Micah, Ivy, and I get in the van with my mom and follow behind the big moving truck. We drive through town to our apartment building. It’s called Applewood Heights, which sounds like a map section in a fairy-tale book but looks nothing like one. There are no apple trees in sight and definitely no woods. Maybe they cut down all the trees to make the apartment building, which would just figure.

People look out their apartment windows as we start to unload. We each take a box and follow my dad inside, where he picks up a key from the office on the first floor. We stack the boxes in an elevator and squeeze in. We quietly watch the red digital numbers rise: 1, 2, 3, 4, then ding. When my dad unlocks the door to the apartment, it does not feel like stepping over some special threshold to our new home, like they show in movies. It smells funny inside, and the carpeting looks old and worn. You can see matted-down trails in the rug where the people who lived here before us walked from the kitchen to where their couch must have been, and then to the hall that leads to the bedrooms.

My dad tries to look enthusiastic but can’t manage it. We put the boxes in their designated rooms and then head back down for more. It takes all day. The furniture is the worst because some of it won’t fit in the elevator and we have to drag it up the fire-escape stairs. Some of the residents come out and help, as if it’s their way of welcoming us to the neighborhood. They seem friendly and nice, and already this place is feeling less gloomy than it did when we first stepped inside.

By the end of the day, we’re all dripping in sweat, and my dad suggests we leave things and go for a swim, but none of us can remember which boxes our bathing suits are in. Instead, Mr. Sasaki gets us pizza and we sit at our kitchen table, which looks so out of place in the tiny kitchen eating area here and not in our house on the hill. I think he can tell we all feel awful, because he eats really fast and tells Micah they should give us some peace and time to rest. They offer to come over tomorrow to help unpack, but my mom tells them we can manage and thank you and she sort of pushes them out the door even though they’re clearly ready to go anyway.

When she closes the door, she leans against it and looks from left to right, at the strange cabinets in the kitchen that aren’t wood but some kind of white particle board, and the ugly light-blue laminate countertops, and the scratched linoleum floors with a flower pattern. Her shoulders start to shake, but she takes a deep breath and doesn’t let herself cry.