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fair. It’s not like I chose Steve for my mom. It wasn’t my idea to move across town. I don’t disapprove, when it comes right down to it. Steve’s nice enough. He’s going to pay for me to go to college, which is a pretty good deal. We get along. Which is to say, I keep my head down most of the time, and he doesn’t bother me. But I didn’t choose a life like his, with him. Mom did.
    The singing surrounds me before I can come up from my thoughts. I’m on Peach Street. There’s a crowd gathering. A small old woman presses a flower into my hand. Everyone has them—they’re throwing them forward, against the wall, a great mound of petaled beauty in honor of Tariq. I hold mine. The singing is soft and close and tearful. Everyone on the street gently sways. The people fold me in and before I can breathe, I feel like a part of something. It’s a feeling I don’t want to let go of.

 
    KIMBERLY
    Peach Street is all crammed with people, hugging and crying. I have to walk through it to get home but I try not to look.
    There’s nothing I’d want to leave in tribute to Tariq. I can barely find the will to be sad for him, which makes me sad all in itself. It’s not that I think he deserved to get shot or anything; I’m just not really surprised it went down like that, the way he was always hanging with Brick and the Kings. It’s kind of what you sign up for when you put on the colors. Isn’t it?
    The person I ache for is Tina, his sister, so small and probably so confused by what’s happening.
    I should go by and see her, maybe. I’m sure she’d remember me from when I used to babysit her. That seems like a good thing to do.
    Everyone forgets about the smallest, most fragile ones when there’s high drama going on. My daddy died when I was four, and it was all so strange and hectic and upsetting. All these extra people in the house, and everyone trying to hug me and I didn’t really understand why. I remember squeezing beneath a couch and hoping and praying that my dad would just come and get me. I knew he was dead, and I knew dead meant gone, but Daddy had been gone before and he always came back. I don’t know how long it was before I realized gone meant forever and always. Longer than I would ever admit.
    So I kind of wonder … I wonder if Tina’s sitting there, quietly waiting for Tariq to come home.

 
    TINA
    Songs float in the window.
    A vigil , Nana says. For Tariq.
    Mommy says: No.
    I’m not going to look at the spot where he died.
    Nana holds my hand and we walk down Peach Street.
    Flowers and candles and a whole crowd of people.
    Nana says: Look how much everyone loved Tariq.
    But no one loves Tariq as much as me.

 
    REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN
    The young girl comes toward me, wielding a powder puff. She says her name is Kimberly. She’s not a girl, but a woman, I suppose—she curves like a woman, at any rate—but that flawless smooth brown skin only reminds me that I’m getting on in years.
    She has a wide open face, like a child, but her generous hip bumps against my thigh as she works to get me camera ready. Her brow furrows in concentration. Twenty years from now, she’ll have wrinkles in those spots, but for now I can enjoy the view. My gaze drops down, down, past her full, parted lips to the column of throat to the barest hint of cleavage.
    “No, look at the ceiling,” she says, whisking the brush across my cheeks.
    The ceiling is dimpled white, the familiar foam board squares that always top off a high school classroom.
    “Sorry.”
    “You’re fine,” she says.
    When my son was young, he got detention once for throwing paper airplanes at the ceiling during class. His mother had to go pick him up early. By way of explanation he told her, “We were trying to get them to stick in the cracks.” She related this to me later, still hopping mad. I laughed. “Well, did it work?” I asked her. She started to laugh too. “He didn’t say!” We never did find out. No good way to ask