids dash across the road like they can’t be hit. I find myself leaning to the side as if somehow I could then see around the final bend of my street. Moms drives a blue Prizm, a 1992 edition. She doesn’t care that the paint is peeling from the hood. The car runs well and is paid off. I pray long and hard that when we find our way around the curve that her car won’t be parked in the driveway like some predatory bird waiting to swoop down and snatch me up whole. On the other hand, if I do see it, I at least have a few moments to mentally brace myself for Hurricane Moms.

I have a theory that the best way to control a story is to be the one telling it. It’s like a truth inoculation. You know, like when you go to the doctor to get immunized, they give you a shot that’s a little bit of the thing they’re trying to protect you against? A little bit of it triggers your body to protect itself. In this case, I need to give Moms a careful amount of the truth to protect her against the full truth. So actually this is for her own good.

When we follow the bend, it isn’t the car in the driveway that makes me both sigh and send my heart tumbling into my stomach. It’s the sight of my mother squaring off against a teenage girl. While a growing crowd of neighborhood kids surrounds them.

“Oh snap.” Nehemiah prepares to join me at my stop. He rarely rides all the way to his home since no one would be there, especially this soon after school. “Moms is about to go off.”

I scramble to collect my stuff and slink off the bus.

“Oooo,” the twins say at the same time. Tafrica Simone and Wisdom Monet aren’t related and don’t look like each other. Tafrica has skin the color of rich sepia, her hair styled into a nest of thick braids. Wisdom, short for Wisdom-Madonna, has the complexion of milk with a dab of butter in it. She has long blond hair woven into two braids and a face that’s perfect with her glasses. The two all but hold hands wherever they go, a continuous fountain of gossip.

“Who’s that with your mom?” Wisdom blocks me, ignoring how anxious I am to get off at my stop.

“Ain’t that RaShawn and his scraggily butt?” Tafrica asks.

“With his sister. You know that can’t be good.” Wisdom nods with a somber tsking to her voice.

“Triple OG, low-key to the max,” they say at the same time before slapping hands. They love to make up their own slang. If (though it’s more like when) others start using it, they’ll change it up. They also love drama, always wanting a front row seat to it, thriving on it like vampires in a blood bank.