Ali shivered. It made her sad to think someone stood up there, waiting for someone who might not have returned.

Emily nudged her. “Let’s go in.”

Ali followed her inside, stopping again when they stepped into an enormous two-story foyer. A grand staircase curled its way to the second floor, past a chandelier hung with dozens of glass disks that twinkled on the shiny marble floor below. Several fancy rooms opened off the foyer, all of them magazine worthy and so neat it was like nobody used them.

“I’ll grab my phone and then we can go. We’re going to the park, Mom!” Emily shouted.

“All right!” a voice in the distance called back.

“My mom’s into watching some kind of home makeover show,” Emily explained. “You’ll meet her when we come back.” Ali followed her up the stairs, feeling like Cinderella at the ball.

Emily’s bedroom was what every teenager’s bedroom should look like: canopied bed, vanity table, ruffled curtains. There was even a walk-in closet and a private bathroom!

“Your room is beautiful,” murmured Ali as she stared at a picture of Emily on the wall with her arms wrapped around Mickey Mouse at Disney World.

Emily grabbed her phone off her desk. “Thanks, but I think it’s kind of over the top. My mom hired a decorator.”

Ali thought of some of the places she and her parents had lived in: squalid dumps with broken windows, leaking toilets, and screaming neighbors. Emily’s house was so soundproof you couldn’t hear the traffic going by. She started when she realized Emily was staring at her.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

Emily giggled. “I’m worried you won’t be warm enough. Want to borrow a sweater?”

Ali had wondered the same thing when she’d stepped off the bus. Her thin windbreaker was no match for the fog’s icy tentacles. The idea of borrowing one of Emily’s lovely sweaters was tempting, but also humiliating.

Emily pulled open a built-in cupboard where at least two dozen sweaters were stacked in perfect flat squares like in department stores. “I bet you forgot we were going to be outside today,” she said, running her fingers along the edge of the sweaters until she reached a cardigan that was the same color as the vivid geraniums in Gigi’s window boxes. She pulled it out, careful not to mess up the other sweaters, and tossed it over to Ali.

“This will look nice with your dark hair and pale skin. You can give it back tomorrow.”

Ali ran her hand down the sleeves, mesmerized by the soft yarn. “Thanks.”

“It’s cashmere,” explained Emily. “The only kind of sweater my mom buys. They’re made from the wool of some fancy goats in Nepal or something.”