It’s just that now, with some distance, I realize that even though my extended family was broken, and Mom and I bounced from motels to family shelters to cheap apartments … we still had each other.

Lucky and I, however, were torn apart.

Relationship cut short. Communication ended, over and out.

As I reread Lucky’s short note to me now, I sense a little of his dark humor, but I’m not fully certain about the meaning behind his words. Everything aside, I’m not letting him have the final say in this. My broken window. My mistake. He doesn’t get to take credit for it, pay for it, and play martyr.

I see you, Lucky 2.0.… Mr. Not-So-Bad Boy, casting a big shadow. With your beautiful, normal family, and all those cousins running around the boatyard offices, playing with that cute black dog and the black cat in the window, the symbol of your survival. With your dad, who is probably still the nicest guy in town. And Kat, who I always secretly wished was my mother, because she didn’t do things like fight with my grandmother until the police were called.

I think about all this, about Lucky’s polite letter, and begin hatching a scheme.

A strategy. A plot. A plan.

Sure, my plan has a couple of hurdles, the first being Mom and her insistence that I stay away from Lucky. However, since she hasn’t chastised me for his being at the hospital that day when she showed up with her “ride,” and since that whole parking garage experience was so supremely humiliating for all of us, I believe it nullifies her right to have a say-so about who I can or can’t hang around. Therefore, I decide to use my own judgment in this matter. After all, if I’m going to leave her next year, what’s the point in obeying her now?

So one afternoon after my talk with Evie, I don’t tell Mom where I’m going when it’s time for my break. I just quietly walk out the door and head to the other side of Freedom Art Gallery next door, where I withdraw a hundred and fifty dollars from my savings account out of an ATM, and I march across the street to Nick’s Boatyard.

Ignoring the fact that my pulse is racing because Lucky’s red motorcycle is parked in the side alley, I head through the front door, into the boatyard’s offices.

It’s cool inside, quiet, and I have to push up my sunglasses and adjust my eyes to the wood-paneled walls. It smells of engine oil, fiberglass resin, and my childhood.

A filing cabinet shuts, and I swing to face the sound. Kat Karras stares at me with sharp brown eyes. Dark hair curls around the collar of her shirt as she leans on the filing cabinet, crossing her arms in front of her.