Joellen has never asked me for anything, ever. Until today.

The thought of staying all year in one house, in one school, on an island, was giving me hives. John Muir would never camp in one spot for so long, not with unexplored wonders waiting over the next horizon.

The ferry engine went silent, and the boat floated still in the middle of the Sound. A voice came from deck speakers.

“Passengers, please offer a moment of silence for a memorial at sea.”

The captain stood with a family at the bow of the ferry, a woman and two men and three little kids. Seagulls cried, and the family tossed ashes into the cold wind, and rose petals, which scattered and floated, pink confetti on the glassy dark water.

“I’ll try,” I said to Joellen.

She smiled.

Three blasts of the ferry horn and we were sailing again.

In my pocket, I worked the knots in the necklace chain.

I carry this tangled chain from a house in third grade. I was nearly eight years old, and Joellen says that house is the one I stayed in the longest, almost the whole school year. Back when parents decided how long I could stay, and I remember these parents liked me a lot. I remember I liked them.

Memory is a fascinating thing. Months and years can pass, uneventful and lost, but then certain tiny moments, pieces of conversation or feelings within the thousands of blank days stay sharp, clear like yesterday. I remember the dad worked at an office, the mom was home with us kids, who came and went in this house in the University District, except for me—I stayed and stayed. The parents were youngish, white; they took us kayaking on Lake Union, to matinee movies on weekends, to see the cherry blossoms at the university fountain, and to the library, and once, between kids, when it was just me, the three of us rode the fast elevator to the top of the Space Needle, and we sat in the restaurant for lunch.

“Are you happy here?” the dad asked.

“Yes!” I said, and put my hands on the glass wall and watched the mist move in a slow circle. “We’re in the clouds.”

“Are you happy with us?” the mom said. “Living in our house? Do you think you’d like to stay?”

I remember getting off my chair to climb in her lap—too big but she let me—and I put my head on her shoulder beside the wall of glass, all of Seattle beneath our feet, tiny and beautiful and home.