It could quack like a duck every time I turned it on and I’d still be thrilled. Except, this is too much. Way too much. “I can pay you back,” I say quickly.

“It’s a gift,” she says, and now she’s smiling. She’s as excited about this as I am. Now I’m conflicted. I want the phone, but I also hate the thought of being indebted to the Morgans. Maybe I’ll figure out how to earn money? Even so, I can’t help the excitement building in my chest.

Then I remember the second thing.

Suddenly the raggedy-looking orange shoebox comes into focus, and she holds it in front of her.

“What is it?”

She’s clutching the shoebox hard, which lets me know this is the thing she’s nervous about. I brace myself. Whatever this is, it isn’t going to be good. “Last year I was going through some old things at my mom’s house—she was getting ready to move, and I found this box I’d forgotten about. It’s from high school. Notes I passed with friends, pictures, ticket stubs, that kind of thing.” She exhales. “I know you can’t store a relationship—a friendship—inside a box, but honestly, I think this is as close as it gets. Everything in here has to do with Naomi.”

She pushes the box at me, and I automatically take it, but the moment it’s in my palms, I wish I hadn’t. It’s heavy and smells lightly musty in a way that conjures up old books, but today makes me sick to my stomach. She’s giving me a box of my mom?

“I haven’t told you this quite yet. But your mom…” She hesitates, and I realize that her eyes are shiny. I swallow, hard. “I really loved your mom. She was the most important person in the world to me for almost twenty years. I wanted you to see. We were in a play together once. I was terrible, but she was so good. And we played volleyball. She was homecoming royalty our junior year. You can find her in the yearbook. It’s all…” She exhales. “I thought you might want to see it. Have something to remember her by.”

Every hair on my body prickles, my spine suddenly completely straight. Emma is talking like my mom is dead. Like neither of us will ever see her again, and suddenly heat is building in my center, filling me up slowly from my feet to my head until hot pressure builds behind my eyes. “You know she just lost custody of me temporarily, right?” I blurt out. My tone is wrong. I sounds aggressive and angry, which I am—but I typically try to stay away from that. This time I can’t. “She isn’t dead.”