I PUSH HER higher. Watch her feet kick. Listen to her giggle. When I can, I walk two swings over and do like she doing—swinging with my head back, laughing at the sky. Not for long though, ’cause she don’t like sitting still. Jumping up again, I run and push her, tickle and kiss her. Tell her how much I miss being with her.

A hour is gone by the time I carry her over to the bench to give her a bottle of juice and Cheerios. Cricket couldn’t eat nothing like that when we was together. She was too young. Now she got rolls behind her knees, a double chin. “You remember our place?” She don’t, I know, but I wish she could. Shutting my eyes, I go back to the Starfleet Motel. We’re on the floor playing with her blocks, reading Goodnight Moon. “Cricket.” I open my eyes while I bounce her on my knees. “If it happens to you, tell somebody.”

I pack her up and walk as fast as I can. Using a pencil, I scratch take her to the park off my list. If I wasn’t doing that, I woulda seen them girls coming this way. Today ain’t my best day clothes-wise, so I turn around and walk the other way.

“Char? That you?”

I look back. She catches up. Her eyes got question marks in ’em.

“Hey. What’s up, India?” I say.

She with a girl who don’t look up from her phone at first.

India and me was never close friends. But we would walk to elementary school together and go to the park sometimes. She ask how I been. After I say fine, her lips curl up, like she smelling something foul. Don’t know why. I took a bath.

I’m walking when she ask about Cricket. I lie. And tell her she mine. She lies. And says she look exactly like me. Then she reaches over and pinches Cricket’s chubby cheek. Right then, I let my guard down and ask how she been doing, what she been up to?

“You ran away, right?”

“What?”

She look at her friend, then Cricket, then me. “I heard you in that life.”

“Huh?”

“You got a pimp, right?”

I start backing up.

“Ain’t nobody surprised, Charlese Jones.”

I turn around and run.

“Hope you came back rich!”