“Are you getting a divorce?” I ask.

She sits down next to me on the bed. “I don’t know what we’re getting. But I figure, there’s no point hanging around here, waiting for him to come back. Might as well go home.”

“This is home.”

“Oh, honey,” she says again, and starts stroking my hair. “It isn’t for me anymore.”

Jake was at soccer camp in the morning, but after lunch I take the elevator downstairs to see if he’s back. Mrs. Schultz answers the door.

“Can Jake hang out?” I ask.

But Jake has come out already to see what’s going on. He’s still wearing his soccer uniform—blue nylon shirt and shorts, with high blue socks and cleats.

“I have to pack up my room,” I tell him. “Maybe you want to look at some of my stuff. I can only take a few things to Austin.”

“Go on, Jake,” Mrs. Schultz says. “It’s nice to have company when you’re packing.”

So Jake follows me back to my apartment; his cleats click against the tiles. I know what he’s thinking about. For my last birthday, Dad gave me a Syma quadcopter drone with a camera, which we like to take to Central Park—it’s loud enough to make everybody stare at the sky. Jake always wants to hold the controls.

We spend most of the afternoon messing around with this drone, even though my room is really too small. It’s hard to control, and it keeps crashing against the ceiling and wiping out. Jake thinks this is funny, but I worry the blades might break. (The box says in capital letters NOT FOR INDOOR USE. The first time I showed it to Jake, I said, “What kind of idiot would fly a drone inside?” But then we started doing it anyway.) We haven’t gotten much packing done when Mom comes in to say there’s food on the table.

“Can Jake stay for supper?”

“I’m sure he can, but let him just run down and check with his mom.”

I say to Jake, “Everything I don’t take with me is going into storage. So maybe there’s something you want. Except this,” I add, holding the drone controls in my hand and trying not to smile.

Jake starts to go over everything carefully. It makes me feel funny to see him looking like that at all my stuff. He puts his hand in the chest of toys and starts digging around. A lot of this stuff is stuff I haven’t played with in years—I can’t even remember half of it, but some of it I do remember, and it makes me feel like, I don’t know, it makes me feel old. Like I’ve already outgrown a lot of things that used to make me happy.

But Mom says, “The food’s getting cold. You can do that after.” So Jake runs down to check with his mom.

At supper, all Jake wants to talk about are my baby toys. He’s making fun of me for keeping all these old toys. But he’s also joking about what he should take. Part of what I don’t like is that I can tell when my mom is . . . I don’t know, listening or judging. Sometimes she doesn’t like Jake as much as I do; she doesn’t think he’s nice to me. Or she doesn’t like the way I act around him.