The locker room was still packed, and people were circling, waiting for empty lockers. I recognized a purple coat—it was Lizette’s. I shouted her name, and she weaved her way over to us, with her family behind her. She was bummed we were leaving, but happy that we could give them our lockers. Jesse said he liked the green pom-poms on the toes of Lizette’s skates—each pom-pom had two tiny bells hanging off it, and she shook them for us, but we couldn’t hear any ringing because of all the people talking and the locker-door slamming.

I introduced Lizette to Sonia, and Lizette introduced her parents to Dad and Jesse. Lizette’s mom said, “I hear you two are getting hitched,” and Dad smiled this huge smile. I looked at Sonia, and she was smiling, too.

Jesse took his skates off and said, “Ahhhhh,” and Sonia and I jumped up and down in our sneakers and said how they felt like pillows on our feet.

Lizette’s mom told Dad, “My mom’s a baker. She makes great wedding cakes. No pressure.”

“Really?” Dad said. “Can you give me her number? Jesse wants this thing called a 7 Up cake that I’ve never even heard of.”

“A 7 Up cake!” Lizette yelled. Because it turned out that 7 Up cake was one of her grandmother’s favorite cakes, too.

“It’s super yummy,” she told me and Sonia. “Sometimes I help her, and my grandma always lets me eat the pieces that she trims off to make the cake look totally perfect before she frosts it. And sometimes I frost things, too. I’m not good enough to work on a wedding cake yet, but I can do cupcakes.”

Angus had wandered over to sit on a bench next to Lizette’s brother, Damian. They were both hunched over Damian’s phone. I yelled “Angus!” and he looked up and waved. I had nothing to tell him. I just wanted him to see me right then.

In my head, I put the day on my list of best days.

—

On the bus, I felt bad that I could have a best day without Mom being in it for one minute. I watched Sonia looking out the window and realized that all of her time with us probably felt like that. Even if these weren’t best days for her, they were days with a piece missing, like my breakfast-table diagrams. Neither one told the whole story.

Dad’s phone rang as we were getting off the bus, and he answered it right away, walking ahead of us down the block. I was used to it—when Dad isn’t at the restaurant, he gets a lot of calls about problems he’s supposed to solve over the phone. But when he came back, Dad told us it was Uncle Frank, and that something was wrong with my cousin Angelica.

“What happened to her?” I asked.