I open my planner for her to sign off on my homework.

“My turn,” Ahrion says, so I hand her my binder. She draws a smiley face with extra bushy hair. “That’s you.”

“Thanks.”

Moms hands me a book. Langston Hughes: An Illustrated Edition. “You have a week.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Moms “assigns” me books to read every so often. It’s how I earn video game privileges. Her library is full of books like this. With all the posters and paintings of Malcolm X; the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.; Sojourner Truth; Harriet Tubman; and Marcus Garvey hanging around the house, sometimes it feels like I’m living in a black history museum.

“All right, let’s go.” Moms grabs her keys and shoos us out the door. Moms doesn’t want to leave me waiting at the bus stop without her hypervigilant supervision; she thinks it’s better for me to get to school a half hour early. I want the independence of catching the bus. We split the difference: Moms drops me and Ahrion off at our respective schools on her way to work and I catch the bus home.

As we drive to school, I can’t help but think that I really love Indianapolis. Sure, it’s the only place I’ve ever lived, but this city is just so . . . me. Not so big that it doesn’t still feel like a small town (we only have to drive ten minutes to find llamas, horses, and cows). Not so small that we escape big city problems. And the city operates like a gangster: it rolled up on all the towns surrounding it and straight took over. Take Persons, for example.

I read that Persons was a small farm town tucked into the northwest side of the city. When farmers drove their animals to the Indianapolis stockyards, they stopped in Persons. A railroad depot in the heart of the area gave it the “Crossing” part of its name. That was one story of how this area of town earned its name. Another version was that there was an important family named Persons who helped found the area. I really don’t want to think that folks were so simple that just because people’s paths crossed there, people literally decided to call the place “Persons Crossing.” But that’s the thing about Indianapolis, stuff like that just happens.

“You all right, baby?” Moms asks, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yeah. You know, school stuff.”

“Remember, you can’t count on others to protect your name. Only you can do that. You got this.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You got this,” Ahrion echoes.

“Thanks, Ahrion.”

The Persons Crossing Public Academy building mirrors all the schools in the district. A massive redbrick building broken up by tan concrete lines, its long drive in front forces parents to travel the length of the building to drop their kids off. I’m pretty sure they designed the walls to be so tall in order to intimidate the students, though it gave the building that much more of a prison look.