“Is she there?” he asks me. “Does she want to talk to me?”

“No. She usually goes out on a Wednesday night.”

“Who with?” he asks.

“I don’t know, it’s girls’ night. That’s what she calls it. They normally go to the movies.”

But I’m thinking of Mr. Tomski, and I wonder if I should say anything. Instead I ask him a question. “Dad, if I wanted to move to London . . . with you. I mean, if that’s what I wanted to do . . .”

“Yes?”

“I mean, what would I have to do? Is there . . . like, I mean, would you just come and get me?”

“Is that what you want me to do?”

“I don’t know.” And it feels like, almost for the first time in my life, what I say is going to . . . I mean, it’s important for me to be honest, to say what I mean, because what I say matters, and I have to get it right. “I like . . . I guess I like knowing that it’s an option.”

“It’s an option,” he says. “And if this is something you want to do, this is something we can talk about. This is something we all need to talk about. I mean, your mother, too.”

“Yes.”

“Have you told your mother how you feel?”

“No. I don’t know. Not really.”

“Why not?” my father says.

“She’s kind of . . . she’s got a lot . . . going on. And right now, we still share a bedroom, and it’s like . . .” But it feels like I’m discussing Mom behind her back. “Anyway, I don’t always want to talk to her about everything.”

“I understand.” Then he says, “Do you want me to start the conversation?”

I think about this for a minute. “Not yet.”

And that’s that. We say good night and hang up. “Okay, kid,” he says, and I say, “Sleep tight.”

Then Granma calls me in to dinner, and I sit down to a plate of spaghetti. The windows are still steaming in the kitchen. “How was your father?” she asks. “Did you wake him up?”

“Fine,” I tell her. “Yes, I woke him up.”

She looks at me while I eat. “I wish I had a nickel for every time you said fine. I’d be a rich woman.”

But I’m lying in bed now and thinking about that call—going over everything we said and remembering the way my heart suddenly started racing. Just thinking about it makes my heart beat faster again. But I don’t feel sad. For some reason, I feel excited—about what, I can’t figure out.

Twenty-Two

THE NEXT DAY, I take my lunch out to the basketball court again. But first I stop at Sam’s hut and knock on his door.

There’s a television sound coming from inside, like the noise of a baseball game. I wait and listen, feeling the sunshine on the back of my neck. Bugs are flying around; I can hear them, too. Eventually Sam comes to the door, with a sandwich in his hand.