“Do you?”

“No,” I admit. My best friend seems a stranger to me—obeying her parents, going out with a boy they picked for her. Looking like an older woman on a cheesy movie poster.

“It was hard. You were gone. You got to be on the road! Free!”

I snort. “Free? Your family left me cold. I had no one. I only had Carlos to help me figure it out.” Tears start to leak out of my eyes. I hate her seeing me like this. I’m the strong one in our pair. The sensible one.

“Oh, Ra-Ra—”

She reaches for me, but I hunch away, sip my coffee. Then I sneak a look. Fatima is staring at her feet.

“So what was it like?” I venture.

“What?”

“The date.”

She sighs. “It was actually pretty boring. He doesn’t even know who the Beats were.”

“Most people don’t. They’re just some boring white dudes.”

She swerves to face me, her hazel eyes lit up. “Look, one day there’s gonna be some guy they pick who I like. I’ve made my peace with that, Rania. You…you can’t judge me. I can’t have my best friend judging me all the time.”

“Is that how you feel?”

She tilts her head so a curl loosens over her cheek and I can’t see her expression. “Yes. That’s exactly how it feels.”

“I’m sorry.”

We both stare at the jagged outline of Manhattan in the distance. There was a time when the two of us looked at this view and felt ourselves going in the same direction. But I set my hands on a steering wheel and went on the road. I kissed a boy, I found out who my father was, what danger we lived with. And Fatima went on to find something else, about herself. If I learned anything this summer, I claimed what was mine. Maybe Fatima and I both did, in our own ways.

She looks at me slyly. “I did tell my father he may be able to pick out a husband, but he can’t pick my BFF. In fact, he better lay off her.”

“You said that?”

Her eyes are shining. “You bet.”

The harbor shimmers in late-summer sun. I fish out the small bag of tiny ridged white shells and drop it in her palm. “Freedom,” she whispers.

“It’s overrated,” I say, and laugh.

“Is it?” Her eyes are pleading. She wants me to forgive her but for what? She didn’t do anything wrong. She tried to help. So why am I still so sore at her? For being different from me? For having a family that holds her too tight and loves her? How can I ever explain all I have been through, all I’ve come to know? And then she sets down the bag, and reaches for my hand. Her skin is not fragile, but warm, firm.