Then, dinner completed, she would return to the shadows at the end of the hall, her daily allotment of energy all used up. I’d wash dishes. My father would watch TV. Nine p.m., lights out. Another day done for the Leoni family.

I learned early on not to invite over classmates. And I learned the importance of being quiet.

Now it was hot, it was July, and I had another endless day stretching out before me. Other kids were probably living it up at summer camp, or splashing away at some community pool. Or maybe, the really lucky ones, had happy, fun parents who took them to the beach.

I sat in a tree.

A girl appeared. Riding a hot pink scooter, blonde braids flapping beneath a deep purple helmet as she flew down the street. At the last moment, she glanced up and spotted my skinny legs. She screeched to a halt beneath me, peering up.

“My name is Juliana Sophia Howe,” she said. “I’m new to this neighborhood. You should come down and play with me.”

So I did.

Juliana Sophia Howe was also eight years old. Her parents had just moved to Framingham from Harvard, Mass. Her father was an accountant. Her mother stayed home and did things like tend the house and cut the crusts off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

By mutual agreement, we always played at Juliana’s house. She had a bigger yard, with real grass. She had a Little Mermaid sprinkler head and a Little Mermaid slip and slide. We could play for hours, then her mother would serve us lemonade with pink curly straws and thick slices of red watermelon.

Juliana had an eleven-year-old brother, Thomas, who was a real “pain in the ass.” She also had fifteen cousins and tons of aunts and uncles. On the really hot days, her whole family would gather at her grandma’s house by the South Shore and they would go to the beach. Sometimes, she got to ride the carousel, and Juliana considered herself an expert on grabbing the brass ring, though she hadn’t actually gotten it yet—but she was close.

I didn’t have cousins, or aunts and uncles or a grandmother near the South Shore. Instead, I told Juliana how my parents had made a baby when I was four years old. Except the baby was born blue and the doctors had to bury him in the ground, and my mother had to come home from the hospital and move into her bedroom. Sometimes, she cried in the middle of the day. Sometimes, she cried in the middle of the night.