ON MY LAST EVENING before leaving for East Lansing, I snuck over to the Dayals’ when my father thought I was packing upstairs. He was semi-dozing over a textbook at the breakfast table, some continuing education. My mother and Prachi were on a Target run, buying extra-long twin sheets and a shower caddy and other dorm supplies. My mother was insisting on taking new purchases to the temple to have them blessed by a priest who specialized in educational consecrations, so they’d be out awhile.

The Dayals’ lights were on, and music played inside. The door was unlocked. Milling in the foyer were people I didn’t recognize, fobby-looking thirtysomething guys, white men and women, a young black couple. Pranesh Dayal was holding forth in the dining room, drinking red wine. He wore a key-lime-green summer button-down that stretched round his middle.

“Just came back to finalize all this moving business,” he said to his conversation partner. “It was getting a bit much for Anjali, she settles for any old amount, can’t be so generous when people are out to take you for all you’re worth.”

Pranesh Uncle’s eyes fell on me. “Anita’s in her room, Neeraj. She’s sulking.”

I didn’t need to be asked twice. I kicked off my shoes and bolted up the front stairs. The walls were still covered in Anita’s yearbook photos. The carpet looked recently vacuumed. I understood from years of tagging along with my mother to open houses that the limbo of placing a home on the market meant maintaining the illusion of life persisting within the walls.

I knocked on Anita’s door. She looked unsurprised to see me.

Her eyebrows had grown bushy. The whites of her eyes were roped with red. Her thick hair was tugged into a messy ponytail. She wore smudged glasses instead of contact lenses.

“You’re not at that party?”

“It’s people mooning over my dad,” she said. “Stupid shit.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said, practically bouncing on my toes, looming over her. “I’m leaving tomorrow, then you’re leaving, and you can’t just expect me to not say bye.”

She stepped aside so I could come in. Her room was barer than it used to be. The dresser and desk remained, but the Harvard shrine had come down. She took her glasses off and tossed them on the carpet.

“Manu wanted me to have you sign a card. For the Patels.”

“No,” she said.

“Yeah. I figured.”

She sat on her mattress, cross-legged. Her legs looked freshly shaved, inviting and buttery. There was nowhere else to sit—her desk chair was gone—so I chose the foot of her bed. My legs swung to the side, heels on the floor.

“You’re not kicking me out.”

She ignored that. “I took some of my dad’s wine. Do you want some?”