All I’ve been able to think about since this morning is the look on Sophie’s face when I told her I’d be picking her up from Maria’s a couple of hours later today. When she asked me what I was doing, I didn’t have the guts to tell her I was hanging out with my friends, so I just said it was something important.

“Hurry up as much as you can, okay?” she said to me.

“I will, Sophie. I promise.” In the back of my mind, I told myself that maybe this was for the best anyway. If Child Protective Services decides to return, we won’t want to be anywhere they might think to look for us, so Sophie will probably be safer at Maria’s.

But now, as I stare into Adam’s face, I think about Sophie waiting for me to come get her, and about Erika handling the bodega all by herself, and I feel the urge to blurt out an excuse. I try to think of a way to apologize, to explain that I can’t come over anymore, but then Kimmie speaks up.

“Let’s get outta here.”

I swallow hard as we walk together toward the subway station. I tell myself that it might do me some good to step away from everything for a couple of hours and just be with my friends, hoping that if I repeat this enough times, I’ll stop thinking about Sophie and Erika.

The subway ride feels long. Adam’s family lives in Brooklyn, in a duplex apartment that has been in his family for generations and hasn’t undergone any major renovations in decades. Everything from the wallpaper, to the tile in the bathrooms, to some of the appliances in the kitchen seems to be straight out of the sixties, but it’s big, with enough space to fit his parents, his two brothers, and his nonna.

Her voice is the first thing we hear when we walk through the front door.

“Alessandro, is that you?”

“No, Nonna. It’s me!” Adam yells back, closing the door behind us.

“Where’s Alessandro?”

“I don’t know, Nonna.”

“Can you call him?”

“Why don’t you call him yourself?”

There’s a pause. “I left my phone downstairs.”

Adam rolls his eyes at us, and then he runs into the kitchen. He comes back a second later holding an old cell phone in his hand, and then we follow him up the stairs.

I can’t help but smile a little to myself. Adam’s nonna always reminds me of what life used to be like freshman year—us coming over to his place after school every other day, his nonna telling us to be quiet again and again, and then, after a while, popping her head into his room to ask if we were hungry.