But Syd said she was beautiful. Why not let him kiss her where she peed? He wasn’t hurting anyone.

He would always leave her money when he left for the bar. Five bucks on the pillow beside her face, which like the rest of her would be able to sense a touch before it landed. So sensitive it had become. So connected to itself and the air around it.

Something about the money didn’t feel right, and she would ask about it. He would wink and say that it was for emergencies.

Like what?

Like anything, he would tell her as he buttoned his shirt. We all have to pay our way in life.

With menstruation came an awareness, an intuition, that neither she nor Syd was a child—that what they were doing was not a game, but something serious. One evening as he buzzed her blossom she thought about the things that adults had placed inside her—thermometers in her ass, depressors in her throat, air tubes in her nostrils, syringes in her ears. On reflection she concluded that none of them had been pleasant, and that all of them had made her nervous. Why should this thing—she knew the name but was afraid to conjure it—that Syd had begun to coax inside her fairly often now, be any different … any more benign … any less reason for concern?

Why?

There was no one to ask. No one to speak to. She had no friends or family but Syd. One Thursday afternoon, she edged up to a girl she barely knew and asked if they could talk. As they sat facing each other in the cafeteria, she leaned forward and framed the situation hypothetically, speaking in a whisper. “I have this friend …”

When she was through the girl said take the money. They were all getting fucked, she said, pointing around the room. She, she, she, she, she … they all be getting fucked. They wish they was getting paid.

Fucked. The word braced her. Placed everything in perspective. Getting fucked. She didn’t like the sound of it. If she had once thought of Syd as fulfilling her, or of them as fulfilling each other, she felt different now. Used.

They all be getting fucked.

She looked at each in turn. They were all girls she didn’t like.

Now that she spoke American and chose her own clothes and knew how to style her hair she resented them. Not for how they’d treated her, but for how easy it was to be them—how easy it was to surpass them. She was the only one who took the exam for Brooklyn Tech. The only one who wanted a career. These girls—the girls getting fucked—didn’t want careers. They wanted jobs. No. She would not be like them. She wouldn’t get fucked anymore. Syd would have to stop.

The next evening she hid a knife beneath the sheet. When Syd began to touch her she told him to stop, but he didn’t listen. She ended up in juvenile court and a group home in Harlem. That’s where she met Diego Peña, a foul-mouthed boy with a bullet head and bushy brows who would study with her at Columbia and grow up to be a filmmaker.