I didn’t know if that was her way of reminding me to be careful, or her way of pleading with me not to abandon them, but either way, my answer was the same.

“I’ll be here,” I promised her.

She smiled, and was gone.

What if she didn’t come back?

It wasn’t a question I wanted to think about, but my brain didn’t listen. It went straight there, conjuring thoughts that I didn’t want and couldn’t avoid. I looked down at my hands. The nail on my left thumb had a bit more of the white at the end than the others. Just the teeniest nibble would make it match the rest . . .

“We don’t have to teach you stuff today, Kiki,” Suki said, jerking my attention away from my hands. “Your world pretty much turned upside down yesterday, so if you want to just do nothing today, that’s totally okay.”

I shook my head. “I need to do my part. And I have to keep my brain busy anyway.” I couldn’t force my brain to stop thinking the things I didn’t want it to, but sometimes, if I was lucky, I could replace the not-nice stuff by finding something more fun to become obsessed with instead.

My sketchbook used to be that fun thing, but that wasn’t exactly an option when I was, you know, inside it.

“Okay!” Suki said happily. “Pip and I are going to bite into an oobly-floobly to decide who gets to give you your first lesson.”

Simha, who had started washing up the breakfast dishes by licking them, looked up. “That seems unwise,” he remarked.

“That’s pretty much the story of their lives,” Samara informed him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Suki, did you just say you and Pip are going to bite an ooble-flooble? Do I want to know what an ooble-flooble is?”

“Oobly-floobly,” Pip corrected as Suki reached across the sink to the kitchen windowsill, where a row of small potted plants were lined up. She picked up one of them, a succulent of some sort.

“This,” said Suki triumphantly, “is an oobly-floobly. Do you see the tiny nodules on each leaf? There is a fifty-fifty chance that, when touched, the nodules will burst and release a horrid, bitter goo. So Pip and I are going to bite down on the leaves! The first one to taste the bitter goo gets to give you your first lesson.”

“None of that makes sense!”

“Also the story of their lives,” Samara said.

Jojo covered his eyes, his dark brown skin taking on something of a greenish hue. “I can’t watch.”

A grin crept across my face. “I am absolutely going to watch!”

In the end, after much fanfare, Pip had the debatable good fortune of bursting a nodule first. But the bitter goo was so horrible that he had to spend twenty minutes literally washing his mouth out with soap, so Suki seized the opportunity to whisk me up to her room for my first lesson, while Pip’s yells of “Cheat!” followed us up the stairs.