“We love you, Quinnen,” Mom whispers as she kisses the top of my head. She stops rubbing my back, but she still has her arm around me.

“To the moon and back, kiddo.” Dad squeezes my hand.

And then nobody says anything for the longest time, and we sit on the bed as the thunder roars overhead and the rain pelts the roof so hard it sounds like hail. I wonder if they’ve called off the Bandits game yet.

I glance over at the signed ball sitting on my bedside table. “I miss Brandon.”

Dad laughs. “You? Miss Brandon?”

“What’s so weird about that?” I ask, reaching for the ball. I show Mom and Dad Brandon’s signature.

“He ate all our food,” Mom says. “And he always left the toilet seat up.”

“I wouldn’t call that his greatest flaw.” Dad chuckled, turning the ball over in his hand. “You been checking up on him?”

“Not since a few days ago,” I say.

“What are we waiting for?” Dad says. “Let’s find out what our old buddy Brandon’s been up to.”

Mom and I follow Dad downstairs to the kitchen, where he turns on the computer. As we wait for it to boot up, Mom pours glasses of milk and puts Oreos on a plate. I stack two Oreos together, dunk them in the milk, and cram them into my mouth. Mom carefully slides her Oreo apart and scrapes off the frosting with her teeth, exactly how Haley used to.

“Here we go.” Dad pulls up the website for Brandon’s Double-A team. On the main page, there’s a picture of Brandon pitching. One of those funny shots that shows his face while he’s in the middle of throwing a pitch. It looks like his tongue is going to poke through his cheek.

Dad scrolls down to see how the last game went. “Ouch,” he says.

Mom and I read the article along with him. Brandon gave up six runs in his second start for the Double-A team. Someone on the opposing team hit a grand slam off him. Yikes.

“He keeps pitching like that, he’ll be back in town before long.” Dad dunks his Oreo in the milk, leaving it there for so long I can’t believe the cookie comes out in one piece.

“You think so?” Mom asks.

“Nah,” Dad says. “I’m sure he’ll get his act together.”

“Can he stay here again if he doesn’t?” I ask.

Dad doesn’t answer right away. He glances over my head at Mom.

“What?” I ask. It drives me crazy when they do this.

“Your mom and I have been talking about this whole hosting deal,” Dad says.

I bite my lip and wait for what he’s going to say next. Please, please, please let us host again.

“My only worry is that it’s hard to have someone come and stay here—be a part of the family—and then leave. Sometimes with no warning,” Mom says.

Dad looks at me. “What do you think, kiddo?”

Mom’s right. At least a little. But then I think about the letter Brandon left me. How I’ll be able to follow him his whole career. And how one day, when he’s in the big leagues—and I know he’ll get there—we can all root for him. Drive into Chicago and watch him with forty thousand other people in the stands. And how even though he’s gone, I can still email him. Mom and Dad have his email address. So even though he’s left, he’s not really gone. Not gone gone.

“I think we should,” I say. “As long as we don’t get one of the scary tattooed guys.”

Mom and Dad smile.

“I think they always send those ones to Mr. McCormack,” Dad says.

“It’s never going to be the same as having Haley.” I look right at Mom and Dad when I say her name. “But wasn’t it nice, having somebody else around? We’ve got a pretty big house, with Haley’s room and the guest room. Could we host a couple of players?”

Dad and Mom look at each other again.

And for once they don’t say “We’ll see.”

—

I’m the one who opens the door to Haley’s room. It’s the first time all three of us have been in here together since she died.

“It’s definitely bigger than the guest room,” Mom says as she picks up one of Haley’s old softball trophies, the kind you get just for being on the team.

“What’ll we do with her stuff?” I sit down cross-legged on the bed to take it all in.

Dad goes to the bulletin board on the wall behind Haley’s desk. It’s covered with pictures of Haley with Gretchen and Larissa and all her friends. With notes and drawings, cutouts from magazines, ribbons from writing contests she won. “Her friends—you think they’d want something to remember Haley by?” Dad asks.

Mom nods. “Of course.”

There’s so much stuff in here. Her bureau drawers and the closet full of clothes. All her books. Her computer. Her cell phone. And all the little things on her bureau and her wall.

“Us, too, right?” I ask.

“Yes,” Mom says. “Anything you want to hold on to, sweetie.”

“Whatever’s left, we can donate,” Dad says.

“When can we start?” I ask.

Mom and Dad look at each other.

“It’s never going to feel right,” Mom says. “So why not now?”

Dad heads up to the attic to get boxes. Mom offers to start with Haley’s bureau. I start with her desk. The top drawer isn’t organized at all. It’s full of the kinds of things you get but can’t throw away, even if no one else understands why they matter. I have one of these drawers, too—okay, a few of these drawers—but I never thought Haley had one. I never thought what might be in it. Movie ticket stubs and folded-up notes with her name on the outside and buttons for all sorts of different bands.

There are so many things in this drawer that are new to me. My sister had a whole other life apart from me and Mom and Dad: the one she shared with her friends. I save this drawer for them and start looking through her bookcase.

“Hey, Quinnen?” Dad holds up Haley’s prom dress from last year. It’s green and sparkly and goes all the way to the floor. She looked so beautiful that night. “Should we hold on to this for you?” He laughs.

I snort. “Yeah, right, Dad.”

But as he puts it in the pile for donations, I change my mind. “Prom’s not for a long time.” I carefully fold the dress and place it in my box. “You never know.”

Mom pulls shirts out from Haley’s bureau, considering each one before placing them into a pile for the Salvation Army.

“I loved this shirt on her,” she says quietly, almost like she’s talking to herself. She’s holding a blue-and-white-striped shirt, nothing special.

“Keep it,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Someone else needs it more than I do.” She places it in the donation pile.

When she isn’t looking, I put the shirt in my box to give to her later. She finds one of Haley’s old Bandits sweatshirts, and I put it on. It’s still too big, but someday it will be the right size.

One by one, I look at Haley’s books. I haven’t read any of them, haven’t even heard of most of the authors before. “Hey, Mom?”

She finishes folding one of Haley’s shirts. “Yeah?”

“What if we had our own book club? Just you and me. We could read some of Haley’s books. We could take turns choosing the book.”

“I think that would be really nice,” she says, reaching for the next T-shirt.

“Can we keep them all?”

“Whatever you want, Quinnbear.”

I grab Haley’s jewelry box from its spot on her bureau and sit down with it on the floor. The little drawer has necklaces and bracelets, but when I pop open the top, all I see are earrings. Some are long and dangly; others are small and sparkly. Little studs and hoops in so many different colors. I pull out one of the earrings and hold it up to my ear.

—

“Take a look.” Claudia, the woman who just used the small silver gun to punch holes in my ears, hands me a mirror.

I stare into it. Is that really me? The stones sparkle under the mall’s fluorescent lights. I turn my head a little to the right, and the earrings get more sparkly, if that’s even possible.

“What do you think?” Mom asks. “Do you like them?”

I hand the mirror back to Claudia. “You did a really good job,” I say. “They’re right where they should be. Right in the middle of my earlobe.”

She laughs. “Well, I should hope so. I do this for a living.”

Mom lets me pick out three new pairs of earrings, her treat. I spend forever looking at the walls and walls of earrings. It’s a hard decision. I hold a pair up to my ear and look in one of the store mirrors to imagine how they might look.

I think about what Dad said, last summer, about how Haley was changing every minute. That girl staring back at me in the mirror? She’s me. Quinnen Amelia Donnelly. But she’s not the same person who looked back at me in the mirror this morning while I was brushing my teeth. She’s different.

Dad was right. We’re all changing.

I look different on the outside, especially with these fancy earrings. But on the inside, I’m the same me. Haley’s little sister. That’s still me.

“You can come back and get more someday,” Mom says. “There’re always more earrings.”

I know one pair I’m getting for sure. Tiny white baseball studs.

“Can I get dangly ones?” I ask.

Mom’s leaning over the glass case with the necklaces, probably looking for something to ask Dad to get her for her birthday. “Of course,” she says. “But no big hoops. They could get stuck on something, and then you’d rip a hole in your ear.”

“Mom!” Some things about Mom are never going to change.

I decide on a pair of tiny silver hoops and a pair of bright blue studs for my final two choices, and take them over to Mom.

“All set?” Claudia asks.

I look at myself in the mirror one more time. “Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”

“You know, I brought your sister here to get her ears pierced,” Mom says as we leave the store.

“Really?”

“Yup. You came, too.”

We pass by the frozen yogurt shop. My stomach growls, but I don’t want to stop Mom from talking about Haley. “I did?”

“You were only two. I probably had you in the stroller. Nope—I definitely had you in the stroller. It was hard to find a place to park it where you couldn’t reach any of the earrings. You were awful handsy back then.”

“Did Haley cry?”

“Do you think Haley cried?”

I shake my head. “What earrings did Haley get put in her ears the very first time?”

“The same ones as you.”

—

Even though school isn’t starting for another three weeks, Mom insists on checking out one of the back-to-school sales. “Just for a quick minute,” she says.

Mom’s minutes are never quick, but I follow her into the store anyway. She skips over the kids’ section and heads straight toward the juniors’. She stops in front of a mannequin wearing the tightest jeans I’ve ever seen, a super-frilly pink T-shirt, and a jean jacket that looks five sizes too small. “What do you think?” she asks.

“I think you forgot who you’re shopping with.” I swing my bag from the jewelry store back and forth. Earrings are one thing, but Mom couldn’t pay me to wear jeans that tight.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “But we’re not done yet.”

I follow her over to the underwear section. I keep looking around to make sure there aren’t any Bandits nearby. Running into one of them in the undies section would be so embarrassing. “Mom!”

“You may not need embellished jeans, but it’s certainly time for some real underwear.” She heads straight toward where they have all the bras on tiny hangers.

“Mom,” I whisper. “I don’t need a bra yet.”

She turns to look at me, really look at me.

“You’re right,” she says. “Why rush things?”

“There is one thing I need.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “What’s that?”

—

“I can’t remember the last time I went to a store like this,” Mom says when we walk into the sporting goods store. “You always insisted that Dad take you.”

It never crossed my mind that Mom would want to come. “Isn’t this store the best?”

I head straight for the baseball equipment. The new metal bats are shiny and in all kinds of colors: silver, neon green, white, gold, maroon. I run my hand over them as we make our way to the gloves. So many different shades of brown and black leather. I want to sniff them all.

“Gosh, there’re so many. How do you know which one is right?” Mom asks.

I pull one off the shelf and slide my hand in. “You kind of have to go with how it feels.” I point out a glove that’s obviously too tiny for my hand. “You don’t want one that’s too small. But you don’t want one that’s too big, either, ’cause then it could fall off. It would really stink to make a great catch and then have your glove fall off with the ball in it.”

Mom nods. “Makes sense.”

A dark brown glove with a red star on it catches my eye. I reach up for it and slide my hand in. My fingertips don’t quite hit the end. There’s still room to grow.

I put the glove up to my face and breathe in.

“You have to sniff it?” Mom asks.

“Definitely.” I grab one of the bigger gloves off the shelf and hand it to Mom. “Try this one.”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t know how.”

“If you put on gloves in the winter, you can put on a baseball glove.”

She slips her hand in and flexes the glove. “It’s not very soft.”

“You have to break it in, Mom.”

She purses her lips. “Okay, okay.”

After one more sniff, I say, “I think this is the one.”

While we’re waiting in line for the register, I trace the stitching on my new glove. “Hey, Mom?”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“Why did you and Dad decide to do it? To host a baseball player this summer?”

“Your father and I thought…well, we thought having one of the Bandits around all summer might help you realize how much you missed playing baseball. You and your sister, you were never ones to do things when we pushed them. You’re so alike in that way.”

As Mom steps forward to pay at the register, a tiny smile spreads across my face. They were on my team the whole time.

While we’re leaving the store, I decide to tell her: “You know my friend Hector, the pitcher?”

Mom nods.

“He’s been meeting me at the park. When I went with Brandon, it was really to meet up with Hector, to work on my pitching. I need to practice a ton if I want to be on the Panthers next year. Especially since I missed this whole season.”

“I know, Quinnbear,” Mom says.

My feet catch on the mall floor. “You know?”

“Do you think you’d convinced me and your father that you and Brandon were hanging out at the park? The Brandon Williams?”

“Brandon told you?”

“Let’s just say your father and I aren’t as clueless as you think we are.” Mom laughs. “Come on, let’s get you and your new glove home so you can try it out.”

When we’re rounding the corner to walk back to the parking garage, I see Hector’s friend, the shortstop, José, waiting in line at the pretzel shop with a girl, and I know what I still have to do.

—

It’s been almost a year since Zack was last here, in Haley’s room, with me and my sister. He’s standing in the doorway now, but this time it’s with just me.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Really. I’m not going to throw anything at you. Promise.”

He laughs. It’s a little laugh, not at all like how he used to laugh with my sister.

The window over Haley’s bed is wide open, and the curtains move with the breeze. Sunlight streams in. It’s not a cave anymore. The floor is covered with boxes of her belongings, divided and labeled by Mom so it won’t be hard when it comes time to donate what’s left over. For the past couple days, Haley’s friends have been stopping by, looking in the boxes and taking things that make them think of her.

I hop over a few boxes and sit down on the bed. Zack follows me into the room, but with slow, carefully thought-out steps.

“No one took any of her DVDs,” I say. The DVD shelf next to her desk stands completely full.

Zack steps around a few piles of clothes to get there and pulls out one DVD. His hand is shaking.

There’s a lump in my throat that I’m not sure will ever go away unless I say something.

“Hey, Zack?” I say it quietly, but he hears. He turns his head and looks at me. He isn’t crying, but his face looks like it hurts somehow, like how Hector looked after he got hit in the face by the baseball. Like the shock of Haley dying has never left.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you much of a chance last summer. I was a little quick to judge and…anyway, you didn’t ever do anything to deserve how I treated you. I didn’t get that before, but I do. I do now, and I really am sorry.”

He nods his head slightly and puts the DVD back, his hand a little less shaky.

“I should’ve come to see you in the hospital last summer.” It comes out louder than I intend, but maybe he’ll understand that I really mean it.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You know, I thought about giving you a call or sending you a card. But I didn’t know what to say.”

He goes back to looking at the DVDs, one after another. Turning them over in the palm of his hand to look at the back.

“Hey, Zack?” He doesn’t look up when I say it this time. But that’s okay. All that matters is that I say it. “Haley really liked you.”

“I know,” he says, looking right at me. “I loved her.”

“She loved you back.”

I stare out the window. Dad is mowing the side yard, and Mom is busy working in the garden. The cornfields are flat and dry, which means there are only a few weeks left in the baseball season.

I turn around to see what Zack is up to. He’s sitting on the floor, going through a box of random stuff from Haley’s desk. Her friends have already taken a lot from that one. He picks up a glow stick from Haley’s last Fourth of July.

“How did you get to be friends with Hector?” I ask.

Zack grabs some photos from the box. “He and a couple of the other players came to my band’s show back in June. He liked our music and asked if we could jam sometime. I lent him my spare keyboard.”

“Oh.”

“You know, he misses you coming to the ball games. You’re like Hector’s personal mascot. I mean, in a good way. The season’s almost over, and then everyone will leave.”

“Is Hector leaving?”

“Everyone’s got to go back home when the season ends.”

“Right. Why’d you decide to work at the stadium?”

“I couldn’t imagine being back…working at the camp…without her.” Zack fiddles with his lip ring. “They were hiring at the stadium, and I thought it might be nice to do something different for a change.”

He goes back to flipping through the contents of the box, pulling stuff out until he has a little pile on the floor. I look through a magazine on Haley’s nightstand. One of the ones with all the quizzes and dating advice. I stop at the article “How Not to Break Up with Your Man.”

“Zack?”

He looks up, and I can tell that he’d probably like for me to leave the room and stop talking to him while he goes through Haley’s belongings. But this is important.

“When I sent you that message—the breakup one—why did you write back ‘Okay’?”

He keeps staring at me, but it’s more like he’s looking through me.

“I wish I hadn’t. Those days, when you were still on your trip, when I could’ve talked to Haley every night—I wish I could have them back, you know?”

I nod. I know exactly.

“But when I got the text, it took me by surprise so much that I didn’t know what to say.”

I shift toward the edge of the bed and kick my legs against the side.

“I mean, I eventually figured out it was you. Because of the typo—how you spelled break wrong. But at first it didn’t occur to me that someone else sent it. And then once she thought that I was okay with the idea of breaking up, she thought it meant I didn’t really care about her. And I did. I liked her so much. I just…”

“She was so mad at me. She didn’t talk to me for the whole rest of vacation.” I stop kicking my legs against the bed.

“When we were in the car…” He covers his mouth with his hand and takes a deep breath. “After the accident, it took me so long to remember that car ride. But then my memory came back.”

I bite my lip. My heart beats faster as I wait for him to continue.

“She said she was so glad I came over. She hated being mad at you, Quinnen. But she didn’t know what else to do. She wanted for you to come with us, instead of going to the Bandits game.” He takes in another deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m so glad you weren’t in the backseat.”

“I’m sorry, Zack.”

“Me too,” he says.