Later, walking to the parking lot after Ben insisted on giving us both a ride home—something he did in the early days when they both worried about my feelings—Kelly asked Ben about Alex. “I saw him looking at Tam,” she’d said. “It would be so cool if we could all go to homecoming together!” My mouth dropped. Last year homecoming was, according to Kelly, “an archaic ritual.”

But then Ben said something that closed my mouth for the rest of the day and the next day too. Finally, my mom demanded to know what was wrong.

“This guy—” I started. “Kelly’s boyfriend. He said his friends were talking about me, like, wondering if I was . . . hot.” Mom was doing her best to be casual, but I could see her ears prick up, the tension in her shoulders, that slight narrowing of her eyes. Part of me wanted the angry-cat mom on my side right then, so I spilled.

“He said they couldn’t decide. Like, they debated it. But then Ben goes, ‘For what it’s worth, Tam, I think you’re a total babe. I bet those idiots would think so, too, if you weren’t Mexican.’”

Just like that, Mom was detonated. When the swearing was finished, she grabbed me. She always showered off the hospital smell right when she got home, so the hug was a hundred percent mom: coconut lotion and sunshine. I let myself rest in her arms.

“Oh, mija,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

I love it when she calls me “mija,” but she hardly ever does. She says her Spanish sucks, but I’ve heard her use it at work, the plump syllables softening her face as she speaks. I remember calling my mom “mamacita” and my Irish dad “papacita.” I remember him laughing. I must have been three, definitely younger than four. My mom left my unfaithful dad when I was in kindergarten.

“Wait,” she’d said as the hug transitioned to a trip to the freezer for shitty-day ice cream—what we call the huge tub of rocky road we make sure to have on hand for emergencies. “How did he say it? The part where you’re a hottie?”

I thought about that. “Not creepy. More . . . nice. I hate to say it, but he’s kind of okay. He’s got good taste to like Kelly.”

Mom likes Kelly too. They are both newspaper readers, debaters. They used to love talking politics together. “I bet Kelly gave him an earful about his friends.”

“Umm, yeah,” I said. “Totally.”