“Yeah,” she said. “I guess having to burn or bury every family heirloom and treasure in a worthless attempt to convince everyone you’re a loyal American in the hopes your own government won’t drag your family to a concentration camp but it happens anyway and then you live for years on a dirt floor in an empty plywood shack in the desert with nothing and somehow you survive kind of turns your home-decorating aesthetic in a more…minimalist direction. For generations.”

“Holy crap,” I sighed. “I guess that would do it.”

“Francine’s and ours are both fourth-generation island families. Her grandparents saved my mom’s grandparents’ house, this house. Pretended to buy it, and they protected it from the government and looting and squatters, held on to the land, made the tax payments, so after the war my family was one of the few who could come home—who wanted to, even with white racist idiots still going after them, telling them to stay away. That’s why Francine is family. Human decency is thicker than blood.”

I took a pen from my bag and asked for a scrap of paper.

Human decency is thicker than blood. I tucked the paper in my bag. Kira held sweaters up around her shoulders to evaluate tattoo visibility.

“How did you convince your parents to let you get them?” I asked.

She smiled. Kind of sadly. “They had to take me to Vegas and bring their photo IDs and mine and my birth certificate to prove I was their kid and that they were giving me permission. It was a deal we made. Trade.”

I sat on her bed and watched her put herself party-together. “Tattoos in exchange…for what?”

She pulled a sweater over her head and took her hair down, went to the mirror at her dresser and put on some bright red lipstick. “It was them giving me something I wanted to try to get me to stop doing stupid shit. Bribery, but they were desperate. I had trouble back home. Los Angeles home. Trouble finding decent friends; like, discerning who was a friend and who was miserable and just wanted someone to be miserable with them. I did a lot of stupid shit. Expensive, professional ink was really the only currency they could offer me.”

“Did it work?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“What about when it didn’t?”

Another sad smile. “Then we came here to live for good.”

I could not fathom the scenario she was painting: parents who loved their kid so much they let her ink her body to try to keep her from something more self-destructive? Who loved their kid so much they uprooted their entire lives to get her somewhere safe?

“Do you miss it?” I asked. “Home?”