The windows in the Hollis apartment ran almost floor to ceiling, which was the reason Renita had signed the lease. From the couch you could see the whole lit spine of downtown Rochester and the dark line of the Genesee where the river cut through. On a clear night the city looked like it had been built on purpose. Renita had grown up on the west side in a house where the windows faced a neighbor's siding, and when she toured this place three years ago she had stood at the glass with her coat still on and decided. The rent ate a piece of every paycheck. She paid it anyway.
It was a Monday in early March. Dinner was done. The kitchen behind the living room still smelled like the smothered chicken Walter had made, because Walter cooked on Mondays and Thursdays and acted as if this were a law he'd been handed rather than a deal he'd offered. Water ran in the sink. A spoon clinked against a pot.
Desmond Hollis was eleven. He knelt at the coffee table with a yellow pencil, and his braids were still tight from Saturday because his grandfather had sat behind him for two hours and done them, humming the same four bars of a Stylistics song the whole time. He wore the blue polo from school. In front of him lay a single sheet of paper, plus a second sheet stapled behind it, and he had already filled in every line a kid was allowed to fill in. Name. Grade. Team number: 31187. Team name: Lake Effect. Emergency contact. Allergies: none. Medications: none. He had printed it all in neat block capitals.
The lines he couldn't fill were near the bottom. *Parent/Legal Guardian Signature. Date. Parent/Legal Guardian Printed Name.* There was a box beside them with a dollar sign, and in that box Ms. Sato had written *$240 — bus + 2 nights hotel (shared)* in green ink.
His mother came out of the hallway carrying an orange shoebox, holding it in front of her with both hands like a cake.
"Mom," Dez said. "I need your signature tonight."
She didn't stop. "Ask me later, baby."
She went around the end of the coffee table to the couch, where Jalen was sprawled with his phone. He was sixteen and long-boned, in the navy hoodie with ROC RINGS printed across the chest in white, the name of the travel program he'd played for since he was thirteen. His feet were up on the cushion in socks. He looked at the box and sat up slowly, the way people sit up when they're afraid of guessing wrong.
Renita set it in his lap.
He lifted the lid. Inside, under the tissue paper, was a pair of basketball shoes in orange and a pale peach going to white at the heel, so new they looked wet.
"Oh," Jalen said. "These are the new ones?"
"Only the best for you." There was pride in her voice, and something warmer underneath it, the tone she'd used when he was small and had a fever and she'd pressed her wrist to his forehead. She had worked four overtime shifts in February to buy those shoes without touching the rent. She hadn't said so, and she wasn't going to.
Dez was looking at the table. He said it softly, to the paper more than to anybody. "Mine cost less than those shoes."
The faucet in the kitchen shut off.
Renita turned. Her gold hoops swung and caught the lamplight. "Excuse me?"
"Nothing."
"No, you said something. Say it to my face."