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I’m exhausted of running, dodging cruisers, ducking into alleys when they fishtail around corners, screaming toward something that seems to be everywhere. I thought it’d be okay, once I got far enough away, but what is far enough?
    Even the neighborhood has caught the reckless spirit of the day. Fires burn ugly in the storefronts. People run in the streets, some looking for safety, others for something else to set aflame. Sirens rage against the night.
    Tonight is bad enough on its own, but in the midst of it all my mind is thrown back to the day Dr. King was murdered. The terror and sadness of those nights. To be wrapped in what is awful. No way out, no chance to breathe through the smoke.
    I see my building ahead, but I can’t even feel relieved yet. So much has happened between this corner of the street and my front door. It’s where Bucky was beaten. Where I found Sam throwing rocks into a storefront the night Dr. King died, which was the moment it all sank in for me that everything had changed in the most irretrievable way. It’s the sidewalk I’ve fled down a hundredtimes, sometimes to get home but most times to get away.
    A stretch of road that sometimes brings me to tears. I don’t know why I have no tears tonight. My clothes and body are drenched with sweat, so maybe that was all the water in me.

CHAPTER 9
    I T’S ALL I CAN DO TO CLIMB THE STAIRS. I OPEN the apartment door and Raheem storms at me like he’s been standing there awhile, all wound up and waiting.
    â€œJesus, Maxie. Where have you been?”
    I brush past him, wanting to get indoors. “I’m here now.”
    â€œYou were supposed to be home!”
    â€œI know.” Him being mad is making me mad, and I’ve had about all I can take for tonight.
    â€œThe streets are a goddamn pigsty!” he shouts. “What are you trying to do to me?”
    â€œI got lost,” I shout back. “I was trying to get Leroy his quarters.” The roll is locked in my fist; it’s hard to pry my fingers from their death grip.
    â€œNobody cares about any damn quarters, Maxie,” Raheem yells. “Are you okay?”
    â€œYes!”
    â€œOkay, then.” Raheem throws himself down on the couch. Jumps right back up again. “We don’t know what’s happening,” he blurts. “Daley might order a shoot-to-kill again.”
    Like after Dr. King? I close my eyes. Not that I have to close them to remember. When the neighborhood was burning for days and days, and no one knew what to do to make it stop because the pain burned hotter than any fire. It still hurts; might as well have been yesterday. Sam and I walked home from school that night, as if everything was usual, and then out of nowhere, people started roiling around us. We made it all the way to my block before we really noticed the commotion, and we didn’t know what it was about, so we said good night and went our separate ways. I went into my building and found a cluster of mamas screaming in the stairwell, sick and crying over the news. Dr. King had been shot and killed in Memphis.
    The truth slammed down on me like a flat, heavy weight. I couldn’t climb any farther after hearing it, so I ran back into the street, as if I could get out from under. Not the smartest thing, Raheem told me later, but at the time I couldn’t help it. Sam was out there, and the first thing in my mind was to get back to him.
    He hadn’t got very far. He was crying, like me, and shaking, like me, and throwing rocks against the broken windowsof the shop across the street, which hadn’t occurred to me yet but seemed like a good idea. “Sam,” I said. He turned around toward me, and I could already start to see emptiness about him, like a mirror of what I felt. We held hands and ran as far and fast as we could, but the weight was on us and there was no escape.
    The riots lasted for days. Dr. King was everything for a long