I get up. Afton and Abby are already showered and ready to go. I was sleeping so hard that I didn’t hear them getting ready.

“Come on, Ada,” Abby whines as I pull my board shirt over my head. “I’m hungry.”

“What else is new?” I say.

“Be nice,” Mom says from the bathroom mirror, where she’s paying extra special attention to her hair. She’s wearing a flowery sundress I haven’t seen before, and makeup, too, I notice. “Oh,” she adds, “and I also invited Nathan Kelly to breakfast, and his son. What’s his name again?”

My eyes dart to Afton. What did she tell Mom?

Afton raises an eyebrow. “Nick, I think,” she answers for me.

“Isn’t that the boy who got lost in Rio?” Mom says.

I think of Nick sitting on the street in Rio, tying wish knots into a bracelet on his bony wrist. The image leads me, as all things seem to do now, back to Billy Wong.

Mom’s phone chimes. She puts it in her purse and then claps her hands together, a call to order. “All right, girls,” she says with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader. “Let’s go.”

The restaurant where we’re meeting the group has a large outdoor deck that overlooks the ocean. The entire group is seated along one big table, and sitting in the middle are Nick and his dad. I stop when I get to him. “Hi.”

“Good morning,” he says, and yawns.

“Are you as tired as I am?”

He doesn’t get to answer me, though, because right then Abby starts screaming.

It isn’t a scared scream, I quickly figure out. It’s an excited, loud, over-the-top, earsplitting squeal. Because there’s a familiar smiling figure sitting at the very end of the table, jumping up now, opening his arms and lifting Abby up and kissing her chubby cheeks.

Pop.

“Surprise!” he says, and Abby yells, “This is the best surprise ever!” and they keep kissing each other’s faces, big smacks: Mwa mwa mwa!

“Ada, breathe,” Nick whispers, touching my arm.

It feels exactly like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I watch in a daze as Pop puts Abby down and hugs Afton, who looks nearly as stunned as I am, and then kisses Mom—a quick kiss, but still intimate. Then he frowns and his eyebrows rumple and he glances around, his gaze finally landing on me.

“Hi, Pop,” I wheeze.

“What are you waiting for, silly? Get over here,” he says.

I stagger over and into his arms. He squeezes me a couple of times, then pulls away and looks at me. “There’s something different about you.”

“That’s what I said,” Mom exclaims. “I can’t put my finger on what it is.”

I look at Afton. Help me, I say with my eyes, help me, or I’m going to wreck us all.