They sat at the kitchen table calculating their savings: enough for three months of rent and bills if they were careful.
"Maybe I should drop out of Westfield," Aaliyah suggested quietly. "Go back to Roosevelt High."
Monica's eyes flashed with sudden fire. "No! That's what they want: to drive us out. We don't run. Your father never ran, and neither do we."
Later that night, Aaliyah found her mother making calls about job openings in neighboring counties, voice steady despite her trembling hands.
The next morning, Aaliyah opened her gym locker to find a dead rat with a note reading: Know your place. She photographed it before disposing of the carcass, adding the evidence to their growing file.
After school, she discovered someone had slashed her bike tires. Walking home alone, a car followed her slowly for several blocks, engine revving whenever she quickened her pace.
Outside their apartment building, bright red letters were spray-painted across their door: GO HOME.
When Detective Ross, now off-duty, arrived to take photos, his personal vehicle's windows were smashed while he was inside. The message was clear: no one could help them without becoming a target themselves.
That night, sitting at her desk staring at college application essays she couldn't focus on writing, Aaliyah's phone buzzed with another anonymous message: We know where you sleep.
Her eyes drifted to her contact list, stopping at Uncle Reggie, her mother's brother who had served in the Army with her father. Her finger hovered over the call button as fragments of memories surfaced: hushed conversations between adults, mentions of her father's classified work, the official letter claiming he was missing in action, but the military funeral that never happened.
Against her mother's explicit instructions to never contact him, Aaliyah pressed call.