SHE SURPRISE ME showing up on a Sunday. We in my room. She at my desk coloring. I’m standing over her shoulder, watching. “Not that one. This. And this—Sunglow Yellow.”

“Sooo—” she says, using the crayon I told her to use. “I have a date tomorrow night.”

I run to the front of the desk. “With who? What you wearing?”

Pulling out her phone she shows me the outfit she gonna wear, how she wants her hair to look. But nerds don’t know nothing but books and numbers. Which is why I hook her up with one of my hair combs and a real silver choker with a bracelet to match. I’m digging in my top drawer for more stuff, when I mention perfume. She never wear it. Never has. But perfume is like a back rub, holding hands, magic. The right smell get a boy to remember you long after you gone. I walk a bottle over to her. “Here, sniff.”

Her eyes close. She smiling. Telling me what I already know. It smell like flowers, gets warm in your nose, makes you want to hug yourself. Might even get you kissed. “You can keep it.”

“For real for real? The whole bottle?”

“Do I look like I need perfume?”

“You smell like you do.” She opens it. Splashes me. “I had to, Char.”

I chase her around the room, past the closets, around my bed twice, behind my desk—until I get my hand on the broom my sister left when she cleaned in here the other day. Maleeka ends up in the bathroom with the door closed. Sitting on the other side, resting my back against the door, I catch my breath. Inside, I feel warm as that perfume.

“Char.”

“Yeah, Maleeka?”

“You’re like her, you know.”

“Like who?”

“Sister.”

She say that me and Sister are the same because we both quit talking. That’s stupid. I talk every day, all day, I tell her. I even talk in my sleep, JuJu say. “Who’s Carolina?” she asked once. I pretended not to know what she was talking about.

Sister quit talking because she thought her words got somebody killed and she didn’t want to hurt nobody else, Maleeka say. “You think your words will hurt people too.”

Their names stay in my head when I say them: Roxanne, Earle, Kate, Gem, Kianna, Katrina, Rosalie, Cricket—JuJu too. If I tell, they’ll die. He killed April, didn’t he?

“Would you tell?” I ask. “No, you wouldn’t. You think you would ’cause you don’t know everything. Don’t know what he could do, would do, did do to me.”

“You’re right, Char. I don’t know. You could tell me one day. I’ll listen. Swear.”

“You ever tell your new friends what we done in that classroom?”

“No, but—”

“Some things you keep to yourself. ’Cause what’s the point anyhow? What’s done is done. You can’t put the milk back in the bottle after it spills.”

“The cancer spread.”

I get to my feet.

“She didn’t tell me. I found the papers from the hospital. A couple of weeks ago.”

The knob is slippery in my hand, hard to turn.

“She got—” Maleeka stands upright when I walk in. “It’s in her lymph nodes now. Stage three. That’s bad.”

In the bathroom, I take her hands—hold on like forever it seem. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“I guess everybody goes through something, huh?”

“The chemo took out her hair again.”

“She bald?”

“Real bald.”

I don’t know why that makes me laugh a little, but it do. Then an idea come in my head, so I decide to do it. Like Maleeka is doing Saturday class for me. Like April and Roxanne helped save me. I run to my desk before I change my mind.

The scissors is sharp. They cut off my hair easy, quick, fast. Knots and string, matted hair and curls drop on the floor, get brushed off my shoulders, pile up by my feet.

Her eyes dance. Her lips curl up. Her hand goes out. “I did this once.”

I hand over the scissors. Our hair ends up in a bag together. It’ll stay together forever like her and me. Standing behind me, with her chin digging into my shoulder, she say, “You ain’t have to do it, Char.”

“I know.”

“We look—terrible.”

“I know. But I’m in the house. Nobody will see me. You—”

“Hair grows back.”

I was gonna say she might get bullied, teased for how she looking. But she ain’t the same Maleeka. She may not care. Might even kick their asses if they come for her.

Facing her, I say his name. “Anthony. He smart. Bet he was in the honor society like you. He killed a girl. April. Cricket’s mom. If I stay in the house. If I keep my mouth closed. He’ll leave me alone, I think.”

“But what about them—your friends?”

I don’t say nothing.

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Sister freed her own self when she opened her mouth and spoke.”