He opened his mouth to speak, but then something . . . pelted him. Right on top of his head. Even as he reached up, another pelt, and then another. Not painful, not forceful. Like the first big drops of a thunderstorm. Bouncing off him and onto the grass.

Was she throwing things at him?

Pelt, pelt, pelt. In his hair, he felt something warm and wet. For the first time since he heard her voice, he looked toward the ground. At his feet, he saw small, bright red globes, and he crouched to pick one up. Perfectly ripe cherry tomatoes, marred by the bites of two intrepid squirrels who’d been chased away by the girl on the balcony. He smiled for the first time in what felt like hours. He gathered a few of them up in his hands, even as she continued to rain half-eaten ones into the yard. He stood, his cupped hands held at his waist, and looked up to see that her face wasn’t turned anywhere near his direction. She was throwing these homegrown, city-grown, balcony-grown tomatoes over the railing without even looking, and for some reason, that made him want to meet her, to talk to her, even more now.

He crossed the yard again, back the way he came. He didn’t climb the few steps back to his uncle’s balcony, but he stood beside it, thinking she might be able to see him better from there, thinking he might be able to see her better from there. He’d call up to her. He’d say, Hey, just like she’d said not to him. He’d say, Did you drop something? and he’d smile and hold up his hands. He hoped her vision was sharp enough to see the tomato seeds he was sure were still in his hair.

But then he heard his mother’s voice through the screen, through the smudgy black rectangle he’d forgotten he was meant to be watching.

“We need help,” she was saying. “My husband and I, both of us . . . we are begging you for help.”

And for the third time that day, Will’s heart changed inside his chest.

He made himself listen; he made himself completely still. If the girl saw him now, she might mistake him for a statue. A tomato-catching lawn ornament she’d never noticed before.

But for those long, life-altering minutes while he listened to his mother and to the uncle he’d never met, while he heard a conversation that made his skin turn clammy with shock, he didn’t think about the girl at all.

He’d remember later how loudly and abruptly it had ended: his mother raising her voice to tell Donny that he was cruel and stubborn, that he would regret this. That if he let her leave now, he would never see her or Will again.

He’d remember that there was absolute silence in response.