Content Warning: This section contains discussions of race, racism, racial identity, anti-gay bias, gun violence and fatalities, wrongful conviction/imprisonment, and the foster system. 



The narrator, writing as an adult, is looking back on her past and explains the context of her friendship with D Foster as a teenager, which took place in the couple of years between the first time Tupac Shakur was shot and when he died from another shooting. After he recovered from the first shooting, he went to prison and began speaking out against the “thug life” he’d once embraced and embodied. The narrator reflects that the timeline of the last couple years of Tupac’s life was intertwined with her own coming-of-age and her friendship with D Foster. As an adult now telling the story, she feels it is important to remember that time with the wisdom and perspective she now has as an adult.

Switching now to the story of her teenage years, the narrator begins by telling about a time when she, Neeka, and D are watching music videos and eating pizza at the narrator’s house.