I would have been less surprised if the stone lion sitting outside the fancy restaurant across the street had opened its massive jaws and made the same offer, but I managed to mumble, “No, thank you.”

“Good,” Jenna said. “There are too many books and not enough time as it is.”

“I don’t know,” I said again, nervous. If she was a star in the galaxy, I was one of those astronauts that gets disconnected from their ship and floats through space until they run out of oxygen.

“There’s nothing in the world a good book can’t cure,” she said. “Come on, pick one or two. My treat.”

And so, in the bright artificial light of the bookstore, we browsed side by side like this was how we spent every Friday evening. She wasn’t a supernova and I wasn’t a deserted daughter, and despite the part of my brain incessantly remembering my mother’s crying and the sound I imagined the cheerleader’s teeth made against the flesh of her finger, I was content. Or maybe resigned.

When we brought my book and Jenna’s four to the register, the bookseller smiled at my choice, The Forest Between the Sea and the Sky, the first of the Orman Chronicles, by N. E. Endsley.

“This book is so good,” she enthused. She had a pair of reading glasses on her nose and another pair forgotten atop her head. “The author isn’t much older than you, probably. Only sixteen or so. Ain’t that something? You’ll have to let me know what you think.”

I finished the book in one sitting, under the glowing bulb of Jenna’s crème-colored bedside lamp. I spent the night at her house, though it was less of an invite and more of an edict. When we left the bookstore, I was taken in the Williamses’ very nice car to their very nice house, and it was as if I had always been there and always would be.

“Jenna never brings friends over,” her dad boomed cheerfully.

It was a short drive from the store to their home, but long enough for Mrs. Williams to smile at me with her eyes in the rearview mirror.

When I borrowed Jenna’s cell phone to call my mother and let her know where I was, she didn’t answer. I left the numbers for the Williamses’ house and Jenna’s cell and told her to call me back. She never did.

I was worried she’d be furious when they dropped me off the next morning, but she was still in her room. If it weren’t for the acidic smell of microwave instant pasta, I wouldn’t have known she was even there.