She sucks in a deep breath. Then she steals another brief glance at me. “Your dad has been arrested. Back when he was in high school. I know that much is true, because my mom went to school with him too.”

Chapter Nine

NINE

As we turn down Elm Street, plastic candy canes blow in the wind where they’re suspended from light posts.

“Your mom went to high school with my dad?”

Maybe I knew that, once upon a time. Maybe my dad told me that, back when Amira and I first became friends in the third grade. Maybe that fact got buried beneath the avalanche of more important things on my mind when I found my father’s body on the living room floor, in a puddle of vomit.

But I don’t think so. I don’t think my dad ever talked about high school. About friends he had as a teenager.

And for the first time, I wonder why.

“They were in the same graduating class. Only … your dad didn’t graduate. He got arrested and joined the army.” She shrugs again. “I guess he got his GED.”

“Are you sure?”

Why don’t I know this? How can I know how he liked his eggs and how he made his coffee, but not know he was arrested as a teenager? How can I know the nuance of every smile he ever shined on me, but not know that he didn’t graduate high school?

Amira shrugs as she takes a left-hand turn. “Well, I believe my mom.”

“What was he arrested for?”

I’m not sure I believe her. Yes, my father had problems, but it doesn’t seem fair to his memory to apply one more black mark on his permanent record, when he isn’t here to defend himself. Yet I need to know.

“I don’t know, Beckett. I’m sorry. I didn’t ask for details. At the time, that felt … invasive.” Amira pulls into the school parking lot and heads for my car, which stands all alone now in a sea of cracked concrete. “This was right after your dad died. I was trying … I was trying to understand what you were going through. My mom was trying to help.”

Mrs. Bhatt was three degrees removed from the tragedy of my father’s death, but she had the time and energy to help Amira figure out how to help me. When my mother was burying herself in work to avoid having to exist in rooms haunted by my father’s memory.

Not that it worked. One day, Amira just stopped coming over. She stopped snapping and texting me. She basically ghosted me, and I let her go, because what was the point of trying to keep someone around when that someone didn’t want to be around?

My father taught me that lesson.

“What else did she say?”