“—a better phone?” She watched expectantly to see if I was going to give her mine.

I was not.

She shrugged. “So your whole family is dead, right? No grandparents or aunts or anybody?”

“Nope,” I said. “My parents were only children and my grandparents are all dead.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I have aunts, but it doesn’t do me any good. My mom’s sisters. They won’t take me because they think I’m too much like my mother. I don’t care, though. I turn eighteen in seven months, and then I’ll go do my own thing.”

“Where will you go?”

“New York,” she said. “I’m going to be a model.”

I looked at her in disbelief, but even as I prepared to mentally dismiss the idea, I suddenly felt as if I was seeing her clearly for the first time—that simple, odd face. The impossibly tall, slender frame. I could totally see her slinking down a runway in some outlandish outfit. Her scowl was perfect for it, too.

“Good luck,” I said. “I think you could be a model, actually.”

She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t asking for your opinion.”

Never change, Tam.

“Anyway, you’re the lucky one.” She dumped the bundle of sheets on the floor.

“You keep saying that,” I said. “I don’t know if you realize how much my life has sucked over the past three months.”

She stretched out on the bare mattress, relishing it. “I never said your life didn’t suck. Only that you’re lucky. Those are two totally different things.”

Huh. Were they?

“For instance,” she said. “My mom is a homeless meth head who stole my grandma’s life savings and her pills, which is probably why Grandma died. Be careful who you let handle your meds, by the way.”

I was about to reply, but she silenced me with a finger.

“My last foster family fed me exactly one bowl of generic-brand Cheerios per day. I had a kitten there, but Palmer House made me give it away before I could come. I haven’t seen my brother in seven years. My life sucks. And yet—no rich people have ever, even once, swooped in to adopt me. Hence, unlucky.”

I looked down at the SUV waiting to cart me off to an enormous estate in the country, owned by millionaires who (I assumed) would not actually make me live in the cellar and carry trays of food around.

Then I looked at Tam, whose left hand was curled around a small stuffed kitten wearing an Easter hat.

Well, maybe I am lucky, I thought. But my life still sucks.

“So then—” I said, and I wouldn’t have gone on except she took the trouble to open her eyes and look at me. “If things are so terrible, what’s the point?”

“The point of what? Of life?” she asked.