“I hardly know them,” Mattie says. “I mean, sometimes it seems like it could be kind of cool. Like, I sometimes play chess with the ten-year-old. I went on a ride with my little stepbrother at the Boardwalk and that was pretty fun. Until he puked on me.”

I feel a guilty thump in my stomach. I don’t tell her that I saw it happen, that my friends were laughing at her.

“I mostly don’t talk to them. I mean, even when Kenny and I play chess, we don’t talk. I don’t know what to say. What do you say to your brother?”

“I don’t know. Normal stuff.” I never thought about what I say to Tristan. I suppose it would be weird to suddenly have a new family. “I ask him about first grade and his friends. I tell him about stuff I did when I was his age.”

“I don’t know if they want to hear about what I did when I was their age. They tiptoe around me like I’m an explosive.”

“Are you?” I ask. Something in my chest flutters. Maybe I’m not the only one who has temper tantrums.

“Me? Never,” she says.

My heart closes. “Let’s just go to sleep, okay?” I reach as far as I can and flip the light switch. The hammock sways wildly back as Francisco Gómez’s office—and Mattie—disappears into darkness.

CHAPTER 37 Mattie

The noise is like a mouse scritch-scratching. In my dream, a mouse and rat hold a tiny copy of The Seed Sower and gnaw on the beautiful black cover. My eyes snap open. Where am I? I tear off the stinky, dusty blanket. It’s a very early gray, dim morning. In Francisco Gómez’s office. And everything comes rushing back. The stolen book, the skipped field trip, the poem, the lies. I sneeze, sending the hammock swinging. This causes Mercedes to kick me in the ribs. I shove her back. I open my mouth to holler at her.

At the same time, the scritch-scratching noise becomes the sound of a key turning in a lock. There’s a click. The door of Francisco Gómez’s office swings open. And there, in the doorway, is a man who must be our father.

Except he clearly doesn’t know he’s our father. His eyes widen as he looks from the hammock to his desk, from our bags and shoes on the floor to our faces. Now we’re flailing in the hammock, each of us trying to get out, which makes the hammock twist and turn. Mercedes is trying to grab onto the wall to stabilize herself, but that just sends me tipping further.

“What—” he begins.

Mercedes crashes to the floor.

“—is—”

I tip the other direction, landing with a thud, the blanket tumbling over my head.

“—this?”