I laugh nervously when I realize what she means. “Right, we’re Tinsley people now.” I wipe my sweating palms on my shorts.
Tinsley is only about fifteen minutes from Lorial, yet it feels like it’s in a different part of the country. The few times I’ve been, I couldn’t help but notice the manicured lawns and graffiti-free bus stops. When my mom first told me she planned to move to Tinsley after the wedding, I couldn’t picture her living there—and I definitely couldn’t see myself there either.
Clearly, I’ve been trying to block it out ever since.
Exit 9A. 9B.9C.
We pull off the highway, and she points to a Welcome sign. “We sure are,” she says.
The first street we turn on is lined with restaurants and shops, but there aren’t any people around, which seems strange for a Saturday morning. In Lorial, people would be outside running to catch something—their kids, their laundry carts, their buses. But it’s a ghost town here.
My mom is turning on and off side streets with strange names and big lawns. I look into people’s windows, sinceno one has curtains. I’m about to ask her if we do when she pulls up to a white house, her car blending right into a line of other shiny ones. The front lawn is neat, like it was just freshly mowed, and there’s a gray stone pathway leading to the front door. The window boxes even have fresh flowers in them. It all looks flawless.
I take a deep breath as she beams and whispers, “This is us, Jas.”
The other houses look similar to ours, just in different colors. There is a woman gardening in a front yard across the street and a kid skateboarding at the end of the block. Not exactly the signs of life I’m used to, but I’m happy to see some.
I feel Mom staring at me and I turn to face her.
“We have a chance here, Jas, a chance to do things over… do things right. Let’s put the past behind us, okay? Make this our fresh start?” Her brown eyes search mine. “That’s what you want, too, isn’t it?”
The question scares me like my silence scares her.
I spent so many of those early nights at the center sleepless: rewinding, replaying, going back in time. I imagined myself doing things differently, saying yes to a fresh start that might have changed my path. But I didn’t know if it would have. Soon, forward was the only direction I could tolerate thinking about. I needed to move on.
I nod and say what she’s probably wanted to hear for a long time. “A fresh start sounds good.”
Then
“School out already, girls?” The man at the deli checks his watch before handing Desiree the change for our sandwiches.
She swipes the bag on the counter with one hand and grabs my arm with the other. “It is for us!” she yells when we’re halfway out the door. Her response is too bold and too loud for this time of day, when everyone else is still in school across town. We slipped out right before the bell for last period.
Desiree’s taller than me and way more developed—she miraculously grew curves overnight just in time for high school. Her signature hairstyle, a bouncy silk press, grazes her shoulders as she moves. The sunlight makes the burgundy dye shine even brighter against her dark skin.
“Shhhhh!” I pull away and head toward her uncle’s apartment, our safe house.
“Oh please,” she says. “If you cared that much you’d be in class.”
I roll my eyes. She’s not wrong, just annoying. “Well, you’re here too,” I say.
“Difference is, I actually don’t care,” she says, running ahead of me. She comes to a quick stop just as a police car turns down the block. We both duck into the closest doorways. Afew seconds later, our eyes meet as we poke our heads out, and we laugh. Then we run.
“You’re so bad at this for…” Desiree starts as I fall behind a few paces.
“… someone whose best friend runs track.” I finish the sentence through choppy breaths when I finally catch up to her.
She never lets me forget it. She’s flipping me off when an older woman walks out of her uncle’s building and makes a disapproving face.
“Hello, ma’am, sorry, ma’am,” Desiree says.
I let out a snort when the woman is out of earshot.
“I’ll leave you out here,” Desiree jokes, opening the door with the keys she took from her mom’s purse.
I push past her and up one flight to her uncle’s front door. He’s been on deployment for a while so we haven’t had to worry about anyone popping up here. I’m happy to finally have made it somewhere we don’t have to watch our backs. My mom is always nagging me about coming straight home after school, doing my homework right away, not talking to boys. It’s suffocating.
“I’m starving, sandwich, please,” I say.
