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shook her head. “You gotta help
yourself,
Jada. You gotta get right for yourself.”
    Jada stared at her, speechless. Then she sighed. “I love Marquis. I never meant to hurt him. He’s my everything. I don’t have nobody else.” She looked at Ingrid, and saw the pity that she tried to hide from her. “I know I have to leave. And I know he doesn’t want me to come back. But just tell him that I love him. Tell him to forgive me.” Jada resisted the urge to cry, and to hug Miss Ingrid, and she climbed into her car instead. Ingrid stood there for a few seconds, feeling the young woman’s pain, and hoping that she found the strength to get clean and stay that way. Jada pulled off slowly, looking back at the house she used to think was etched directly from the canvas of her dreams. Ingrid walked back inside, and closed the door on a love affair between two people who almost had it all.
    Jada’s life had taken a sudden plunge, and she was destroyed. She had no place to turn, and nowhere else to go. So she went to the one place that still welcomed her. Back to the streets.
    Jada slept in her car for the next several days, and even drove to her old friend Shante’s place, looking for somewhere to stay until she got back on her feet. Shante allowed Jada to stay with her for a little while, after Jada enticed her with three hundred dollars toward that month’s rent. Jada slept on Shante’s futon, and during the day she went out, looking for a job, a place to stay—something. Three months went by this way, and all the time Jada drove past the house she had shared with Born, hoping to see him. She never did. She called his cell phone, called his house phone. Every number had been changed to an unlisted one. She drove past his drug spots, but was too embarrassed to go upstairs to see if he was there. She didn’t know if Chuck had survived his beating, and she sure didn’t want to face him if he knew that she was the real thief who had caused him to be fucked up. Jada got high every day, copping from her old dealer, Lucas, in West Brighton, whenever she got the chance.
    She saw Mr. Charlie a couple of times during her trips to score somedrugs in his building. But Jada didn’t speak to him. She hated him for contributing to her misery. She hated everything that had contributed to the addiction she now realized that she had. Jada would sleep late some mornings, and on other mornings she would lay on the futon and pretend to be asleep, listening to Shante talk shit about Jada to her other friends.
    â€œYeah, girl. She’s gettin’ high again. I know! Lil Miss High and Mighty ain’t so mighty no more, but she still high.” Shante laughed out loud at her own joke. She listened as the person on the other end of the phone said something. “He left her. He put her out, and that’s why she’s staying with me. Girl, he kicked her to the curb. She said he had his mama come and help her pack her shit up. Now tell me
that
shit ain’t gangsta. No more glitz and glamour for her. Now, it’s back to where she started. That’s why they say, don’t forget where you came from. When he had her in all those jewels and furs, she wasn’t coming to check on Shante. You know? It don’t matter to me, as long as she keeps putting money in my hand. When his money runs out, I don’t know where she think she gon’ stay. I feel sorry for her.”
    Jada lay there with tears in her eyes. She knew that Shante didn’t really feel sorry for her. But Jada sure felt sorry for herself. She got up and went out to escape—to get high once again. Soon her money was low, and Shante was fed up. So Jada packed her belongings, and went back to sleeping in her car.
    After close to a week of living in her Acura, Jada finally admitted to herself that she had to sell some of her things. She went to a pawnshop and sold all the jewelry Born had bought