Thunder shook the house, rattling Sol’s mother. Maybe that’s why they haven’t kicked me out yet, Sol realized. Her mom was from the Florida Gulf Coast, the land of storms with names and body counts. Sol used to love when it stormed because that meant her mom would pick her up from school. “You won’t need that umbrella,” her mom would tell her time and time again, advice she still lived by.

Sol retrieved her poncho from the kitchen counter and headed toward the front door, shaking it as she walked. She reached the door quickly, but hesitated to exit, listening for footsteps or voices. All she heard were shifting plates and clanging utensils.

Outside, the rain continued. Sol considered taking an Uber, but suddenly money seemed tight. Draped in her poncho, she drifted down Melrose, back toward Dekalb, scowling at a street sign that informed her she was on West Howard; she preferred to call it Dekalb. The East Lake MARTA station offered refuge, but she strolled past it, horrified at the thought of returning to a home that might no longer be hers.

Parallel with elevated MARTA tracks, she continued west, her head cloudy, paranoia blooming. Was she really being extorted by a cop and a minister? Somehow that seemed like a more urgent question than why she was being extorted by her parents. She’d heard too many stories in juvie to think that parents were the noble citizens they were supposed to be. Beatings, burnings, pimpings, stabbings, shootings, rapings. Degeneracy and parenthood were far from strangers.

Sol’s parents weren’t saints, but hiring a PI was a new low, an order of magnitude away from the shouting and strict punishments that she’d been raised on. What in the hell did they need more money for? Pa was a captain, and Ma was second-in-command at her church. Their money wasn’t good—it was great. Sol felt there was something otherworldly about her situation, something cosmically amiss.

Choked by the humidity, she removed the poncho and slung it over her arm, retreating under an overpass to escape the rain. The ground was wet, so she crouched, her back against a concrete pillar. Raindrops danced around her, paratrooping into puddles and vanishing forever. Sol breathed deeply, the smell of wet crabgrass and red clay filling her nose. Mindlessly, she dug into her pocket and retrieved her phone. She opened the contact list and swiped down and up, names wheeling past like fruits and numbers on a slot machine. She didn’t need anyone, she felt. But she wanted someone, a friend.

“Meet me at Variety?” she texted Theo. He texted back quickly, asking for a time. “40 min?” she responded.

“Coo,” he said.