She’s for-real crying now, and so am I. But I’m more angry than sad. I’m mad at Mom for keeping every important detail from me. What my grandparents were really like. The fact that my aunt was a lawyer and nice and wanted to see me. Even the volleyball and that she used to clean people’s houses. If our past is part of what makes us who we are, like she said every time we had to move, then she hid 90 percent of herself from me.

I’ve never cried with someone. It’s always been me alone, in the truck or hospital room or airport or this very bedroom. It feels kind of good to cry with Ginger. I give in to it another minute and then stand up and go over to the bed. I scoop up all the crackers and candy and cookies and drop them in Ginger’s lap.

“Lou, you can keep these,” Ginger says, cradling the pile in her arms like a baby. “How about this: We can put them on your bookshelf so you don’t feel like you have to hide them?”

“No, you take them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I know where they’ll be if I need them.” I smile at her because I mean it.

“Okay.” She stands up uncertainly. “Well, good night, honey.”

She wants to hug me so much. I can see it. I kind of want to hug her, too, to lean into someone instead of myself, but that doesn’t mean my body will agree. I know it too well for that. So I take a step back as she takes one forward. It’s the saddest kind of slow dance. She smiles anyway and then quietly shuts the door on her way out.

I lie on the bed and think about what Well said, about how you can’t pick family. Then I think about Ginger and Dan downstairs probably brushing their teeth in their side-by-side sinks. Well’s wrong. Maybe you can’t pick who you get in the beginning, but you can sure pick who you end up with.

11 On the Road to Nowhere

We’re on a road to nowhere,’ ” Alexa booms over and over from the piano bench. I bob my head and hum under my breath.

“Mrs. Nicky? What is this?” Mary Katherine shouts over the refrain. Next to me, Well sighs. She is the ruiner of all good things.

“Alexa, stop,” Mrs. Nicky orders wearily. “Mary Katherine, this is the Talking Heads, and I have deep misgivings about your generation if you know every Miley Cyrus song but you don’t know the Talking Heads.”

“My mom won’t let me listen to Miley Cyrus.”

“That’s one point to your mom, Jacob.”

“Do you want to listen to Miley Cyrus, Jacob?”

“Shut up, Tucker.”