“Other fast-food places are kind of a mixed bag. Burger King is sometimes okay. B is even and both words have even numbers of letters. McDonald’s is the ultimate fail: nine letters plus the asymmetry created by the apostrophe, so . . .” She makes a buzzer noise. “Don’t even get me started on Burgerville.” She sighs. “If I want my Walla Walla onion ring fix, I have to bribe Will to take me.”

I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable, so I try to keep it light. “Wow, you must eat a lot of Taco Bell,” I say. “No wonder Humphrey is so well fueled.”

“Yeah. Hopefully enough to get me out of here,” she says. “College is my only hope to break free. Or ever getting to try Dairy Queen.” Her tone fails to match the lightness of the words.

“Has your mom always had all those rules?” I ask, reeling at the impossibility of what Sam is saying, about the tight parameters she apparently has to steer her life around.

“I don’t remember,” she says. “It was definitely bad after she and my dad split up. And then it got worse when he moved to London.”

“I guess all those changes might have been hard on her,” I say. I don’t know much about OCD, but I can certainly imagine that changes a person can’t control could be a struggle.

Sam nods. “Yeah.”

“My house is the opposite of yours,” I say, wanting to make her feel less alone about her problems at home. “Maintaining control over things is a lost cause.”

“That sounds like heaven.”

“Hardly!” I hesitate, and then for some reason I let a thought tumble out. “Do you ever just imagine your life if it had taken a detour at some point and you ended up somewhere totally different?” She watches me, not answering, so I continue. “I’m adopted, and sometimes I think about my life and how I ended up here, and I can’t help imagining: What if my birth mother had decided to keep me? Or even if she didn’t want me, what if my birth father did? Or what if I had been adopted into another family? Where would I be? What would my life be like?” I don’t know what is making me tell her this. It’s like I pulled a few little twigs from the dam when I admitted what’s going on with Jonah and now it’s collapsing. I’ve never said any of this out loud before, and I’m seized with guilt. The memory of the time I met Cammie’s great-grandmother nudges at me. When she learned I was adopted, she pointed a gnarled finger at me and told me I should be very grateful, that not all unwanted children were so lucky.