“MISS E LET me talk to Cricket the other day.” I chew my bottom lip like gum. “She sound happy.”

Maleeka asks if I’m happy, like she don’t know. Then she ask what would make me happy. Before I get to think about that she telling me all the things that make her happy. Caleb, being a student scholar, making the gymnastics team—belonging to different clubs. She asks if I’d ever join a club. I think about the one next door to the Starfleet. That’s not the kind she means, I know. Gem and us sort of belonged to a club. We did everything as a group until it was time to work.

I tell her about our house, all them trees, snow under our shoes, sitting around in our underwear playing cards, telling jokes, how glad we was to be family, friends. She don’t need to know nothing about what happened after we got in the van.

I turn the light off. Make the room pitch black. Lie down on the floor and stare up at the ceiling. “You know how they find girls, Maleeka? Men like him, I mean?”

“No, Char. How?”

I tell her how he found me, where. Then I talk about how he went after a girl pumping gas at the station. I stayed in the car, while Daddy talked to her. “It’s easy … getting kids to come with you.”

“Did she come?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Some don’t, that’s all.”

“Would I?”

I think on it some. “No. Not without kicking and scratching and screaming.” How come I didn’t do that? I wonder. Even at the house, I never tried to leave. Maybe ’cause I needed some stuff Maleeka ain’t need, like money, somebody to take care of me, a Daddy and a baby.

I’m up, nervous. Turning on the light, I start walking the room. She fanning her nose when I go by. “Was Hattie McDaniel a slave before she was in that movie?”

“Really, Char?”

“I’m serious.”

“Slavery ended in 1865. Gone with the Wind came out in the thirties.”

“Oh.”

She asking why I wanted to know. I don’t say. I get my list out my desk drawer. I add more things to it every day. Today it was try not to think about them. I do all the time, anyhow. Having it on the list makes me check myself, slow down inside. Comb and detangle my hair got crossed off today, finally. But take a shower never does. This afternoon, I sat on the side of the bathtub with both my feet inside. The shower ran, turned cold. The water was black as mud. My feet are clean anyhow.

“Woulda boy go out with me smelling like this?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She passes by me. Digs around in her backpack hung on the hook on my door. Out comes a coloring book and crayons. Maleeka’s at my desk when she say I can watch if I want. I go watch her color. “I’m glad they killed him.”

She stops. “Killed who?”

“The man who raped Sister. You know, Miss Maya when she was young.”

“Oh.”

“Sister was only a little kid. She couldn’t say yes or no—just go along with what he wanted or made her do. He was older. He knew better.” I ask if anything like that ever happened to her. Guess she telling the truth when she say it didn’t.

“What about you?” she ask.

“No, my father woulda killed him.”

“But, Char, didn’t Anthony—”

“I wasn’t no kid! Plus, it was my decision to go with him or not.”

She bring up girls who been trafficked, like JuJu said. I try to explain the difference between me and them. But my words come out all mixed up. They make it sound like me and them been through the same things—and that ain’t true.

Seem like her eyes see things I colored over since I got home. With my head low, I whisper, “Sometimes they put Amber Alerts out on girls like them. My sister never put one out on me, so—I can’t be one of them—trafficked girls, you know. I just can’t.”

She picks up a crayon, navy blue with sparkles. On a sheet of loose-leaf paper, she draw a big old circle. Inside, she put eyes, a nose, and lips that frown. I take a hunter-green crayon and draw tears running down her face. “That’s me, Maleeka—inside anyhow.”

Who start hugging first? I ain’t sure. But we both holding on tight. “Char.”

“Yeah, Maleeka.”

“I miss my father every day. I don’t tell anybody though.”

I write it down on the paper in crayon.

At her new school, she tell me, things ain’t going as good as she lets on. “I’m there. I’m smart. Working super hard. But I don’t always feel like I fit in.”

I ask why she didn’t tell me that before.

“I don’t know, Char. Guess that’s because you got it worse than me.”

“What that mean? Nothing. Anyhow, if you keep your bad stuff to yourself and only let me talk about mine—that mean you think you better than me.”

“No. I don’t. It’s just—”

“Come out and say it, Maleeka.”

She bust out crying. Next thing I know, she hurrying over to the door. I step in front of it, though. “Tell me, Maleeka.”

“It’s back, Char.”

“What’s back?”

“Her cancer.”

“Oh wow.”

“But I don’t want to talk about it.”

I step aside. She opens the door. Just like that, she’s down the steps, slamming our front door. I ain’t mad. I understand. Sometime you just can’t find the words.