“Oh, that. Yeah, I chose French, but I might change it to Mandarin later,” Marianne lied. “It would be cool to learn a language my mom doesn’t know.”

When Skyla finally joined them inside, they all sang along to a Motown station on their way home, and Marianne tried to breathe. She was a winner. She should feel good. And apparently, she was on speaking terms with Skyla again. That was something.

After Jason parked, Marianne started to head home, but Skyla stopped her. “Come in for nachos before you study?”

“I really can’t…” Marianne said.

Breaking up the awkwardness, Jason insisted Marianne join them for a few minutes, and they went into Skyla’s house to feast on his famous nachos. Sully barked wildly at their entrance.

“Can I have a seltzer?” Marianne asked.

“Of course!” Jason rustled her hair.

She still tried to ask for stuff in their house, even though it felt like a second home.

When she went to the fridge to grab her favorite flavor, she saw a couple of Skyla’s midterms on the fridge.

They both read A+.

What had Skyla said about her scores? That she’d done “okay”?

She’d done very okay.

As Jason poured all their favorite items onto the chips, Marianne hopped on a stool and took out her study materials.

“Marianne, give me those flash cards.” Skyla reached across the kitchen’s high-top table. “I wanna see how many I know.”

Marianne handed them over.

“Dad, check this out. Marianne has been studying for this. Let’s go,” she said to Marianne. “Who is the American general in World War I who—”

“No, I really don’t know that many,” Marianne interrupted.

“Hmmm.” Skyla flipped through them, testing herself. “Jefferson Davis, Thomas Jefferson—two huge Jeffersons!”

“I know, right?! I think about that every time. There’s an old TV show called The Jeffersons, too. We should watch it together.” She found herself chatting with Skyla as if nothing had broken between them, even though something had. Hadn’t it?

Marianne pulled out her math homework and stared at it. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but the second-to-last test was in a few days. She’d done okay on a practice test for the first time in her life. Vi said there was no doubt she’d improved.

But if she didn’t improve enough, what was the point?

“How much cheese?” Jason asked.

“All the cheese!” Skyla commanded.

Skyla was never more energetic than when she was at home. At school she had a kind of calm to her that made Marianne wonder sometimes if Skyla, too, had a certain “school version” of herself. Like that nervous first-day-of-middle-school Skyla had been covered up by cool-and-collected Skyla.

“Done,” he said, literally pouring out the whole bag.

“Delicioso!” Skyla cheered.

Would Skyla take Spanish in high school? Her papa spoke it because his parents in Puerto Rico did.

“Okay.” She returned to the flash cards, looking up after reading each question and then saying what she thought the answer was before checking the back. “I know these!” she chirped. “Panama … Dr. Anthony Fauci … Robert Frost … Joseph Stalin … The Battle of Waterloo…”