I shake my head. “No way I’m going up on that stage by myself in front of the whole school.”

“You won’t have to,” Fire says. “We’ll all go up on that stage with you. Right?” It’s not really a question, it’s a challenge.

Still, most of the girls look anywhere but at me.

Fire snorts. “What? Y’all afraid everyone’s going to figure out you live in a shelter?”

“It’s bad enough as it is,” Desiree says. “Getting called all kind of names.”

“It’s the one place I feel like a regular kid,” Phoenix explains.

It makes me mad, but on the other hand, I know how they feel. Being branded as homeless, like Ree says, makes people judge me and my family.

I see Mama and Mrs. B exchange a look.

Daria raises her chin. “So what? We may not have a house, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have family.”

“All that matters is what we believe about ourselves,” Karina says, looking each girl straight in the eyes.

She raises her voice, strong and sure. “We are Firefly Girls.”

Carmen grins. “We are somebody.”

Chill bumps race up and down my arms.

As one voice, we say, “And we can make a difference, when we shine our lights together.”

46

This Jewel

Ree sits beside the bed in the light-filled room listening to her friend Jewel.

This Jewel does not talk about the voices that whisper to her, nor does she talk about the visions she has in a world filled with angels and demons.

This Jewel does not look off somewhere Ree cannot see and recite poetry to the stars.

Instead, this Jewel looks deep into Ree’s dark eyes and says, “How did this happen?”

Ree holds her friend’s hand and listens as Jewel talks about her life before.

The music. The students. The small house with the light-filled windows, just big enough for her, Baby, and a grand piano.

She talks about doctors, confusion, hospitals, bills that couldn’t be paid. Darkness, hopelessness, suffocating sadness.

And then the letter from her sister, a ray of hope, “Come stay with me.”

“And Baby too,” Jewel says.

Jewel worries the edge of her blanket. “How did I lose my way? How did I forget this sister I loved?”

Ree takes her friend’s hand and smooths the worry from her fingers.

She thinks about her little brother. The little brother with the bluest eyes, the lightest hair, who looked nothing like her.

Every day she wonders and worries about what became of him after she left that place called home that was not a home, a place that was not filled with love and safety but hate and hurt.

Where is he?

If he saw her flying a sign on a street corner, would he know her?

If he saw her hitching a ride, Ajax by her side, on some lonely road, would he stop?