When I gently pulled my door open, our house was dark and quiet. And when I peered around the corner of the living room to the sliding door, I watched Pop’s light in his apartment go out and then the backyard was dark too.

I’d put shoes on and a jacket over my pajamas, had the flashlight from the kitchen drawer in one hand, and I was just reaching to unlatch the lock on the front door when—

“Where are you going?”

I spun around and Sam was standing there, squinting at me in the dark and rubbing one of his eyes with his pajama cuff.

I opened my mouth to tell him to go back to bed, but other words came out instead: “To see Jed.”

Sam held his palm out to say wait and then turned around and went into his room. I stayed where I was, listening to the hush of the house until Sam came back out—this time wearing his sneakers and his glasses.

“Get a jacket,” I said.

We didn’t talk as we went out the front door and around to Jed’s side of the house, where only his bedroom was. I lifted the flashlight and clicked the button on and off four or five times as it shone right into his room. I’d seen it done in one of my favorite movies, called Now and Then, when these best friends wanted to reach each other in the middle of the night. I didn’t know if it would work in real life until I saw Jed’s face appear like a moon in his window. He rubbed his eyes a few times and then finally made a sign for us to stay where we were.

Once he’d snuck out and joined us, we walked to the corner of our street and the quiet, empty road that joined ours. Without saying anything, we took a seat on the curb and hugged our knees to our chests, with me in the middle and Jed and Sam on either side.

“Did Vi tell you?” Sam asked, and I felt Jed nod.

“I’m sorry,” Jed said.

“Mom says she’ll be home in a few days, she doesn’t know when exactly. . . .” Sam’s words drifted off. “I wonder what they’ll do with him. I mean, Drumlin.”

“Pop says we shouldn’t think about it,” I said.

Sam didn’t say anything else. None of us did for a bit—until I couldn’t keep what was in my head quiet anymore.

“You know how Mr. Khouri told us that the Earth spins because it does?”

I felt Jed nod again. “Because there’s nothing stopping it.”

“Yeah, I . . . I keep thinking about that.” I turned to Sam. “And Drumlin, too—I can’t stop thinking about him either.”

I took a deep breath.