“It’s not all bad.” I pointed to the corner store. “There’s love and community if you know where to look. That store is where we got groceries when Mom got paid. The owner was this jolly African American guy named Tee who was always singing. He used to give free ice cream to the neighborhood kids.”
At the end of the main drag, a neon sign with half the bulbs blown advertised naked women. “That’s the club where my mom worked. She used to sing in a jazz club in downtown Philly as well, but stripping paid better. It’s a total dive, but the girls look out for each other and the bouncer, Manny, is pretty cool. I brought my first ever bag of weed from him – I got so high I ate two whole pizzas by myself.”
Trey’s eyes darted around the street, and I knew he was trying to see this place through my eyes. I doubted he could do it, but Trey Bloomberg sometimes surprised me.
“There’s my school.” I pointed to a squat grey building surrounded by a high chain-link fence. It looked more like a prison than an institution for learning. “Before you get inside, you have to step through metal detectors, drug dogs, and security guards on constant watch for weapons.”
“Holy Great Old God,” Quinn whistled.
“Yup. Pretty different from Miskatonic Prep. But then, they never sacrificed anyone to a cosmic deity, so I guess that makes things even. This is where I hung out with Dante and where I worked my ass off so I could get into a good college. Joke’s on me.”
“What do you mean by that?” Trey pressed his face to the window, fascinated by this world he’d never known existed.
Oh, just that it’ll be hard to go to college when I’m in another universe.
Quinn snorted. “Yeah, have you seen the points table lately? You’re right near the top. You’re probably going to be valedictorian, which means you’ll get into an amazing school.”
“All I meant was that I never thought I’d look at my old school and think, ‘safe.’”
Ayaz reached across the backseat and squeezed my hand. “One day, when we are free, you will come with me to Turkey, and I will show you around where I used to live. We’ll walk the old city walls and relive the ancient tales of prophecies, wars, and vengeful gods, then sip coffee in a cafe beside the Süleymaniye Mosque. In spring, millions of bright tulips bloom across the city, and in summer we can swim in the azure waters.”
Fuck, that sounds amazing.I swallowed a hard lump in my throat. “Yup, one day.”
“We’ve got a bit of time to kill before we meet your shady friend.” Quinn turned down a side-street. My nails dug into the seat as I recognized the apartment blocks looming over us. “What do you do around here for fun? Apart from stealing cars and buying weed, of course. Maybe we should go back to that ice cream place—”
“Pull over,” I demanded.
“Why? There’s nothing here apart from a bunch of ugly apartments and that abandoned lot. Or did you—hey!” Quinn yelled as I leaned over his seat and jerked the wheel. He slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered over the curb and came to a stop in front of an enormous pile of garbage dumped in an abandoned lot.
I shoved the door open, kicking mangled beer cans and burnt car parts out of the way. Quinn slid out from behind the wheel, his eyes wide as he took in everything – the garbage, the concrete apartment blocks rising on either side, the ring of soot marring the remains of cinder block walls.
Trey slid out of the passenger seat, his brow wrinkling as he lifted his foot. Something brown smeared across the expensive leather of his brogues.
Quinn kicked a can across the lot. “Hazy, why are we here?”
Ayaz came up behind me. His eyes burned holes in my back. He slipped his fingers in mine and squeezed.
He knew. Of course, he’d be the first to figure it out.
I opened my mouth to explain, but I couldn’t find the words. Quinn kicked his can across the lot while Trey used a stick to lift away some of the weeds from the foundation ring. I heard Trey’s intake of breath, and I knew he’d figured it out, too. It was obvious from the charred earth and the household debris choked with weeds what this was.
My old home.
The one I burned down in a fit of rage. A funerary pyre for the first two people who ever loved me.
“Fuck, Hazy.” Quinn’s can skittered away. He dropped his eyes to the debris at his feet. He’d dislodged a wooden box with one corner rotted away. The lid fell open on rusted hinges, spilling out damp, crumpled photographs.
The foundation ring had held up a block of eight apartments, five unoccupied and the other neighbors out for the evening when I burned the place down. Our apartment was on the top floor, which was why the firefighters couldn’t get to my mother in time. The objects that survived could have come from any of the rooms, and yet Quinn had laid hands on that box almost immediately.
My mother loved to print out photographs from her phone. She’d often take her dollar tips down to a place in central Philly that had a machine, and she’d come home with a whole stack. We used them to decorate the apartment walls, changing them out as often as we liked. She kept her favorites in a wooden box.
Quinn picked up the stack, his hands trembling as he fanned out the images. Trey and Ayaz crowded around.
They were all of me – me as a toddler, dressed up and posing in some of Mom’s clothes, my tiny feet dwarfed inside a pair of red pumps. Me grinning from the swing in the playground, and striking a pose in the doorway of the treehouse. Dante and I when we were eight years old, wearing birthday hats and big smiles, in front of a cheap ice cream cake.
Mom and I – our smiles identical – sprawled out on top of a pile of cushions in a blanket fort we made in our bedroom. The lump in my throat burned as I swallowed.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
