Then I stood in the middle of the room, breathing hard. I wiggled my bad foot, hoping I hadn’t opened the cut. I checked the Band-Aid, and it looked okay. But my room still didn’t look right.

I dragged the couch over to my bed, one corner at a time, my arms shaking, until the couch and the bed were lined up perfectly, like the orphans’ beds in Madeline, which had been my favorite book for at least two years when I was little.

Dad knocked, and I opened the door.

“Bea—um, you moved the couch by yourself?”

“Yeah. It’s not heavy.”

He nodded, looking. Thinking. “Sonia’s not coming until January. You heard that part, right?”

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Can I have some privacy?”

He blinked. “Oh. Sure.”

I locked the door after him, put my headphones on, and danced.

—

“So what’s her name?” Angus asked on the phone that night.

I smiled. “Sonia. Good name, right?”

“It’s a nice name. But it isn’t as nice as Beatrice.”

I said, “Oh, yes, it is.”

—

“Sonia is great,” Sheila said when she picked me up after school on Monday. “I’m so happy she’s coming, Bea. This is just—wonderful.”

“A real sister,” I reminded her. “When Dad and Jesse get married, we’ll be legally sisters. Just like sisters anywhere.”

Sheila squeezed my arm. Her bracelets jingled. “She’s lucky to be getting you as a sister.”

“I’m lucky, too,” I told her. “Luckier.”

What If

Miriam said that I should try to think of all the possibilities about what might happen when Sonia came. She said I should think about what it might feel like for Sonia, getting on a plane and flying all the way across America to her dad’s new family.

I reminded Miriam that I have been on a plane by myself, to Florida. Dad was already there for a food-festival job, and I was meeting him afterward for a vacation. Mom took me to the airport on the M60 bus. An airline lady gave me a big orange sticker to wear on my shirt. It said, “I’m Flying Solo!” and Mom came with me right up to the door of the plane to say goodbye, and then I sat next to a woman who had a tiny dog in a bag between her feet. I didn’t even know that dog was there until the very end, after we landed, when she held him up to look out the window. I guess she was showing him Florida.