Whatever. Toby and his owner can kiss my ass. I have more important things to focus on.

The envelope is thin, especially compared to the stacks of papers already on the table. When I open it and pull the papers out I realize this isn’t what I would’ve gotten if I’d gone downtown to make the request. Each one of the ten pages has FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY stamped in red in the top right corner. I grab the lighter from the tabletop and a cigarette, light it, and scan the first page.

The Company (VerenTech) acknowledges that this Memorandum is a public record subject to disclosure but do hereby require that we be notified of any and all FOIA requests, both during the city selection process and in the event that this city is chosen, to allow the Company to seek a protective order or other appropriate remedy.

Legalese is not my jam, but I’m pretty sure that this is VerenTech asking the City of New York to snitch if anyone asks about what they’re doing. I have no idea if this is normal or not, but asking for a list of people who requested information that should be public in order to seek “a protective order or other appropriate remedy” against them is ominous as hell.

I had requested information. I’d been denied but . . .

I take another drag from the cigarette.

The second page, after the “snitches get stitches” clause, is full of terminology I fully have no fucking idea what to make of.

The third page seems to be from some kind of census report on the neighborhood surrounding the old medical center. My neighborhood. Number of inhabitants, racial breakdown of the inhabitants, median income, how many people make use of SSI, WIC, Medicaid. These numbers are bumped up by the housing projects, but it’s somewhat alarming to see the totals highlighted in red below a certain income level.

There’s a block of text in a memo area under the numbers.

Area is centrally located. It’s at the convergence of several subway lines, making it ideal for commuting into Manhattan. There is also commuter train service to Long Island and Penn Station. Tree-lined streets abound and there are many parks, small and large, though most are currently used as hangouts for delinquents or drug dealers. It is also within reasonable walking distance from Prospect Park, meaning the goal of closing gap between the Park Slope operations and the Northwest sector can be reached within the next few years.

JFK is not far, for those who travel often, and access to and from Long Island and its beaches is convenient for those with property there. These resources are currently underutilized. While many of the brownstones and apartment buildings have not been kept up, a surprising number will require minimal work to meet our standards. We anticipate a full rej—

I turn the paper over but there’s nothing on the back and the next page is from a different report. A quick flip through shows that all of the pages were printed slightly too big, cutting off portions of the text.

I didn’t know that VerenTech had a Park Slope campus. That doesn’t make sense, given how everyone made such a big deal of the project about to get started in my neighborhood.

The fourth page is clearly from another report, given its numbering, and lists “incentives” from the city that VerenTech is currently considering, and I inhale wrong and start to choke. The tax subsidies alone amount to over a billion dollars. A billion motherfucking dollars.

This is a lot of money at play, before anything else is even on the table. It’s more than a little rage-inducing when thinking about the redline map Kendra had given us, and how little investment the neighborhood has been deemed worthy of.

The next page is just columns of numbers that mean nothing to me, but the last three pages are easily understandable.

VERENTECH HEADQUARTERS CAMPUS, 5-YEAR PROJECTION reads the first page, and it’s a mock-up of an immense shining tower right in the middle of the neighborhood, like the mother ship for those alien cranes hovering everywhere. At its base is the renovated medical center that will serve as the research and development building. The buildings around it are the familiar ones that have always lined these streets.

I flip to the ten-year projection; in this illustration, the campus has spread. A few more tall buildings—this time condominiums, with storefronts along the bottom. For this to work out, a few other buildings will have to be torn down. There’s a condominium where the YMCA should be, too.

My mom told me something about the YMCA maybe moving to a bigger space, which would make sense if an office building accommodating thousands and thousands of new workers was moving into the immediate area, but it’s still unsettling to see such a major change neatly laid out.

The fifteen-year projection shows a neighborhood that’s completely unrecognizable to me at first glance, even though it’s my street. Condominiums, large faux brownstones and smaller glass-fronted cubes, have replaced several of the familiar houses.

I stare at the image for a long time before I notice that there are people along the bottom edge of the paper, slightly cut off by the bad print job. All of the little illustrated heads I see?

Belong to white people.

Something slams upstairs, right above my head. A door in Drea’s apartment? I didn’t hear her come in the front, but maybe she crept up because she’s still mad at me.

Sulking and evasion aren’t Drea’s usual style. I pick up my phone and check our text chat even though I know damn well she hasn’t responded: Drea is typing . . .

Enough is enough.

I shove my feet into my house slippers and head out into the hallway. I pass the coat closet under the stairs, pushing the door that’s always slightly ajar shut, and walk to the bottom of the steps.

“Drea?” I call up the stairs, and the frightened-sounding reverberation of my own voice jump-starts my pulse. There’s no reason to be scared. This is the house I grew up in. Any spirits that linger here have either had a lifetime to make their move or wish me no harm.

What if it’s not a spirit?

The question slithers icily down the nape of my neck.

I head up the stairs, just to prove I can. Mommy would have been ashamed at how I’m acting this week, shook by every little thing. One time when I was about eight, I woke her up to tell her a monster was living under my bed. She told me to get the .22 and shoot it, then take my behind to sleep.

I laugh a little at that memory, fortify myself with it.

When I get up to the second landing, there’s silence behind Drea’s door. Usually when she’s home, there’s music or humming, or just the thrum of her energy—the same thing that first drew me into the light of her friendship.

“Dre?” I knock. Silence.

I turn the knob.

It opens.

The apartment is sticky with humidity and smells of sage, coconut, and shea butter. Everything in the living room fits Drea’s personal color palette—yellow, teal, and orange, bathing you in brightness as soon as you step through the door.

The late-afternoon light from the sun setting behind the buildings across the street spears into the apartment, pinning down Drea’s belongings around the apartment: the altar with a half-burnt sage bundle and various crystals; the heart-shaped couch pillow I cross-stitched her name into during our home economics class; her college diploma, framed with a photo of me, her, and Mommy at her graduation.

A door slams down the hallway again and I jump, then breathe a sigh of relief. One of the best parts of her apartment layout is she gets the bomb cross-breeze, but if she doesn’t put a doorstop under her bedroom door, it’ll slam and open, slam and open.

I head back to her bedroom, pushing the door open and sliding the wooden triangle under it with my foot. The color scheme in here is different—all white and purple. I head over to her window; her polka-dot curtains flap in my face from the breeze but then go still after I shut the window.

She must have been home at some point today if her window is open . . .

My body tenses. This is where her air conditioner should be. Her brand-new air conditioner. There’s no reason for there to be a cross-breeze because this window shouldn’t be open.

My head starts to spin a little and I realize I’m not breathing. My brain is too busy trying to piece everything together, and has forgotten basic functions.

I have to get out of here. The air conditioner is gone, Drea didn’t tell me she was moving it, and anyone could’ve come in from the fire escape. They could be in here right now.

I start to dash out of the room, but a dark stain on Drea’s white duvet catches my eye and I skid to a halt.

Dried blood is dark like that.

I walk slowly toward the bed, heart in my throat and the fear threatening to blot out any sense I have left. Then the stain moves.

Tiny flecks of it crawl around the edges, and this time it’s not my mind playing tricks on me.

It’s not blood. It’s a clump of bedbugs.