Shelly feels like the answer to Ms. Flores’s question is obvious, but she lies because she knows the right answer. “I’m okay.”

“Good,” says Ms. Flores. “Do you want to put your stuff away while I talk to your grandma?”

Grandma squeezes Shelly’s hand. “Remember,” she says, “you don’t have to stay for the whole day.”

“I’ll be fine,” Shelly says, pulling her hand away and pretending she doesn’t see the concern on Grandma’s face. Shelly walks to her desk, nestled in a cluster of four desks, and takes a seat, ignoring her classmates and the way most of them are staring. Lucas, in the desk across from Shelly’s, is looking anywhere but at her. Their seating assignments, the layout of the classroom—it’s all exactly the same as it was the last time she was here, but Shelly feels like a different person looking at it.

Shelly has no idea what they’re studying in class today. Her last day at school feels like it happened months and months ago, not just a few weeks. Shelly’s life has become a before and an after and she doesn’t know how to bring them together. It’s like being a ghost—she can see all the parts of her previous life, but it doesn’t belong to her anymore.

Shelly pulls out her pencil case and concentrates on it because needing a pencil is one thing she can count on not having changed.

“Shelly, you’re back?”

It’s Isabel. She’s playing with the ends of her long hair. She doesn’t look unhappy to see Shelly, but she doesn’t look happy either—she looks uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Shelly says. “I’m back.”

“I heard about— Sorry about your mom,” Isabel says. “Ms. Flores had us all make a card. Did you get it?”

Shelly doesn’t know. There are a lot of cards stacked up in the kitchen. “Probably. I haven’t read them all.”

“Oh,” says Isabel. “Okay.”

Isabel sits at her desk next to Shelly’s, gingerly, like she’s afraid the chair will collapse under her if she’s not careful. The rest of the day is pretty much the same. Shelly sits at her desk and goes out to the playground and it’s like there’s a bubble around her keeping everyone else away. It’s like everyone knows she’s there, but they don’t want to look right at her.

It’s like she’s a ghost.

Isabel keeps turning to Shelly and stopping right before saying something. By lunchtime, Shelly wants to tell Isabel to just say whatever she wants to say. She wants to climb up on the jungle gym and yell at everyone that it’s not like they’ll catch having a dead mom if they talk to her. It’s not a cold.