“I didn’t move here. It’s a temporary thing. You know that. I’m coming back to Houston.” I only hope that we can resume our friendship when I do come back. It will hurt never to see Paige again. It will hurt never to see Beau Rochester again. “That’s where I’m going to college.”

There’s another pause, and I know he’s taking a drag of his cigarette. I hate that he feels like he needs them. They’ll only make him sick, but I manage not to say that. “Sometimes I think it’s better if you don’t come back.”

I stop walking. Only dimly I register that I’m stopped in front of a chowder restaurant with a giant clam on its hanging sign. “You don’t mean that.”

“You never fit in with us anyway.”

I blink hard to fight the tears. “Stop it.”

“It’s true. We’re all going to be on drugs or dead in fifteen years. Not you. You’ve got your eyes on something bigger. I want that for you.”

I don’t honestly know whether he’s saying something he thinks will help me. Or if he’s trying to hurt me. It wouldn’t feel good to have your friend tell you you don’t fit in, but as an orphan, as someone who’s struggled with the concept of home for years, it’s hell.

“I’m coming home to Houston,” I tell him. “In six months. I hope we can still be friends then, but you need to stop acting like this. I don’t miss this. I miss my old friend. I miss my brother. The one I could talk to about anything.”

There’s quiet. “What do you need to talk to him about?”

About Mr. Rochester. About Paige. “What do you think it means if a little girl is scared about the way her parents died? If she’s worried they’ll come back for her?”

“Sadness sometimes comes out as fear. Or anger. Remember that kid who thought his parents were astronauts who died in a secret mission to Mars?”

“But I just kept thinking, what if he was right? And no one believed him?”

A soft laugh. “Only you would possibly think that.”

“This family has so many secrets, Noah.”

“All families have secrets.”

At the end of the street there’s something large and gray bulging out from the grassy hill. A submarine, I realize as I get closer. Someone put a giant submarine in the middle of a park. USS Albacore, says a placard. I take a seat on a picnic bench nearby. “I don’t know what to think. What to believe. I just need someone I can trust. I need you.”

“You have me, Jane. I was talking shit because I was jealous.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around,” I mutter.

“What?”