Free Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson

his pocket and handed me a tissue. I hadn’t known I’d been crying until I took it from him, wiped my eyes, closed them tight again.
    It get all your people?
he asked.
    I shook my head. It was getting dark. A few cars drove past us. A girl who looked to be about Moses’s age walked by carrying a baby. Another kid was following close behind her. Younger than Jesse Jr. He looked at us, then ran and caught up with the girl.
    Not my daddy. Not my brother either.
    Then we need to find your brother and your daddy, don’t we?
    They . . . I know where they are.
    Yeah—but do
they
know where
you
are?
    I didn’t answer. Just sat down again and pulled my legs up, wrapped my arms around them and stared out at the street. My face itched. I held tight to my own hands to keep from scratching. My teeth hurt like someone had tried to hammer them deeper into my gums. I tried to take my mind off of everything, tried to figure out how much more begging I’d have to do before I had enough money to head over to the Donnersville House, where the guy selling didn’t give anybody a break the way T-Boom did. Mostly I was going over to the Donnersville House. Closer. Moon faster to come by there. No long walking to T-Boom. But when I didn’t have enough money, I went back, begging T-Boom for a break.
    Streetlamps were flickering on. Looked like lightning bugs the way they hesitated for a long time, flickering on and off like they were waiting for the right signal from somewhere. Ben’s face flickered pale and dark again—over and over.
    I gotta go,
I said to Moses. The streetlights were all the way on now. Even with them, the street was dark, shadowy.
    Stuff’s hard to get off of. But you’re young. It won’t be deep for you. How long you been using—a few months?
    Like you know. You just painting signs. You don’t know.
    I see you in snow,
he said again.
Snow falling all around you. I see the flakes becoming your hair.
    He pulled his wallet out of his bag and opened it. I thought he was going to take out some money, but instead he pulled out a picture of a woman. She was dark like him, pretty.
    Wanna know where she is?
I looked at him, and he pointed up.
County sent me and my sister here to Donnersville. Living with white folks we never seen in our lives. But they fed us, dressed us, took us to church and schooled us. My sister is everything they could pray for in somebody who “they gave a new life to.” They’re still trying to figure me out, though. So don’t say “like you know.” ’Cuz, truthfully, baby sis—you’re the one who don’t know.
He snapped his finger at me, then put the picture back in his wallet.
    How?
I whispered. My voice sounded like it was coming from somebody else. A faraway somebody
.
    How what?
    How’d she . . . die?
    Moses got quiet. Felt like a long time passed before he answered.
    Her heart stopped when I was five. But she’d been doing meth for a while before that, so the way I figure it, her heart had stopped working, stopped loving, long before it stopped beating.
    I painted her with a rainbow—but I put the rainbow way in the distance and her reaching toward it. I just wrote “Mama.” No years. No God or Love stuff. Just “Mama.” It’s back in Fort Chester. Where we lived before we came here. First one I ever did.
    He pulled three new dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to me. My hand was shaking as I took the money.
    My sister said, “You can’t save that girl, Moses. You don’t have magic powers
.
” And you know what? I bet she’s right. I bet you gonna head right over to wherever it is you go and get high. I bet you gonna spend the rest of the spring sitting in front of this closed-up building growing more and more invisible to people.
    Then what?
I said.
    Then you die, my lovely.
He said it matter-of-fact, like it was the most obvious