He stands up and brushes off the seat of his pants. Mattie and I do, too, and we pull on our sneakers and sweatshirts. Mattie hands me a hair tie and we both pull our hair into ponytails. While we’re getting organized, Frank Gómez gathers a pile of papers from his messy desk and stuffs them in a bag. He pulls a book from his shelf and puts that in, too.

“Got everything?” he asks, his hand on the doorknob, ready to leave his office.

We look around the room. Our little home for one night. I run my fingers along the cotton of the hammock. Mattie does the same at the other end. And then she says, “Um, we took this from the library.”

She pulls The Seed Sower from its nest in the hammock.

“Ah, my book!” he says, and takes it from her. “Patricia works fast. I didn’t think she would have it processed and ready for checkout yet.”

“No,” Mattie says. “We didn’t check it out—we stole it. We’re sorry.”

And then Frank Gómez lets out the biggest, most beautiful guffaw I’ve ever heard. The tension in my hands eases. Mattie’s face relaxes. His laughter fills his messy office, bounces off the filing cabinet, surfs over the hammock, circles the desk, brushes past the bookshelves, and lands back in my ears.

CHAPTER 39 Mattie

You found your dad!” Miss Wiz says in a big voice when we get to the cafeteria. She doesn’t know how right she is. A student wearing penguin pajamas is at the waffle bar. She doesn’t look up. “Professor Gómez,” Miss Wiz calls, “I didn’t realize these two were your girls.”

Francisco Gómez grins. “This is Matilde, and this is Mercedes.”

I love the way he says our names, even as he’s pushing us toward the waffles. Matilde. My mom started calling me Mattie when I was learning how to talk. It was easier for me to say, she told me. She has a video of me saying, “My name is Mattie,” in a squeaky voice. I never liked the name Matilde, but the way my father says, “Matilde,” it sounds soft and joyful, not at all weird or different.

We pick and choose our breakfasts (waffles with whipped cream and strawberries for me, syrup and butter for Mercedes, scrambled eggs from Miss Wiz for our dad). We sit at a small round table near the windows that face the Quad. Beyond the library, the fog is escaping the woods, making the green of the trees extra brilliant. The campus is quiet now, no evidence of the protest or juggler from yesterday. The only proof that yesterday even happened is us here with our father.