We got back from Tahoe yesterday. Mom and Ginger and Dan and I flew out for the court hearing. I didn’t melt down on the plane. But I did turn the music up so loud my ears rang for an hour after we landed. Maria met us at the airport. Because I have the iPhone now, I gave her back the iPod and told her to pass it on to another kid who needed it.

Tahoe in December was exactly like a postcard. Snow everywhere. Big old-fashioned Christmas lights strung on all the ski lodges and pubs and pizza places. Icicles clinging to the pines. The water was still that same clear blue with the mountains standing watch in the distance. We stopped in at Joe’s for lox-and-cream-cheese bagels and the biggest latte he could make. He still didn’t let us pay.

When the judge, an older lady with bright red cat’s-eye glasses and a neat bob, asked me what I wanted to do, whether I thought it would be better to live with Mom or stay with Dan and Ginger, I knew whatever I said wasn’t going to be the final call. Melissa and Maria had already explained that my testimony was just one of the pieces of the puzzle. But still, I wanted to be honest and to say what I’d been thinking as best I could.

I stood in the front row of the tiny courtroom with wood-paneled walls and creaky benches and said, “I know my mom and I weren’t living so great there for a while, and I know she made some mistakes and I shouldn’t have been driving that truck. Sorry about that, ma’am.”

The judge smiled and nodded for me to go on.

“I’m so grateful I got to meet my aunt Ginger and uncle Dan. They gave me my first real home and put me in a school that I actually really like. So I don’t want to go back to not seeing them again.

“But”—I took a breath—“my mom’s my mom. I can’t picture not seeing her, either. She’s got a new apartment, and she’s working at a coffee shop in Nashville. She’s doing okay. The thing is… I don’t want to pick between Mom and Dan and Ginger. I want everybody.”