On a swel­ter­ing August day, Mani­ac Magee and his friends gath­ered at the live­ly inter­sec­tion of Chest­nut and Green, trans­formed into a bustling block par­ty and makeshift swim­ming pool. The heat was so intense that peo­ple sought relief in the gush­ing water from a fire hydrant, which some kids joy­ful­ly danced around. Amid the merriment—filled with laugh­ter, radios play­ing, and the scent of sweet lemonade—Maniac rev­eled in the fun, soak­ing up the joy around him. How­ev­er, amid the chaos, he heard a sin­gu­lar voice call­ing out to him repeat­ed­ly, which cut through the fren­zy and drew his atten­tion.

He turned to find a man point­ing a brown fin­ger at him, hav­ing iden­ti­fied him as “Whitey.” Mani­ac, sur­prised to hear this label used on him, sim­ply blinked back at the man, still sur­round­ed by the water’s cool­ing spray. The man insist­ed that it was time for Mani­ac to leave, assert­ing that he should go home, as he did not belong in that space. Despite Maniac’s protests, claim­ing he was right there on Sycamore and this was indeed his home, the old­er man remained unyield­ing. The man the­o­rized that Mani­ac was improp­er­ly encroach­ing upon a space that he believed was­n’t for him and act­ed as if he had a right to expel him.

As ten­sions rose, local chil­dren, Hes­ter and Lester, jumped to Mani­ac’s defense, con­fronting the man known as “Old Rag­pick­er.” In the ensu­ing com­mo­tion, the man rant­ed about seg­re­ga­tion and belong­ing, declar­ing stark dif­fer­ences between blacks and whites. His voice trans­formed from tar­get­ing Mani­ac direct­ly to address­ing the sur­round­ing crowd. At the end of this ordeal, a woman inter­vened, pulling the agi­tat­ed man away. With the uproar silent­ly set­tling, Mani­ac, who typ­i­cal­ly loved his sleep, found him­self rest­less that night and the sub­se­quent nights, prompt­ing him to rise ear­li­er to run around town, where his strains of thoughts were filled with con­fu­sion about the day’s events.

As he con­tin­ued to run through town, Hes­ter and Lester excit­ed­ly invit­ed him to join them for a run. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Aman­da approached, eager to take him to the store, but Mani­ac sensed some­thing was off. When he noticed his sur­round­ings, he saw Mrs. Beale out­side scrub­bing away at the wall, fran­ti­cal­ly clean­ing an odd­ly writ­ten mes­sage that stark­ly pro­claimed, “ISHBELLY GO HOME.” The impli­ca­tions of this mes­sage weighed heav­i­ly on Mani­ac as he processed the unfold­ing com­plex­i­ties of belong­ing and com­mu­ni­ty.