We’re doing a lot less “pretty well” now, even with one fewer mouth to feed. But even when we were a two-income household, our idea of “pretty well” looked nothing like Sophia Nelson’s.

Her parents aren’t home enough to have time to clean, so they use a cleaning service from Daley. Which I know because there are still two ladies in khakis and blue polos vacuuming her living room and scrubbing her guest toilet when Amira and I arrive.

Sophia hands out cold sodas and ushers us up to her room, where she plops down on a fuzzy pink rug and leans back against the padded white footboard of her full-size bed. Then she pulls a shiny laptop from her backpack and starts typing, while Amira and I stare around in awe.

Her bedroom looks like a TV set. Or a picture in a magazine, about how teenage girls’ rooms are supposed to look. Maybe her bed is only made up today because the cleaning service made it up. Maybe that’s the only reason her windows are free of grime and her rug is spotless.

But somehow, I think her room probably always looks just like this.

In a million years, I would never have figured out, on my own, how to organize a vigil, but Sophia is in her element, and Amira is a quick study. By lunchtime, we’ve gone through several more sodas and applied for a permit to assemble in the park tomorrow night. We had to have an adult’s signature, so her dad agreed to stop by city hall on his way to lunch so he could sign and submit the form she emailed him.

We pile into Sophia’s car to pick up burgers—her treat—and by the time we get back with our lunch, her dad has already texted to tell her the permit has been approved.

While we eat, Amira and I use her desktop computer to design posters, while Sophia calls every Walmart within a fifty-mile radius and solicits donations of white candles. All three of them promise us free candles once they hear what we’re doing.

Thanks to Amira’s graphics skills, the posters look amazing. Classy and respectful. Sophia emails them to a print shop in Daley, then we drive out to get them—the print shop donated them—and while we’re out, we grab as many of the candle donations as will fit in her car.

That afternoon, I pick up Landry from the middle school, and she insists on coming with me to Sophia’s house to help. When we get there, I discover that our three-woman operation has become a large group effort; Sophia has recruited the rest of the Key Club. And somehow, that reporter from WBBJ in Jackson has come to watch and film our efforts.