A curt nod.

I pick up my pace to catch up with her. “You dislike the idea of voting, don’t you?”

Another, more empathic nod.

“Yeah.” I mull it over in my head. Her comments during our meeting. The weird, uncomfortable, intoxicating spark of hope in the store. They’re more important than the rage simmering beneath the surface. “I’m scared of making the wrong call though.”

She glances at me through her eyelashes.

“And we can’t let Josie do whatever she wants either.”

Logan snorts. She reaches behind her and pats the backpack. I wince.

“Fair point.”

She swirls toward me and raises her hands like she wants to sign something more, but then she throws them up in clear frustration. I wouldn’t understand it, and we can hardly stop to find paper and pen in the middle of this neighborhood.

“I’ll listen to what you have to say when we get back,” I promise. “We all owe you that.”

Logan slows down her pace, and she tilts her head, mulling over the words. Then she shakes her head.

“We don’t?” I take a stab in the dark. “Or that isn’t why you did this?”

The look she gives me makes it clear it was a nonsensical question to begin with. Of course, she didn’t do it because she wanted gratitude. She did it because she feels responsible for the others. I’m not the only one who does.

But that responsibility means we need to take care of each other. And I can’t let anger—or worry—guide me.

I breathe out hard and run a hand through my hair. “Do you know what I dream about?” I ask Logan.

She shakes her head.

“I dream about Paris.” Paris is an ache that’s settled in my bones over these last few weeks. It’s always been that during the hardest times. When I wouldn’t feel at home somewhere, I would take books about Paris out of the school library, and I would pore over the unfamiliar names and places. The Arc de Triomphe. Les Invalides. The Panthéon. The Place de la Concorde and its guillotined ghosts. I was convinced that even if I couldn’t find my own history there, I would go there and still find some sort of roots. “When I stop worrying about all of us, I wonder what the city looks like now. I want to cling to the idea that it’s still there, you know? With the Eiffel Tower lit up at night. And tourists, still sitting on the steps and the benches in front of the Sacré-Cœur, like nothing bad has ever happened. Because someone ought to live.”

I rub at my neck. “But I realized, it isn’t about Paris. It’s about finding something better than this place. It’s about wanting somewhere to belong.”

Logan nods.

“Maybe…maybe that’s what I want to do when I grow up. Be that person for teens like us who have nowhere else to go to either.”

She smiles, and then, with a slight roll of her eyes, she lowers the collar of her shirt and points at her throat. The bruises from Josie’s hands are still visible, and her message is clear.