Books where you miss the characters when it's over can be rough. I was sad to say goodbye to Jade and her friends. Jade's best friend, Lee Lee goes to public school, while Jade takes a bus across Portland to attend a private school on scholarship. A theme of her story is what girls like her--Black girls from the hood--give to programs like the one that provides Jade's scholarship and later Woman to Woman, which connects her with a mentor from a rich Black family--rather than just what they are gifted.

After two years at St. Francis, Jade still hasn't made any real friends, not even with the few other Black kids, until she notices a girl taking the same bus to school as she does. Sam is white and lives with her grandparents in a less tony part of PDX than the school is, but still far fancier than where Jade, Jade's mom, and sometimes her uncle are.

I ride the 35 through the maze of houses that all look like one another, like sisters who are not twins but everyone thinks they are.

I don't know why this description got me or what it has to do with the story, but it struck me. Maybe because I was that sister.

The whole time Lee Lee is talking, I am thinking about York and Sacagawea, wondering how they must have felt having a form of freedom but no power.

There's a storyline about an enslaved man, York and Sacagawea, who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their explorations and were treated as equals along the way. But when they got home and York ask for his freedom, Clark was like nah.

Jade has had enough of meaningless largesse that does more for the givers than the lucky recipients. She both learns and teaches that she and people in her community have a lot to give.