August remembers that while the girls snuck off with their boyfriends, they feared stories of black girls murdered in Manhattan. This fear was coupled with their fear of losing Angela. But nonetheless, they persisted in their sexual exploration—to a point. While Sylvia lost her virginity, August refused to have sex with Jerome, to which he said: “Forget you.” Later, August discovered that Sylvia and Jerome had begun to see each other. Her “world collapse[d] in a moment” (150). During this period, August’s father began to see a non-Muslim woman, but took August to see Sister Sonja. 

August narrates her senior year in high school. Heartbroken by Sylvia, she studied for standardized tests, preparing herself to leave Brooklyn. In her self-imposed isolation, August went three months before seeing Sylvia, and when she saw her again, she found her friend was pregnant. During this period, August came to terms with her mother’s death, looking at the content of her urn and sleeping with it in her bedroom, “one hand pressed against it” (155).