Remember Us

Set in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, the story follows Sage Michael Durham, a twelve-year-old girl, through a transformative summer marked by neighborhood fires, friendship, loss, and self-discovery. Sage narrates from the future, looking back on the year her world changed.

Bushwick is burning. Buildings on Palmetto Street collapse one by one into masses of rock, ash, and crumbled plaster. Sirens scream day and night, and Sage's mother keeps emergency bags packed for both of them with clothes, canned goods, and cash. The children play among the ruins, pressing their backs against still-standing walls, trying to make sense of a world disappearing before their eyes.

Sage is the only girl who plays on the neighborhood basketball courts and one of the best players in the park. Her father, Michael Durham, was the only Black firefighter in his squad and faced discrimination from white colleagues before joining the Vulcan Society, a fraternity of Black firefighters. He died fighting a fire caused by frayed wires in a downtown Brooklyn building. Sage remembers fragments of him: his laugh, his big hands, his promise to watch her play someday. She keeps a photo of him in her wallet.

The summer before seventh grade, a boy named Freddy moves into the corner building on Palmetto Street. Skinny and light-skinned, with a messy afro and eyes that shift between dark blue and gray, he bonds with Sage over basketball and their shared loyalty to the New York Knicks. Both are only children, comfortable with silence, and they become close friends. Freddy starts calling Sage "Slick" because she steers conversations in ways that make him think more deeply; the nickname becomes mutual.

Standing before two newly burnt buildings, Freddy introduces the concept of "the once was," his term for the buildings, lives, and memories that now exist only in the past tense. Sage privately connects the idea to her father. The children cross into the wreckage, where Sage finds a melted picture frame with a water-blurred family photo. A neighborhood boy named Jacob claims it and cherishes it. Freddy discovers a waterlogged wallet and buys candy for all the younger kids.

Sage's mother reads a Daily News article calling Bushwick "The Matchbox" and tells Sage she is thinking of moving. Sage protests, arguing that this was her father's house. Her mother promises to find a brick house. Late in the summer, Freddy's cousins Gwen and Shaunessy arrive from New Orleans, filling his apartment with music, dancing, and cooking. Gwen does not judge Sage's rumpled Knicks shirt, and Sage sees her as proof that there is more than one way to be a girl. Freddy reveals that his family moved to Brooklyn from the Bronx because of fires there, not knowing Palmetto Street was burning too.

Throughout the summer, Sage experiences an unfamiliar emotional hollowness she does not yet understand. One rainy afternoon, a teenage boy confronts Sage alone in the park, asking aggressively what kind of girl she is. He accuses her of thinking she is a boy, grabs her father's old basketball, and runs off with it. At home, Sage throws away her basketball shorts, shoves her sneakers into the closet, and tears down her poster of basketball star Julius Erving. When Freddy comes by, she tells him she just wants to watch. For the first time, she does not want to play.

Sage feels she is walking crooked in the world. She asks her mother if she is pretty, "pretty like a girl should be pretty." Her mother tells her she is beautiful inside and out, but Sage remains unconvinced. One day, she takes matches from the kitchen, locks herself in the bathroom, and holds a lit match to the toilet paper roll. The fire spreads to a curtain. Her mother extinguishes the flames with a pail of water, and Sage is grounded indefinitely.

One Sunday at church, Sage sees Jacob and notices a heart-shaped patch of white hair behind his ear. He gives her two peppermint candies and explains the patch is God's heart. Three days later, Jacob dies in a fire. The neighborhood fills the church for his funeral. Sage prays for every child in Bushwick waking to the smell of smoke. After the funeral, Sage's mother releases her from punishment.

Freddy, back from visiting his cousins in the Bronx, asks if Sage will ever play ball again. When she reveals what the boy in the park said, Freddy tells her she is "the Sage kind" and that the Sage kind loves ball. Later, while listening to a José Feliciano record, Sage tells Freddy the full story of the confrontation. Freddy tells her, "You got the ball inside of you. Nobody can steal that" (130). Something heavy lifts from Sage. Her mother buys her new sneakers, and the next morning Sage returns to the court. The game feels easy and right, and she feels she belongs.

On one of the last days of summer, Sage's mother wakes her with jangling keys: She has bought a brick house in Hollis, Queens. When Sage tells Freddy, he dribbles the ball harder and refuses to look at her. On moving day, the whole block comes out to say goodbye. Sage finds Freddy hiding behind the factory wall, holding a basketball needle wrapped in tissue, all he could afford. They hug and hold on, exchanging "Gonna miss you, Slick."

The new house has a bright red door and a backyard full of flowers. Sage recognizes the unfairness: Freddy, Jacob, and all the fire-displaced families should have this too. At her new school, many students have also moved from fire-affected neighborhoods. The established students exclude the newcomers, and the new kids, including Sage, redirect their own mistreatment onto a girl named Lisa, who has a glass eye mistakenly made blue instead of brown. Lisa endures the cruelty quietly until one afternoon she removes the painful eye at her desk and weeps. Sage later discovers Lisa on the basketball court, sinking shot after shot. They begin playing together, and Sage posts a flyer inviting other girls to join. The group names themselves the Hollis Hoopers.

Over time, Sage and Freddy's phone calls grow less frequent. About a year after moving, Sage and her mother visit Bushwick. Two houses on their old block have burned, and Freddy's building is the only one still standing on Palmetto, but Freddy is gone. Sage learns that some landlords had been setting their own buildings on fire to collect insurance money. Years later, she runs into Freddy near Central Park. He is taller, his afro gone, but his eyes and smile are the same. They walk to a café for hot chocolate and beignets.

The novel closes with a memory from the last days before the move. Freddy tells Sage he wishes the houses could stay standing forever. They look up at his building, white curtains blowing, a full moon above. Sage finally understands the hollowness she felt all year: She had been missing everything even as it stood in front of her, burning away building by building. Her mother later tells her this is what growing up feels like. Freddy says he is sad about someday needing to find a new person to share beignets with, then grins and says that day is not today. They race up his stoop into the apartment, where his mother is making beignets and singing. Sage knows the building will one day be gone, but for now there is music, laughter, and sweetness, and that sweetness will remain with her and Freddy always.