The teens heard the far-off sound of a radio playing afternoon rhythm and blues, the scratching of crushed aluminum caught by a breeze, and the occasional abrupt cough of a man—black, brown, red, and white. Most of the men were a mix of two or more. The suffocating heat exploded on the teens without the cool green shelter of elm-lined streets in the previous neighborhood. They sweated. The girls felt as if they were walking through a ghost town in an old western or a village in Vietnam recently bombed overhead.
Jacob kept his head down, staring at his shoes as they made their way over the cracked sidewalk peppered with scraggly green weeds and dandelions sprouting through the cement. Sher’s head was up, making occasional eye contact with the men in the doorways, but not enough to solicit
