SHE GONE WHEN I wake up. So is Cricket. WK is back in his seat, like he never left in the first place. “Where she at?” I stand up.

“April? She’s in the bathroom.” He unwraps an orange Tootsie Roll, sticks it in his mouth. “I bet she’s on drugs. Popping pills.”

Mrs. Rodriguez looks back. “Maybe we should tell the driver.” Her daughter is awake sitting sideways in her lap—kicking her legs. “Forty-five minutes is a long time to be in there.”

I don’t mean to run—but I do. I don’t mean to bang on the door like I’m the police and she stole something—but I do anyhow. All I can think about is them TV shows I watch. Sometimes girls flush the baby down the commode.

“April!” I got my lips near the crack of the door. “You can give me Cricket. I’m up now. And it’s extra tight in there, I know it. You can’t hardly wash your hands—let alone do your business holding a baby.” I’m thinking ’bout that pretty baby splashing in the water or already drowned. It happens a lot, on the news anyhow. “April!” I use both fists this time.

The driver don’t sound happy when he get on the intercom. He asks if someone is sick. The farmer says there’s a drug addict on board and she shooting up.

For the first time, the driver swears. When he reach for his phone to call the police, the bathroom door opens. Seem like every eye on the bus is on April. “What?” The door slams behind her. “Can’t a girl change?” She walked in wearing jeans and came out in black tights. Her top is different too, a crop top like mine, long sleeves.

I sit down beside her in the last row. “I’ll take her.” I stick my arms out.

She holding tight to Cricket like I’ll kidnap her if she don’t. We stay that way awhile. Not talking. Looking straight ahead. Yawning. I whisper, “This my favorite part.”

“What is?”

“A full moon night with the clearest sky ever.”

She ask if I ever been on a boat. I ain’t. Because if I had been, she say, I wouldn’t think this little old piece of sky was anything much.

April lays Cricket facedown on her lap. It take a lot of digging through her purse, but she find what she looking for. A Gucci wallet, probably fake. She opens it. “See?” It’s a picture of a ship on the ocean late at night, under a sea of stars. The next picture is way different.

“That you?”

“Three years old at home … the day before Christmas.”

She take out more pictures. Holds ’em in her hands like a deck of cards. Shows ’em to me one at a time. Her sitting on a dock by a river. Her riding high on some boy’s shoulders with him walking barefooted up the street. I don’t ask if that’s the father. I stop her at the last picture though. She on a blanket in a alley smoking blunts with a bunch of other kids. They dirty. Look like they stink. I ask how long she was homeless. She rolls up her sleeves.

I point to the tattoos on her right arm where there’s a whole row of numbers, one after the other, from her shoulder way past her elbow. None the same font or size. “You do that?”

“With an eraser.”

Six is the number of kids in her family, she says. Three is how many years they lived in a van after their parents lost the house. Her dad is a veteran. He got that PTSD, she say. Her mom’s a diabetic, and medicine costs a lot. Doctors cost more. “Sometimes you lose your house trying to pay the bills. Lose your job when you take too much time off because your husband is sick—crazy in the head.”

I trace the number four. It’s puffed up like all the numbers she tattooed on herself. “What’s that stand for?”

“That’s how many years I lived on the street by myself.” She goes down the row of numbers. “This is how many foster homes I’ve been in—seventeen.” She chokes up when she gets to one. “It only takes one person”—she clears her throat—“to help you set things straight.” She pinches Cricket’s chin. “That’s gonna be my aunt Helen. Cricket’s going to live with her.”

April bend down to kiss Cricket on the forehead. She’ll pay her aunt to take care of her. Send her clothes from around the world. “I’ll help my family too.”

“Are they still—”

Her folks live in California someplace. Her sisters and brothers are in foster care somewhere. “I used to write them when I could.” She’s thinking about her family, home. You can tell by her eyes.

“April?”

“One day you’ll see.”

“See what?”

“How good you had it with your sister.”

I sit up. Put my feet on the floor. “A sister can try to be your mother, but she can’t never be your mother, not really.”

“Go home, Char. Bad things happen if you out here too long.”