We never talk. Not really. He’s never said, So, let’s catch up! Or, How’s life been treating you? Nothing normal like that. We don’t acknowledge that we were once best friends and spent every day after school together. That I spent every Sunday eating dinner at his house. That we used to secretly meet up after school at an abandoned cedar boatshed at the end of the Harborwalk—secret code: “meet me at the North Star”—to listen to music and run terrible Harry Potter D&D campaigns.

No. He’s just … around. Like now. Dark eyes staring at me from across the corridor.

Did he hear Big Dave just now? Lucky is always witnessing my little humiliations at school, and I can’t decide if I’m angry or grateful that he never tries to intervene. All I know is that I’m weary of thinking about him all the time. Weary of wondering why he won’t talk to me. And weary of enduring his haunting stares.

I’m so glad my junior year is over.

When the last bell rings, everyone pours out of the hundred-year-old brick school building like ants deserting an anthill. Sad sack that I am, I hike the five blocks back to the South Harbor district, trying not to the let the internship rejection get to me. After all, I’ve weathered bigger storms than this. I just need another angle. Talk to someone else. Show the right person my work—someone who’ll be willing to go to bat for me and stand up against Levi Summers and his stupid age rules. Something. I’ll figure it out.

Tenacious. Wily as a fox. Schemer. Plotter. That’s me.

Once I get to the Nook and pass under Salty Sally the mermaid, I glance through the front door and spy Mom talking to a customer. Then I make my way around back where I march up rickety steps that are eternally covered in seagull shit. Up here is my grandmother’s old apartment—where I lived when I was a kid. It’s got a fussy old lock and a new security system, into which I tap a code before kicking the door closed behind me.

The front end of the apartment is basically one big living room with a fireplace and a tiny, open kitchen. It’s decorated in a mix of my grandmother’s left-behind furniture—New England antiques, worn rugs on hardwood floors, and her mermaid collection—and the few things that we’ve U-Hauled from state to state. A 1950s pinup-girl lamp I discovered in a junk store, which looks uncannily similar to my mom. Framed photos I’ve taken of all the cities we’ve lived in over the last few years. Mr. Ugly, a blanket Mom crocheted during one of her crafty phases. No matter where we go, those things follow us. Those things signal that we’re home.