Nick tossed his bike into his open garage, and we walked across the street. It felt so surreal to be together, knocking on Harrison’s front door—once for all clear—like it was only another Adventure day. Like, if we pretended hard enough, we could actually erase the vacant years between us.

Harrison’s mom answered the door. “Hello, Ms. Shin,” Nick said, as formal and polite as always.

The softness in his voice melted into her like butter. She hugged him tight. “It’s so good to see you,” she whispered into his hair. She let go, taking him in, then hugged him again. “Harry! Aidy! Nick and Olivia are here!” She turned to me. “Staying in or going out?”

“Out,” I said. “Cadence Park.”

She hugged me as tight as she’d hugged Nick. She loved to bake, I remembered, smelling the flour on her. My eyes suddenly watered as she continued to squeeze me as if I were her own child. As if she loved me as I was, not for what I pretended to be.

I’d made myself forget her baking. Her white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. The three-tiered strawberry cake she made for my tenth birthday. She’d covered the cake in lavender frosting and made a fondant lion for the top, my name in lavender letters running across the crown of the lion’s glorious mane. My parents hadn’t asked her to make it; she brought it over to my party unprompted and without fanfare, setting it down in secret and refusing to take credit for its majesty. I knew it was from her because days before, she’d asked me my favorite animal. She wouldn’t accept I love all animals as an answer.

“There isn’t one you like more than the others? Like me, I love otters.” She had a beautiful laugh, musical and easy. “Their little whiskers make me happy.”

I’d always fancied myself a lion. Drove Aidy up a wall when I’d walk around our house on all fours, roaring at her. Refusing to speak. She’d assume I was pretending to be a house cat and would tell me to go live under a porch with the other strays. I could never get her to see the world as grandly as I did.

“A lion,” I’d told Ms. Shin that day.

Right then, she’d mussed up my hair until my bangs pointed toward the ceiling. “Ah, yes. There it is. Your mane,” she’d said, grinning. She winked at me as she pressed my hair flat. “Go play now.”

I’d roared at her as I left.