CHAPTER 1
BULLETS DON’T HAVE NAMES.
But if they did, chances are one would have mine. Or someone brown-skinned like me.
Metal slats chill my legs and I shimmy sideways, craning for a better view from the bus stop, careful to keep the onyx stones fused to my wrists covered.
Up all night, I watched the sun rise like a traitor to the chill set in my bones. A yawn scratches at my throat, but my lungs refuse to breathe. Any moment Tasha will step out, her tie-dye drawstring knapsack on her back and her purple fuzzy phone clutched in her fingers. She always oversleeps. But she won’t be late. Not today. She—like me—probably couldn’t sleep, knowing we had to face today. Had to relive what this day means.
One year ago today, Moms died, shot dead on her stoop. No explanation. No investigation. Just blood, pain, and lots of tears. So many tears.
Since then, it’s been Tasha, and me. Separated, living in different places.
But not today. Today my little sister won’t be alone.
My eyes sting. I blink the tears away as a bass-filled trunk rattles by, blasting some rapper whose name I can’t remember. I’m home. It’s good to be back… even if I can’t stay. I sigh, but my shoulders cinch instead of sink.
Construction crews spill out of work trucks across the street, bringing the block to life. Chiming bells snatch my attention. Kiki’s wig shop? They opened early as hell today. Two doors down, dudes in glistening chains, hoodies, and baggy jeans chop it up, slapping hands and giving one-arm hugs. My niggas. The whole damn block is family. Neighbors are aunties. I got more cousins than makes any sort of mathematical sense. You can’t work that shit out logically with a family tree chart. The block is fam. Just the way it is. The way it has to be.
But even families keep secrets. I tug at my sleeves.
I lean back, slipping my hood on, face cloaked in shadow. I’m not trying to get tripped up with questions about where I’ve been. Some shit’s just too wild to even try to explain. And where I’ve been this past year—the place I’m forced to now call home—is wild AF.
A jumble of voices pulls me around, twisting in my seat. I keep my head down, hoodie up, until their footsteps are faint patters. I exhale, my knee still bouncing.
Six a.m.
My sis takes the bus to school because it’s too far to walk, and everybody at the house is off to work well before the streetlamps stop buzzing. Any moment now, she’ll be out the door and find the gift I left on her step. A gift I wish I could hand to her if the risk wasn’t so great.
As far as folks know, I disappeared a year ago. They probably think I’m locked up in juvie somewhere. It’s not true. I’ve been in juvie twice. Two times too many. Being snatched from home before Moms was in the ground makes my insides ache more than how it felt sleeping on a cold cell floor.
And the bastard who took me left Tasha.
Such bullshit. “She isn’t full blood,” he’d said. We got the same mom, different dads. I tried to tell him the whole block is fam—that I can’t be pulled from home and just forget where I’m from. It don’t work like that. But he wouldn’t get that because he’s not from ’round here. Home won’t ever be “behind me.”
He wasn’t hearing it. “Once you leave this place you can’t ever come back… ever,” he’d said without explaining. And for 364 days I didn’t.
But Tasha won’t be alone today. Today, she has me. Even if it means breaking their dumb-ass rules to leave her this gift.
She will know I remember.
I tuck my curls inside my hoodie and swipe the screen on my wristwatch. It warms, glowing a dull blue. It’s barely breakfast time and this Houston heat is straight up disrespectful.
Six-oh-five. Come on, sis.
I promised Bri, just about the only friend I have at my new “home,” I’d get in, leave Tasha’s gift, see her off to school, and get out of here. She protested, but she made me this dope watch to get here and back—without magic—undetected. She’d just finished it days ago and was nervous it might not work. A pulsing dot shifts on its screen, zeroing in on Tasha’s location when I tap. Works just fine. Bri is smart as hell, I swear.
As long as I lay low, no one will even know I’m gone.
A frayed purple necklace dangles from my neck. I roll the thread back and forth between my fingers. The last time I saw Tasha, she wore a matching one. The sparrow charm that used to hang from it broke off months ago. Tasha’s got a thing for birds. Something about flying mesmerizes her. She was always back and forth between Moms’s and her dad’s grandma’s house. She’s like a bird, even if she can’t fly. Little bones, light, so small. Always flitting between fam’s houses. A bird with many nests. When I last saw her, she was going on about some new species she’d learned about in school. I smirk. She loves school. A trait we don’t share. Tasha musta got that from her pop’s side of the family.
I didn’t have a dad, so home for me didn’t change every weekend. I pull the knot in the charmless necklace, making sure it’s tight. As ratty as it is, it’s mine, my sister’s—ours. One of the few things I was able to hold on to from this place when I left. My only real keepsake from home.
Tasha’s glittery pink Converses catch the sunlight as the door opens, and I gasp. She’s taller than before. How she grow that fast? The door fully opens and I’m up on my feet. I lighten my pace across the street, careful to stick to the shadows. I can see her, love her from a distance, be here, but I can’t touch her. Touching her is the one rule I can’t break.
Something changed when I was bound to magic in Ghizon, the place I live now. I rub the onyx lump fused to my wrist and it warms. Having magic is cool, but it isn’t worth the cost. If I’d had the choice, I’d have chosen Tasha and life here on the block.
A message on my watch shakes my wrist and I ignore it, eyes fixed on my sis.
I skip across the street to get closer, careful to keep my hood up. Shade swallows me on her side of the street. She pops in earbuds before locking the door and slipping her string straps on her shoulders. That faded-ass tie-dye. I told her that went out in the seventies, but she loves it. She was never one to follow what everyone else is doing. She’s always been like that though—cool doing her own thing. Like me. That we musta both got from Moms.
Come on, Tash. Look down. Neon braids dangle from her cornrows, dancing across her scalp in zigzags. Her hair is always tight. Her nails probably match. That’s my sis. Nail polish isn’t my thing. Chips too easy. I keep my fresh white 1s clean though. Toothbrush in my pocket at all times. Tash ain’t leaving the house without the dopest ’do and flyest nails. Period. Twelve years old and stuntin’.
I slick down my edges, grinning… remembering. On the stoop, Moms used to rip through our heads, braiding ours and half the neighborhood’s with a piece of cigarette dangling on her lip. Took the whole Saturday, I swear. She’d smack the hell out of my hand with a rattail comb if I moved too much.
“You got too much damn hair to be tender-headed,” she’d say.
I flick away hot tears. Moms is gone and crying never solved shit.
Glasses perched on Tasha’s beautifully wide nose hide her dark eyes. Her shoe nudges the wrapped box I left on her bottom step and my heart skips a beat. She grabs it and looks around. I press into the neighbor’s brick. She cannot see me. How would I explain that? Where do I say I’ve been? What do I do if she wants to come back with me? She wouldn’t understand. And what if she tries to touch me? Patrol back in Ghizon says touching humans gives them memories of all your feelings and experiences. She’d know everything about the secret place I live and the magic they gave me. I can’t. Ghizon exists in secret and they intend to keep it that way. Just being here for a few is enough. It has to be enough.