“Say, ‘I forgot.’ I mean, you can say you live here in Scottsdale, that’s good, and that you and your momma and your sister have a real nice house near Sandia and you even have your own bedroom, and that I love you more than plenty. But if she wants to know your address, like street name and number, just say that you forgot it and that she should call me. You got that?”

“What about Randy?” Alex asks. Randy is Momma’s boyfriend. They met at the Oregon Country Fair, and it wasn’t too long after that that Momma moved them all to Arizona. She said Randy was a handsome man and a kind one, and that Arizona would be a good opportunity.

“What about him,” she says.

“You said we moved down here to live with him.” When Michelle protested the move—she wanted to finish high school in Eugene, with her friends—Momma said she couldn’t do this alone anymore, and Alex had said that she wasn’t alone, and that made her lips go wobbly and her eyes get wet. “So do I say he lives with us, too?”

His momma frowns. “No, he has his own apartment. We live near him, and sometimes he stays with us. And he helps, too, getting us settled.” They had been staying with Randy in his tiny apartment for a week when he gave them keys to the Grandpa House. Then, when they’d had to leave there in a hurry, he brought them to Sandia Hills. “I don’t miss Oregon, not one bit. Do you?” She stirs some sweet, milky stuff into her coffee and Alex wants some but knows she’ll say he can’t have any, that he has to drink regular milk until he’s a big boy or else all his teeth will fall out, and not just the baby ones.

“No,” Alex says, though he did like the duck that was on all the posters and sweatshirts and he did like seeing his grandpa all the time. Momma and Michelle had lived with Momma’s parents, but then Grandma died and Grandpa didn’t like Alex’s dad and so they moved out. Momma doesn’t like Alex’s dad, either, not anymore, but they can’t move back in. They had to move to Arizona instead.

“Don’t make him lie for you, Mom. We’re fucking squatters.” Alex’s half sister, Michelle, is sitting across the table, reading her math book and eating her third Pop-Tart of the morning. She has a cup of coffee, too, because Momma says it’ll help her lose weight and wake up, but Michelle makes a frowny face every time she takes a sip.

Momma’s face is like something smells. “Don’t swear in front of your brother. And Alex,” she says, “put on your shirt.”

“I don’t have none.”