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Anita may look like a boy, but she still acts like a queen. She ignores Peanuts, opens the front door and leaves. She left her purse on the bathroom floor.

“I hope the cops don’t come to get her,” Hammer says.

“Depends on how good a shot she was,” Peanuts says. “She killed somebody, probably. Assault, naw. There’s so much shit that goes down on Polk. Nothing ever happens.”

I grab Anita’s purse, about to follow her out.

“Hey,” Peanuts shouts. “Where you going?”

For some reason, I turn and look for J.D. He’s gone. Maybe he’s smoking or on the fire escape. I walk to the kitchen, part the curtains and look—it’s empty. Voices. I look up: Kidd and J.D. are together, one flight up. They kiss.

J.D. looks down.

“Mi’jo!”

I hear him, but I’ve already turned and run back. I want to open the front door and run even farther, but right now, I don’t know where to go.

J
.D. crawls up the ladder and onto the bed. I’m turned away and face the wall. I know it’s him because I know his weight, how his body feels on the bed. He raises his hand, a shadow on the wall, about to rest it on my shoulder.

“Mi’jo, please!” he pleads. “Can we talk?”

I don’t move. Even though I want to turn over and ask. Why. I stare at the wall, listening to him breathe. I wonder how long he’ll wait. Five? Eighteen? Thirty days?

“Can I at least explain?”

I roll over. I don’t look him in the eye. I look to the side, at everything but: chin, ear, temple. I want to kiss him. But now his lips seem used. Dirty.

“Explain what?” I say. “I
saw
. What else is there to say?”

“No. You. Just. Saw. Can we talk about this?”

“I’m here. Talk.”

“In the closet?” I wipe the tears off my face. “Okay.”

Hammer and Peanuts leave the closet, silent. The door shuts.

“We’re alone,”

I tell myself. “We could work this out.” I shake my head. “No, he lied.” My body says, “I don’t care.”

J.D. steps forward. I step back. I don’t want him to touch me. I back into a corner. He comes close. I put out a hand. Stop. I
know that if he touches me, I won’t be able to resist—his touch, his lips, his kiss.

“Are you listening?” I nod. “Then what’d I just say?”

“Dunno.”

He reaches out and squares my shoulders, turning my body toward his. “What do you want?”

“You,” he says.

“Fine. I’ll leave my body. You can have it. But you can’t have me.”

I wish he’d leave. I want to lie down and go to sleep.

“Look at me.” I do, but my gaze drifts to the side. He takes my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “You don’t get it. Kidd? He’s like living with a stalker.”

I watch him struggle and try to explain. I want to hear him, but my heart is deaf. I feel betrayed to the core by the one person I chose to trust. “Compassion,” I tell myself. “Forgiveness.” I look at him. I can’t help it. My heart is cold.

“Why do you talk that way?”

“I knew it.” He drops his hands. “You’d never understand.”

“Understand what? You’re a liar? A poseur? That you’re full of shit?”

“What’s that s’pposed to mean?”

“What that means is you can just stop with the rap flavaed whatevah.” Now I glare at him, head-on. My fake blond hair stands on end. I’m ready to fight. “I
know
the truth. You’re about as get-tow as me. And I’m about as ghetto as Mickey fucking D’s.”

“I grew up
poor
,” he says, defensive. “You don’t even fucking
know
.”

I pause. Take a breath. “Maybe you should stop,” the little voice in my head says. “Maybe you’ve said enough.” But I can’t.

“I
know
your stepfather got caught diddling your—”

Crack!

He slaps my face. It stings. So much for being “right.” Next time, I’ll use a smug, nonverbal look. I step toward the door. He blocks me.

“Let me out.”

“Who told you that?”

I thought that throwing the truth in his face would feel good. I just feel like shit.

“I’m sorry. Forget it—us. Let me go.”

“How,” he asks, refusing to move, “did you know?”

“Sugar’s journal. Am I right?”

He steps aside. I got my answer. I’m free to go.

“She don’t know the half of it.”

“The other half? That true?”

“Pretty much,” he says, looking down and away.

“The story you told me—about getting caught having sex with the fourteen-year-old. Or, the one about you and ‘Oskar’ planning to escape—”

“I knew someone,” he says. “Maybe, it wasn’t
exactly
like that. But, mostly, it was.”

“Exaggerated, or lied? What about you and Kidd: true or false?”

“You have to, like,
trust
me. Okay? There’s a lot of other stuff you don’t know.”

“Start with one fact.”

“Okay.”

I look him in the eye. Now, he’s the one who won’t return my gaze.

“Tell me, who are you. For real?”

He looks up and takes a deep breath.

“I
can’t tell you my bio. None of us can. Not even you. And I wouldn’t ask. It’s more important to you because you’re closer to the truth because … you still remember. Me? My family? My ‘real’ life? That’s what I remember least. You live here long enough, you’ll see. It’ll happen to you. You move things around in your head. Or you forget. Otherwise, you can’t get up in the morning. There’s life—what you remember—and life that you live. You can only live one if you forget the other. What happened with us … I
never
meant to hurt you. That’s the truth. The first time we talked on the roof, I wanted to be with you. And now, every night, I sleep with you and hold you in my arms … there’s truth in
that
. I know it. You know it.”

Done, he looks at me. His face is flushed. I see the effort it took for him to tell this “truth.” My head’s jumbled with thoughts. Sleeping together. Holding one another in our arms. He’s right, it’s true. There’s no denying. He sleeps with me every night, all night.

“Those kids?” he says, gesturing toward the safe house. “They
act
like they’re all ghetto, but they’re from the suburbs. Like us. But look around. We’re not in the suburbs. It
is
the ghetto. And the longer you live in it, the more it becomes you and your reality. Your reality stops being what you remember.
Or where you came from. It’s where you are
now
. So, you tell me: What’s the truth? What’s a lie?”

“I dunno,” I say. I’m confused. Some of what he says, it makes sense. The rest gives me a headache. “You tell me.”

“I like you,” he says. “I really,
really
like you. That’s the truth. That’s for real.”

I believe him. But I can’t help it. My heart breaks a little. There’s a gap between “like” and “love.” He looks at me. Black eyelashes blink. One. Two. Three. The last time, his eyes stay shut, lashes resting on his cheeks. He leans forward, lips ready to kiss. I let him. We part. Our lips tremble with hope and fear and excitement.

“So?”

The moment of truth. I look him in the eye.

“You don’t love me.”

I walk to the door. My hand reaches for the knob. He doesn’t try to stop me. I can leave. The little voice in my head says, “You’re making a mistake.” I ignore the voice and step out the closet. I know I’ve been cruel and … foolish?

I’m dazed. At first, I don’t hear the fist pounding on the front door. Or, the voices.

“Let me in! Let me in!”

P
eanuts peers through the keyhole. Nobody moves. It’s happening. A raid.

J.D. grabs my arm and pushes me toward the kitchen.

“Run!”

Blur, movement, bodies rush out the room like water sucked down a drain.

The front door shakes. Someone kicks—

Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

“
Run!
” J.D. screams.

I can’t run. But I can hide, I think, leaving my body and—

Watching—

The door crack—

Split—

My bedroom door. It’s all happening again. They’re here. To take me away. Lock. Me. Up.

My vision fades. I’m blacking out.

“
Run!
” J.D. yells. His voice is far away.

I step into the closet. I dive down. I burrow, hiding under a pile of dirty clothes.

“
Ben!
” J.D. cries, “
Ahmed!!!
”

He calls me by my name.

“
Ben! Ahmed!
”

J.D. keeps calling me by my name. Both of them. He’s broken a rule. There are no rules. This safe house is closed.

“
Ben! Ahmed!
”

He wants me to follow. I would, but I can’t. I’m hidden.

“
Ben!!!
”

J.D.’s voice sounds so sad. Faraway. I peer out, my nose in-between a jockstrap and jeans. A blade splits the door.

“
Ben? Ben! BEN?!?
”

J.D.’s voice is close. He came back. The door cracks.

Whack—

Light hits the blade.

A man steps inside. He wears a helmet, uniform and boots. He holds a gun. Wow. A Real Live Cop.

“
Freeze!
”

“
BEEEEENNNNN!!!
”

I cover my ears.

Cops pour into the safe house.

Click-click
. Handcuffs. I know that sound. They lead him out, wrists cuffed behind his back.

Passing the closet, J.D. turns his head and looks down, at my hiding place. Our eyes meet. His mouth forms the words—

“I love—”

And, then, he’s gone.

M
y nose is stuck inside the jockstrap’s plastic cup. It smells. Oh la la. Hammer’s sexy self. I gag on the odor. It’s revolting. A nasty combination of dried cum and skank. Why didn’t Hammer take it? Isn’t his sperm-stained jockstrap worth hun-dreds—or thousands—of dollars on eBay?

It’s noisy outside. I peek through the tee shirts, running shorts and socks. The pile smells so bad, I might vomit. There’s a price Hammer pays to look like a muscle god: His clothes smell like a garbage dump.

My left hand’s cramped. I flex, feel a telephone cord.

Creak.

The sound stops me. I look up. A figure stands in the doorway. A gun’s barrel nudges the door. It swings open. A head look inside. Blue-Eyed Bob steps into the closet. He’s huge. Monster sized. He grabs the telephone cord and yanks. The cord snaps, and it hits my face. It hurts, but I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I don’t make a sound. He scans the closet. His eyes land on the dirty clothes. He smiles. He bends forward. His fingers plunge into the pile. He’s going to rip off my face.

I shut my eyes.

“O
hhhhh!” he moans, orgasmic.

I look through the hole left by the jockstrap. Blue-Eyed Bob could see me—if he looked. But his face is buried in the jockstrap, his mind in an imaginary locker room, hand rubbing his crotch.

I move and a pair of shit-stained briefs fall, draped over my face.

Blue-Eyed Bob turns and leaves with the jockstrap.

I stand. Dirty clothes fall off my body. I plug the cord into the jack. I hope the phone works. It vibrates. I flip the lid. It’s an old walkie-talkie model. The Star Trek communicator model.

“Hello?” I whisper.

“Where are you?” Marci’s voice.

“Closet.”

“Cops.”

“Yeah.”

“Who’d they get?”

“J.D.”

“Shit! He’s gonna get deported.”

“Deported?”

“That’s it?”

“They axed the door and tore the place apart and, and—” I
feel horrible. I start crying. My last words to J.D. were, “You don’t love me.”

“They’re gone?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re downstairs. Leave the closet and run down the hallway. When you get to the fire escape on the first floor, jump.”

“Unit four fifty-six, status check, Market Street raid?”

“Over, 806 in progress.”

“Pigs,” Marci says. “They’re outside. They have dogs. You have two minutes before they come back. They’re looking for drugs.”

Drugs? What about the kiddie porn? If they examine Hammer’s computer and find his pictures, I’ll get the blame! I imagine life imprisonment without parole. Men with bad breath, rough hands and smelly crotches. I’d rather die. All this had to happen just when I was starting to like sex.

“Still there?”

“Yeah.”

“They entered the building. Get out.”

Ten minus ninety, ten minus eighty, ten minus—and I know this—I mean, I
really
know this, but I can’t move. I’m stuck. My body won’t stand. My feet refuse to budge.

“I can’t.”

“If you don’t, the dogs will smell you, you’ll be caught and sent back.”

“
Clear!
”

The cops march down the hallway. Holsters bounce, guns slam, walkie-talkies squawk.

“This is your moment,” I tell myself.
“GO!”

Now or never.

What’ll it be?

T
he safe house is silent. I drop the cell. All I need to do is … Move.
Fast
. Well, probably not even fast. Cops are always late to bank robberies. They’ll probably be late with—

Woof! Woof! Woof!

I look back: German shepherds strain at their leashes, fangs bared and barking. They smell me. See me. And foam at the mouth.

“
Hey, you!
” shouts Piggie Number Whatever.
“Stop!
”

I ignore him and run. I jump out the window and land on the fire escape. I climb up, faster than Spider-Man on crack. On the roof, I look over the edge. Cop cars outside the building. A dirty Impala’s parked at the end of the street. This isn’t the fire escape or the second floor. I can’t jump. Well, I could, but seven flights up, I wouldn’t live. I’m trapped.

I need to go back, down the fire escape. I start to and then I see the Storm Troopers and the dogs. They’re trying to climb up the fire escape, but they’re slowed down by batons, gun holsters, walkie-talkies. The dogs’ feet slip on the metal stairs.

One flight down, I see an open window.