When we stopped in at a bookstore, I got an idea. I walked right up to the cashier and asked if they were hiring. She called the manager, Amirah. When I saw her walking toward me—a tall, slender woman wearing a red-and-black-printed headscarf—I felt a small pulse of excitement. I’d do anything to work for someone so cool and beautiful.

After I filled out the application and she went over it, she asked, “So you like literature?”

“Kind of runs in the family. My mom wanted to be an English professor.”

“What about you?”

I felt my skin prickle. Amirah’s question made me nervous, as if there were a spotlight trained on me. I was so used to talking about myself in relation to Ammi, never just me. “Probably going to be an English major. Totally impractical.”

“I majored in Russian,” she said and we laughed.

We talked some more about authors and poetry, and at the end, she said, “I’m definitely going to be hiring at the end of the summer. A lot of the college kids who work for us in the summer will be going back. You say you’re going where?”

“Hunter.”

“Great. You’re local.” She stood, and shook my hand. “It all looks good. I’ll be in touch about training.” She added, “I warn you. A lot of it is really boring. Unboxing books. Inventory.”

“I’m in.”

After she went back to her office, I bought myself a new lilac-colored notebook. I couldn’t wait to crack it open, smooth down the pages, put my name inside.

When I rejoined Fatima, she was so excited she declared I needed to buy myself something more. A few blocks down a Jamaican dude in aviator sunglasses was blasting reggae from an old boom box. Vintage clothes were spread out on a blanket on the pavement and hanging from a fence. Fatima lit up, touching an orange vinyl jacket with brass buttons, a daisy-print dress, and a pair of maroon corduroy bell-bottoms. She snatched up an old army jacket, its epaulets embroidered purple, and held it up to me.

“Try it.”

I slipped it on, swept my hair up over the collar, and turned to the narrow mirror. “Beautiful girl!” the guy said.

I looked at the epaulets that made my shoulders straight and firm, the frayed cuff, and the heavy buttons, and it instantly felt like mine. I was toughened, protected. Everything that lay ahead—graduation, summer, maybe my first real job—and then onward into the fall, where I could lace up my favorite black boots, shrug on this jacket, put my new notebook into my bag, and take the subway into Manhattan, to college, a new life. This jacket smelled and felt like my future.

“How much?” I asked.

His sunglasses glinted. “Twenty-five, for you.”

I shook my head, started pulling it off.

“Twenty!”