I’M HUNGRY, STARVING, mad at everyone on this bus who got family sitting next to ’em that want them there … like the lady across from me, and the man and his wife sitting behind me. So, I try to make myself go to sleep. ’Cause when I get like this, bad things happen.

Soon as I close my eyes, I think about my sister back at the party and wonder if she missing me—even a little bit. I miss her already. I miss home and my bed, my mother massaging my scalp every Saturday night—Daddy telling me I was pretty.

Them tears start up again. So, I reach for my backpack. I got all kinds of things in here—snacks, my coloring books and crayons, drinks. I take out the first bottle I get to. Cover my head with my jean jacket again. Twist off the cap. Drink it down straight, no chaser.

I brought five minis with me: pineapple rum, lemon vodka, gin, and plain old whiskey. I took ’em right before JuJu put a new lock on the liquor cabinet last week. She said God told her to. That made me laugh. So does the rum after a little while. Guess that’s why I call her. “Maleeka?”

“Char? Hey. How you doing? Sorry, I can’t talk.” She in a hurry, she says. Her mother put her in a summer camp for kids good at math and science, and this is the last week. “We built a robot.” Right now, her team is on a bus to a university, to race robots with kids from all over the city who built robots too. “Real engineers are gonna pick the best winner.”

“Oh.”

“You gonna wish me good luck?”

I do like she asks. She’s gone right after that. She don’t even say bye.

My eyes close, and I pretend I’m back in my room sitting at my desk, coloring. My mother’s downstairs cooking red beans and rice, her favorite. My dad’s in the basement banging a hammer on something he wanna fix, but probably don’t got the skills to fix. JuJu is somewhere partying, like she done when they was alive.