This focused attention on me and everything I needed or wanted was exhausting, and also engaging in one-sided dialogue with Karen was not a great sign of my emotional health.

Though I was not lying about granola bars. I do love them.

I walked to Kira’s house, which turned out to be less than a mile from Francine’s, and waited at the top of her driveway. Her house was pretty. Small and white, shingled, two stories, back from the road and facing the Sound. I wondered if they could see the water.

She came jogging up the steep drive, hair piled on her head, long silver earrings, black jeans, another tank top showing off all her ink. “Hey,” she said. “Is that Blackbird toast?”

“Aunt made it, not my fault.” I broke off a piece and handed it to her.

She chewed. “Not bad, though.”

Again with the lying—Sean said it, and it probably was true: if anyone was going to not give a shit about my lack of parents, it would be this person who obviously wasn’t trying to fit in with anyone on this island. If she truly had an aunt who fostered, I wouldn’t be an anomaly to her. Honestly, without other kids in Francine’s house, I was going to need someone to spend time with. A friend. Kira was an excellent candidate for the position, and she seemed to have an opening. Lying was brand-new to me, the best way to kill a friendship before it began, and Kira wasn’t stupid. Did I think I could keep this ruse up for an entire school year?

We walked and talked our way through forests and along the highway, the prettiest walk to school I’d ever had. Inside the building things were familiar, because all high schools are kind of the same. The usual halls crammed with the usual million kids. Doors. Windows. Lockers. I was glad for Kira beside me. Easier not walking in alone.

“You okay?” she shouted above the mayhem.

“Yeah,” I shouted back.

She was swallowed and carried away in the sea of faces, nearly all of them white except for hers. In the city, depending on the neighborhood, I was sometimes the only white kid in the house or in the classroom. For all its good intentions, Seattle is not immune to what Joellen described as “a stupid bunch of racist gentrification and discriminatory housing practices.”

“Meet me at lunch!” Kira yelled from the crowd. “Find the cafeteria!”

I was used to eating lunch by myself, typically in a corner of the library.

“Okay,” I called to her.

Might as well try something new.

—