It was May now. Most flowers were dead and the knotty Atlanta trees erupted in shocks of green and the rain came down in a hot thick curtain.

“You can come visit me at UGA—before I transfer, I mean. Get a preview of college life,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the storm as I opened the car door. “Hey, your little neighbor’s moving?” She pointed at the Dayals’ yellow house—even its rollicking colors looked muted in today’s weather.

I had to squint to make out the open house sign. Thunder rolled above. About a year ago, I was watching these storms from the glassy interior of the Hammond Creek Public Library; a year ago my world was smaller, and I’d bristled against its confinement.

“I would have known,” I said. “No way.”

“Life moves pretty fast, or whatever the line is. Hey. I’m sorry, again, about your friend.” She screwed up her nose. “Shruti.”

She zoomed her Saab up the hill, leaving me to hold that word, friend, like some stranger’s baby I had been tasked with minding. I watched the bumper stickers advertising years of Wendi’s honor roll statuses retreat out of our cul-de-sac. I stood in my driveway holding my suitcase and the quarterfinals trophy Wendi had disdained; she couldn’t stand to look at anything but first place. My skin and clothes were turning soggy. I stood there until I felt like pulp.

I tugged my bag through the puddles and crossed the cul-de-sac. The Waltham children spun around beneath the family’s basketball hoop, mouths open. It seemed impossible that life persisted, that people still dwelled in innocence. I blinked and tried to make my eyes resemble a man’s eyes. I did not reach for the watering can behind the azalea bush. I rang the bell.

Anjali Auntie sighed to see me on her doorstep. Wordlessly, I looked at the open house sign, then back at her. She nodded slowly, and I began to cry. She pressed my forehead to her chest and her hair brushed my cheek and there she was, forgiving, as only one’s own mother can. In the hours and days after Shruti’s death, she had said weepy things—how it was her fault, not mine, her mistake, not mine, she was the adult, had failed me, us, failed, period.

“You’ll catch cold,” she said. “Come. Let me get you a towel.”

“Is Anita here?” I sniffed, following her inside.

“She’s here,” Anjali Auntie said warily, as though to add, That’s between you two. Because Anita had not spoken to me since the moment the Dayals arrived home from New Jersey to find me rocking madly on their doorstep, hacking and hiccupping as I tried to explain what I had done.

There had only been unanswered instant messages:

neil_is_indian: anita

neil_is_indian: if you rly didnt want to talk to me youd have blocked

me neil_is_indian: if you never wanna talk to me again

neil_is_indian: id understand

neil_is_indian: but i think u do