“It started again.” He points at the window.

“It’s barely a drizzle.”

Pedro looks at a loss for words, but then he grabs a box of quentinhas and hands it to me. “What’s so important that you can’t discuss later? We’re here to volunteer, remember?”

Victor offers me another of his cute smiles. “Another time then.”

“Sure.” I smile back at Victor, and sneer at Pedro for butting in.

“Get to work,” Pedro says, clapping his hands to get us moving.

The volunteers start bringing the kids into the dining room, and I get a wave of excitement and nerves. This is the first time kids will try food I helped prepare! Please, cursed cooking, don’t ruin anything today.

When everyone is seated, Pedro explains what we’ve brought today and we distribute the quentinhas. The kids listen eagerly, but a little girl at a table nearby pushes her meal box away. She seems to be about five, her light brown skin covered in adorable freckles like a constellation over her nose. She lowers her head, but her round, curious eyes dart right and left, looking like she doesn’t want to be here.

Pedro notices her, too.

“That’s Amandinha,” Dona Selma whispers to us, letting out a heavy sigh. “She’s struggling a lot. Her mother is unemployed, and Amandinha has to stay longer hours with us now. She’s completely shutting everyone out.”

“Should I talk with her?” I suggest.

“It doesn’t hurt to give it a try,” Dona Selma says.

“May I talk with her, too?” Pedro butts in again.

My back immediately tenses up. Judging by the way his grandfather has terrorized kids who play soccer too close to his bakery and the way his mother feels at liberty to criticize me—a teenager—so openly, I doubt someone like Pedro Molina will know how to talk to a kid.

Next thing I know, he’s kneeling down next to Amandinha. They chat a little, and he opens her box with rice and beans for her, pretending to eat it all by himself like the Cookie Monster. She smiles, and I feel myself smiling, too, but in the end Amandinha doesn’t give in. She pushes the box away from her even farther this time.

Pedro walks back to us, scratching his head.

“It didn’t work?” Dona Selma says.

“No.” He sounds worried. “She said she has a stomachache. I wish I’d brought boldo tea.”

“I don’t think boldo tea will help,” I find myself saying.

I make my way to Amandinha’s table. There’s a big Snorlax plushie in a toy box nearby, and I pick it up. I crouch down next to her and sit the Snorlax in an empty chair by her side.

“Hi, I’m Lari.”

She gives me the side-eye, pulling the Snorlax to herself. “That’s mine.”