Indigo Summer. Monica McKayhan

      On moving day, I carefully placed all my CDs—50 Cent, T.I., Kanye West—into a cardboard box. Packed away my DVDs—Friday, Next Friday, Friday After Next, and some of my old Kung Fu movies—into the same box. And I couldn’t forget my all-time favorite DVD, Rush Hour, and every episode of The Dave Chappelle Show, which was packed in the same box. I didn’t want the movers packing my sacred items. I needed to pack them myself, to make sure they made it to the new place safely.

      I placed the box on the backseat of my ’92 Jeep Cherokee that I’d saved up for and bought with money that I had earned by working the drive-thru at Wendy’s. As 50 Cent’s “Just A Little Bit” blasted through my speakers, Killer took his place in the passenger’s seat of my Jeep, his head hanging out the window as I pulled out of the subdivision I grew up in…a place where I had chased the ice cream man down the street at full speed every day just to buy a red, white and blue bomb pop; the same neighborhood where I had my first kiss with Ashley Thomas right in between Mrs. Fisher’s house and the vacant house at the end of the block, the place where I was chased by Mr. Palmer’s Doberman every time I took the short cut through his yard, and where I fell out of the tree in Miss Booker’s front yard and broke my arm when I was nine; the same place where I pushed a lawn mower up and down the street and made money cutting lawns every summer since I was twelve, and where the entire neighborhood gathered for cookouts and block parties every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and on Labor Day.

      The neighborhood was all a kid like me had. That and Kim Porter, the girl who broke up with me the same day she found out that I was moving to the south side.

      “It’s too hard trying to go out with somebody at another school, Marcus,” she’d said.

      Then she said those four words that pierced my heart.

      “Let’s just be friends.”

      The words still rang in my head, long after they had lingered in the air. Let’s just be friends.

      My life as I knew it was over.

      Chapter 3

      Indigo

      My breasts had grown a little bit over the summer, even though I was still in the same A-sized cup, I could tell they were just a little bit bigger than they were at the beginning of the summer. I wore my pink low-cut top that I’d picked up at the mall on Saturday just to show them off a little, my low-cut Mudd jeans and pink, black and white FILAs.

      The first day of school was not the same without Jade. We’d made so many plans before she moved away. Times had gotten too hard for her mother and she decided that they should move in with Jade’s grandmother in New Jersey. Jade hated living there, too, because her grandmother was nothing like Nana. She was mean and stuffy, Jade told me, and she made them go to church three nights a week and on Sunday, too. She hoped it wouldn’t be long before her mama found them an apartment or something. She’d have to find a job first, and that was the hard part. Thank God for free nights and weekends, because I was able to call Jade every night after nine o’clock from my cell phone. And we talked all day on Saturdays and Sundays. That helped, although it still wasn’t the same as having her next door.

      On the first day of school, I was forced to walk to the bus stop with Angie Cummings, who was literally “a nobody” on the face of the earth. She was a smart kid who made straight As and wore what looked like her Grandma Esther’s clothes to school. I was more of a B student, and sometimes C when I didn’t apply myself as much. I wanted to make good grades, but sometimes I just got caught up in other stuff and didn’t pay as much attention in class. For people like Angie, who didn’t have a life, straight As came much easier for them.

      Even though I’d known Angie since kindergarten, and we attended the same church, she wasn’t someone I hung out with. She was kind of weird and wore bifocals. But since she was going to the bus stop, and I was going at the same time, there was no harm in walking together, although she was the type of person that would ruin your reputation for life. And I’d worked too hard for my popularity. Outside of the cheerleaders, Jade and I were the most popular two girls at our middle school because we could dance so well.

      It was hard being popular, too, because people were always trying to be friends with me. And boys were always trying to talk to me, telling me how cute I am, and making comments about my body. Now that’s what really got on my nerves, the comments about my body. My body was the one thing that made me uncomfortable, because it was always changing. I knew how smart I was, knew I could dance, and I could beat everybody, even Nana, in a game of Monopoly. But when it came to my body, now that was a whole different story. My breasts were always changing, and I wasn’t built like a light pole anymore. There were bumps growing in some places, lumps in others, and my hips were filling out a little. Even my booty was coming full circle, and was more round than I remembered it being in the fifth grade. Now that was weird, but the weirdest thing of all came three years ago, sixth grade, right after recess was over one day on the playground. I remember it just like it happened yesterday.

      Miss Brown had blown her whistle to let us know that it was time to come inside. It was after lunch, and it was on a Friday. I remember because I was so excited that Nana Summer was coming for a visit that weekend, and I knew she’d be at my house by the time I got home from school. My stomach had been cramping for about three days, and when I told my mother about it, she gave me some Midol and asked, “You started your period, Indi?”

      “No, ma’am.”

      “Well, if you’re having cramps, it probably means that it’s coming soon.”

      “What’s it for, Mama?” I asked her, “I mean, why do women have periods?”

      “All women do, Indi. It’s just a part of life.” That was all my mother said, before she took me to the CVS drugstore and bought me sanitary products and told me how to use them. I could tell that she was just as uncomfortable talking about it as I was.

      So I left it alone, until that day on the playground when I felt a warm gush in my underpants and I took off running at full speed to the restroom. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life, and on the bus all the way home, my jean jacket tied around my waist, I felt like a freak or something. Thought all of my classmates were staring at me. As if they’d all known.

      I was so happy to see Nana standing in our kitchen when I got home. I grabbed her around the waist, and hugged her so tightly from behind.

      “Can we talk?” I whispered in her ear, as she stirred something on the stove. It smelled like spaghetti. “In my room?”

      “Sure, baby,” she said, turned the fire down underneath the pot and followed me to my bedroom. “What is it?”

      “Do I look different today?”

      “Different how?” she asked.

      “Do I look more grown-up than I did the last time you saw me.”

      “A little taller maybe. But I was just here at Christmastime, Indi. What’s this about?”

      “It came today,” I whispered. I didn’t want the rest of the world hearing, and certainly not my daddy if he was anywhere in the house. Surely she knew, just as everyone else probably did. Even Jade had seemed standoffish that day.

      “What came today?” Nana asked.

      “You