July

Pack rat. I hated that term. Yes, I was sentimental and I was a saver, but no, I wasn’t a rodent, and my father shouldn’t call me one.

“Take it back.”

“What?”

“You said I was a pack rat. Take it back.”

“Sofia, aren’t you getting a little too old to—?” I must have looked near tears because he said, “Fine. I take it back. You’re not a pack rat. You’re a wolf cub who’s not very good at throwing things out.”

“I never said I was.” Fact is, I felt defeated by my room: full drawers, stuffed closet, overflowing armoire.

Last April, I’d set aside a lot of Mom’s things—lipsticks, purses, cards from students, even a “World’s Greatest Mom” mug I’d given her one Mother’s Day. Now I realized I couldn’t keep it all. One thing I would treasure forever was a pair of earrings—pearl studs—that Abuelo had given Mom when she was my age.

Dad was undaunted by the tasks at hand. Just as he had made us put away Christmas on January 1, he would, no doubt, have our worldly possessions boxed up before August 1. Right on schedule, we’d move to Armonk, then fly to Spain.

I still had so many decisions to make. Stubby pencils? Out. Dried-up markers? Out. Unused address labels? Out. But what about that frayed valentine that said “Sweet Open Fun Interesting Awesome”? And the cards and fortune-tellers Kiki had made me? As for letters from Mom, I was keeping every one, no questions asked.

I wished I had a recent photo of my family. On moving up day, everyone had posed with their parents, and I’d been slammed again by the unfairness of it all. Girls often grumbled “My parents this” and “My parents that” without even realizing how…

Oh well, I knew better than to go down that path.

I reached for the ceramic sneakers I’d made in art class right before Mom died. I’d told Mom about them, but by the time the shoes emerged from the kiln, Mom was dead. No. Worse: cremated. Reduced to ashes.

Cremains. That was my least favorite word. Far worse than pack rat! I couldn’t bear to think about it, yet my parents had “discussed” what they “wanted,” and my vote didn’t count. Dad had put the “crematory container” in his closet over a year ago, and it was a subject I avoided. I’d told him I didn’t see why we had to do anything right away. What was the urgency?

Back to my ceramic sneakers. In or out? I remembered showing them to Dad and how he’d complimented me and said, “The shoelaces even have aglets!” explaining that aglets were the plastic tips that keep laces from unraveling.

As he praised my work, however, I mostly heard the booming silence of my mother’s absence. I put the shoes on the windowsill by my ceramic turtles and wished I could hear her praise: “¡Qué maravilla! ¡Me encantan! ¡Qué dotada eres!”

I wished I had aglets to keep me from unraveling.

It was terrible to crave a double dose of parental love knowing I’d never get it.

At least missing Mom came in waves now. Sometimes, I missed her a lot, sometimes…less. Which was a relief but unsettling in a new way.

I had moved up. I was moving out. Was I beginning to move on?

I fell back onto my pink canopy bed and thought about writing Dear Kate.

Dear Kate,

It’s me, Catlover. I know I should be grateful that I’m in one piece, and believe me, I am. But I’m also messed up and mixed up. As you know, we’re moving into your house. And I love your house. But I love my apartment too and I don’t want to leave—not that I have a choice.

I do have a choice about schools. I can go from the girl whose mother died to the new girl. Which might be better, except I’m not ready to accept that for the rest of my life, all the people I meet won’t know my mom. Here, everyone knew her. There, and everywhere else from now on, no one will.

I just wish someone could promise me that it’s safe to come out of my shell. Is that why I like turtles? Because they’re good at staying safe?

And what about Alexa? She’s going to be sooo pissed when she comes back from Canada camp and finds Dad and me in your house—her house! She’s going to want to kill me—or you! Have you even told her yet? And what about when she finds out about Sam?

I did not press Send. This was a pretend letter. All in my head.

I was becoming a head case.

I opened my bottom desk drawer and looked at the emails from Dear Kate and reread the one that had ended with the promise “Things will get easier.”

Would they?

I phoned Kiki. “Can you come over? I’m packing and I need you to be ruthless.”

“Ruthless?”

“Hard-hearted. Unfeeling. Merciless.”

“I thought I was kind, imaginative, knowledgeable—”

“Just come over. Please?”

She said okay, and while I waited, the sky darkened and raindrops pecked at the air conditioner outside my window.

Kiki arrived, and I greeted her holding the ceramic sneakers. “In or out?”

“In! That’s a no-brainer!”

I wrapped them in newspaper and placed them into a box marked “S’s Bedroom.” “What about my Magic 8 Ball?”

Kiki picked it up. “My sources say no.”

“And this sweater?”

“It went out of style two years ago. Which is why you haven’t been wearing it.”

“But it looked good in sixth grade, right?”

“You were quite the hottie! Except you hadn’t hit puberty, so you were quite the warmie.”

I hugged Kiki. “I couldn’t face this alone.” I held up a T-shirt covered with signatures from our classmates in fourth grade.

“Irreplaceable!”

I reached for another shirt and flinched.

“Your shoulder still hurts?” Kiki asked.

“It’s getting better, but I’ll have a scar. At least I got the staples out of my head.”

“Scars are okay.”

“I guess. What about my dress-up clothes?”

“Are you kidding?! Think of Alexa!”

“I can’t stop thinking of Alexa.” I frowned. “What about my turtle collection?”

“Sorry. Can’t be ruthless about your turtles. They’re small—take ’em all.”

“And my stuffies? Will I find them good homes?” I laughed but my voice caught.

“Keep Panther and Tigger-Tiger and Yertle. Wash the rest and give them to Goodwill. God, Sof, what would you do without me?”

“What am I going to do without you?”

“How do you think I feel? I’m having abandonment issues, and you and Natalie haven’t even left yet! At least you’re staying at Halsey, right?”

I hesitated.

“Sofia, you have to! What if your dad and Dear Kate break up?”

“I don’t think they’re going to. Maybe it’s because we have to move anyway, but everything’s in fast-forward.” I sat down. “Kiki, I never saw my dad this happy with my mom.”

“You weren’t there for that part. Your parents had a good marriage—I know because my parents had a sucky one.” Kiki made a face. “And by the way, you’re not allowed to dump me no matter how great it is in the boring ’burbs.”

“You can’t dump me either.”

“No way,” Kiki said, but then I heard a ping as she got a text. “Oh! Gotta go. Madison just got back from China, and I said I’d meet her at the Met. Wanna come?”

“Yeah, but—” I looked at the stuff of my life, strewn across my bedroom.

“Aren’t you almost done?”

“No. Look under my bed.”

Kiki kneeled on the floor. “You never threw out Secret Admirer?!” She pulled out the torn box, opened it, and held the plastic purple phone to her ear. The game board showed the faces of two dozen boys. “Think of the hours we spent on this phone!”

“Hours?! Try years!”

“Look at this! David, Jamal, Liam. I had such a thing for Christopher.”

“I was in love with Scott!” I laughed. “Was there a Sam?”

Kiki studied the board. “No, no Sam. No Jeremy either. I met him two days ago when I was on the Great Lawn, getting a tan. He said he likes my sense of humor.”

“If you were working on your tan, he likes more than that,” I pointed out. “But see? Now you get it. How can I throw this out?”

“Watch and learn.” Kiki closed the box, stood up, and carried Secret Admirer out the door and down the hall to the communal garbage can by the service elevator. She lifted the box high in the air and dropped it in. “Bye-bye, boys!” She dusted off her palms.

I had an urge to dive in and rescue the game—as well as David, Jamal, Liam, Christopher, and Scott. But I resisted. “It’s the end of an era,” I said.

“It is,” Kiki agreed. “Now we have real boys to call.”

• • •

Every time Kate’s phone rang—cell or landline—she rushed to answer, hoping it was Alexa. This time, it was.

“It’s so good to hear your voice!” Kate said, glowing. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” “That’s great!” “I love you!”

“How’s Alexa?” I asked when she hung up.

“She sounds so happy. Her group stopped in some small town to get supplies and there was a pay phone. She said that instead of mountains, they were seeing mountain ranges. And that last night, the Milky Way was crystal clear. They even saw the aurora borealis! She said it was ‘sick.’” Kate laughed. “She said the food is ‘lame,’ but they get so hungry from hiking that nobody minds. Oh, and she’s practicing Spanish with a girl named Victoria who also lives near here, in Westchester. She also said I shouldn’t worry.”

I wanted to say, Did you tell her she should worry? But I said, “Did you mention…?”

“I should have, but it was a short conversation.” Kate went back to arranging the hydrangea and lilies from her fenced-in garden.

“Kate, I just think that if she gets home and it’s all a done deal, Alexa might”—hack me to pieces—“be really surprised.”

“I intend to tell her,” Kate said. “But she’s been impossible to reach, and just now, she barely let me get a word in—as you could hear.” Kate met my eyes. “And I want her to enjoy her vacation. At the airport, the coordinator kept saying that these trips are about disconnecting.”

I wondered if Kate’s neglecting to spill the beans was due to kindness, cowardice, or some kindness/cowardice combo. It occurred to me that Kate herself was on vacation—she was in girlfriend mode instead of mom mode. And while she didn’t want to burst Alexa’s bubble, maybe she didn’t want Alexa to burst hers either. Kate liked feeling summery and carefree. And yes, I got that, but I was also realizing that Dear Kate wasn’t perfect. She was a good person, yes, but she had flaws like everyone else.

The question was: Where did this leave me?

• • •

Ten days till moving day. Kate’s house had a basement and a garage, but she’d said we shouldn’t store things that we should “let go of” or that didn’t “spark joy.” Sure, okay, but how could I “let go” of my mom’s big oval mirror or the wooden “Lemonade 50 cents” sign I made with Abuelo or even my Halsey concert programs? As for framed photos, they sparked both joy and bittersweet feelings. (Did Dad still have framed photos of Mom in his office? Did he have one of Kate now too?)

I made index cards with descriptions of all the objects we no longer needed—lamp, desk, dresser, bed, chairs, television, sofa—and posted them in the mailroom.

Selling to neighbors felt more personal than putting stuff on eBay or Craigslist. Teachers also bought odds and ends from a card table I’d set up in front of our building. Dad had said I could keep that money, and by 2:00 p.m., I’d pocketed almost $170.

“If I’d known you’d make that much,” he said, “I’d have asked for a percentage.”

I was glad for the cash, but our bigger transactions made my insides curdle. My pink canopy bed? A teacher bought it for her daughter. The sleigh bed Mom and Dad had slept in for nineteen years? The Russells bought it for Mason. They said it would be his “big-boy bed.”

• • •

In late July, I went out a lot with Kiki, Natalie, Madison, and other friends—I’d never felt so popular. But every get-together was tinged with sadness. It was as though I’d already started missing them.

One evening, everyone met at Natalie’s, and Sam came in by train. I told him to take the shuttle from Grand Central to Penn Station and then the 2 or 3 subway up to Ninety-Sixth and that I’d meet him at the Starbucks on Ninety-Third and Broadway. I got there first and liked watching him walk in and look for me, liked how he kissed me in public.

At the party, I could tell that everyone liked Sam. They were all laughing and joking (but not flirting), and when Sam went to the bathroom, Natalie whispered, “Sofia, he’s great.”

“I know.”

“I still can’t believe he used to go out with Alexa!” Kiki said.

“I know.”

“Omigod, they didn’t do it, did they?” Madison asked.

“I don’t know! And I don’t know if I want to know!”

All three nodded.

“I don’t think so,” I added, mostly for my own benefit.

Dad, meantime, had been telling all our neighbors to visit us in Armonk—“I’ll fire up the grill!” But would any of them come? Were some of our “close friends” close simply because they lived close by? I hoped real friendship meant more than that.

Dad also notified the super; arranged for the gas and electricity to be shut off; stopped delivery of The New York Times; contacted the post office, phone, bank, and credit card companies; hired a moving van…and complained that his to-do list was out of control.

“Once we move,” he said, “I hope Mom will stop getting credit card offers. It’s nuts how much junk mail she still gets.” I hated hearing him talk about that—and hated that banks still wanted Mom as a customer. “Speaking of mail,” Dad continued, “am I sending Halsey a check? It’s a lot of money, so I want you to be sure. And if you’re not going, they need to offer the slot to a girl on the waitlist.”

Halsey School for Girls or Byram Hills High School? I couldn’t make up my mind. Kiki suggested I toss a coin—and then, when it was in the air, figure out which school I was hoping for.

I tried: Heads for Halsey. Tails for BHHS.

But it didn’t help.

• • •

Kiki begged me to stay at Halsey, but Sam had a different opinion. One day, he came by after work at his parents’ stationery store in Mount Kisco where his job was to deal with inventory and customers. (“Pens, paper, and Post-its,” he joked.)

“The teachers at HSG have known me forever,” I explained. We started walking up Evergreen Row, and he showed me the foundation of an old stone mansion that had burned to the ground decades earlier. “So if I stay, I wouldn’t have to prove myself. And I’d be the copresident of the Spanish Club, which is cool as a freshman. And if you do all thirteen years, K through twelve, you get to be a Survivor. There’s even a Survivor page in the yearbook.”

“A Survivor? Is that, like, a badge of honor?” he asked, and I realized how silly it sounded. Then again, sometimes surviving was harder than people realized.

“At least consider Byram Hills,” Sam said. “You probably think I’m saying that for all the wrong reasons.” He pulled me closer.

“Windmill afternoons?” I said. Windmill afternoons. It sounded like the first line of a haiku. I slipped two fingers into his belt loop. “You’re not getting impatient with me?” I couldn’t believe I said that aloud, but he knew what I meant: so far, all we’d done was make out.

“No. Not that I—” I kissed him to stop him from finishing the sentence, and we went back to the original subject.

“Sofia, with the school thing, don’t you want a change?”

I shrugged. “Maybe change is overrated.”

“Maybe comfort is too. Don’t get offended—I know Halsey is the god of private schools.” When I’d told him it was up there with Trinity, Exeter, Sidwell, and Harvard-Westlake, he looked perplexed and said he hadn’t really heard of those schools either. “I just mean,” he continued, “is being a ‘Survivor’ enough for you? Thirteen years at the same place with the same people?”

“Surviving isn’t nothing,” I said. “And it’s not all the same people. New girls come, and some leave when it’s not a good fit.”

“If you switch, you get to reinvent yourself,” Sam said.

“I don’t want to reinvent myself,” I said, then wondered if that was one hundred percent true. “I don’t mind myself.”

“I don’t mind you either.” He smiled. “I’m not saying this right. Can I tell you a story?”

“You can and you may.”

“Two summers ago, my grandfather—”

“Grandpa Fritz, the Southern gentleman?”

He nodded, pleased that I’d remembered. I liked that Sam and I had real conversations, full of teasing and references. In middle school, my circle of friends didn’t include boys, so whenever I met one, it had been hard to relax. Now, Sam and I were heading back to “our windmill,” holding hands and pointing out chipmunks.

“Once, when Grandpa Fritz took me fishing,” he continued, “he asked what I was thinking, and I was like: ‘Nothing.’ So he said, ‘What do you see?’ and I was like, ‘I dunno. Water?’ He sounded disappointed and said, ‘Don’t just look down, Sam. Look around. Use your five senses! That way you’ll always appreciate fishing no matter what you catch.’ Well, that may sound stupid, but…like, right now, it’s a beautiful day, and I’m with a beautiful girl, and I’m here for it, you know?”

I knew. I too wanted this feeling to last. It was good to feel happy again. “In sixth grade,” I said, “I was a total geek—”

“A girls’ school geek in desperate need of corruption.”

“You would’ve hated me.”

“I would’ve corrupted you!”

I laughed. “We were watching some old movie in history, and I got out my spiral notebook and raised my hand and was like, ‘Will this be on the test?’ After class, the teacher—who was also, of course, one of my neighbors—took me aside and said, ‘Sofia, you’re eleven. Don’t worry about your permanent record. It’s a privilege just to be a sponge in a school like this.’”

“You could be a sponge at Byram Hills,” Sam said, squeezing me. “We win Intel science prizes and stuff. What does your dad think?”

“He’s forcing me to move, so he doesn’t want to force any other decisions.” I sighed. “If I go to Byram Hills, I’d save him thousands. Maybe that’s reason enough, especially since we don’t have Mom’s salary.”

“Unless your dad likes having his girl at an all-girls’ school. Does Dr. Wolfe thinks all boys are wolves?”

“Would he be right?” I gave him a shove.

“Maybe. You know what, Sof? You have to decide for yourself. Don’t think about your dad or your friends or even me.”

“It’s hard not to.” I held his hand tighter.

We reached the windmill, Sam jiggled the rusty latch, and we slipped inside. I paused to take in the cool, musty stillness. Sight, touch, smell, sound. My fifth sense was taste, and before we even climbed the steps, I kissed Sam right there, holding his face in my hands. I moved my fingertips to the nape of his neck and tugged delicately on his long hair. I made a little mmm sound. Like yummm. Or Sammm.

When we broke off, he howled. “OWWwooooo.”

“What are you doing?” I giggled.

“Howling. No, ululating. You scared to be alone with a wolf?”

“I’m a Wolfe too, remember?”

He laughed. Being alone with Sam didn’t scare me. It made me feel fizzy and excited, like a soda bottle that’s been shaken. What scared me was how much I was letting myself care.

• • •

Dad, Kate, and I were drying dishes when Alexa phoned again. At first, Kate sounded thrilled to hear from her. But her tone quickly changed.

“Robbed? Oh, honey! I’m so sorry… Are you okay… Look, it’s just money. If you’re okay… I’ll cancel the card. I’ll take care of it. You take care of yourself… All right… I’m so sorry… Okay, okay, okay, see you in eight days. Love you.”

Kate hung up and told us that Alexa was at a hostel taking her “first hot shower in a month” when someone stole her wallet.

“Poor kid,” Dad said. “That’s a terrible feeling.”

“It is!” Kate said, reaching for her purse. “I’m glad her credit card has its own separate number. Last year, Alexa left her purse in a cab, and I had to change my info on E-ZPass, PayPal, Netflix, everywhere.”

Dad nodded, but I knew he was thinking what I was thinking.

Kate looked up. “I know! I know! But how could I when she was already so upset?”

She handed us a postcard from her bag. It was a close-up of a moose’s snout. On the back, Alexa had written: “Hi, Mom. I saw a herd of meese. It was epic! Are you keeping Teen America out of trouble? How are things with Gyno Guy?”

“You need to tell her,” Dad said gently. “Doctor’s orders.”

• • •

After dinner, I joined Dad on the porch swing and told him I was going to Byram Hills. I said I loved Halsey but couldn’t see making the commute twice a day, and it would probably be good for me to “get out of my comfort zone” and go to a school where everything didn’t remind me of Mom. He nodded and said if I kept my grades up, Halsey’s doors would always be open.

Nice to know that while some changes were permanent, others were reversible.

I considered unloading my worries: What if I miss my friends? What if Dad and Kate break up? What if Sam and I break up? What if the teachers don’t think I’m smart? What if Alexa turns people against me?

Instead, I stayed quiet—and Dad opened up.

“When I was a boy, we had a porch swing like this,” he began. “Sometimes, after dinner, I’d look out and see a little red light. That red light was my green light, because it meant my dad was outside smoking a cigar, so I’d go sit with him. Father and son.”

It was good to be sitting with my dad, father and daughter. He always spoke fondly of his father; he too had been a doctor, a general practitioner in Katonah. I was sorry I never got to meet him.

I wondered how Dad had managed to accept his dad’s death, how so many people manage, generation after generation.

But I knew the answer: You can’t mourn forever. When you’re alive, you have to live.

• • •

Kate pointed to a hamper in the upstairs bathroom. “Dirty clothes go here.”

“Really?”

She laughed. “Really.”

I’d been doing my own laundry for fifteen months. Mine and Dad’s. Mrs. Morris in 6C had explained how to operate the basement machines and had told me to “hoard quarters.” She’d said to separate lights from darks, put in towels and heavy items first, and empty all pockets. “No pens, no makeup, no gum.”

It was only after Mom died that Dad and I understood how many jobs Mom did besides teaching. At first, neighbors brought food, but before long, our fridge and pantry grew bare. Pepper ran out of cat food. The printer ran out of paper. The shower ran out of shampoo. Only the laundry basket got fuller and fuller.

When Dad and I finally realized that elves weren’t going to pick up where Mom had left off, I volunteered to be in charge of laundry, and Dad said he’d vacuum and grocery shop.

Now Kate was offering to do our laundry? Score! I felt guilty and giddy. “I like to fold,” I said. “I used to help my mom when I was little.” I told her that Mom and I would take opposite ends of the sheets, fluff them, then step toward each other, meeting in the middle to match up corners. “It was like a dance.”

“It is like a dance!” Kate agreed. “I used to help my mother with sheets too, right in this very house. I always thought of ‘London Bridge.’”

“Do you have any clothes that need folding?” I offered.

“I bet I do,” Kate said.

As we headed to her laundry room, I asked, “Have you talked to Alexa yet?”

“No, but I called again, and the coordinator got back to me. He said the hikers are deep in the woods, ‘unreachable and far from civilization,’ and that I should let her enjoy her independence. He said that Alexa had told the group leader that she was getting a ride home from Logan with Victoria’s dad.”

“That saves you a trip to Boston.”

“Yeah, but I was looking forward to the one-on-one,” she admitted. “The coordinator also went on and on about some high-maintenance mom who flew in on a private plane to bring her daughter acne pills. He said his program wasn’t ‘a coddling American camp’ with camp cams and daily blog posts for helicopter parents.” She looked at me. “He doesn’t like me, and I don’t like him.”

“He can’t lecture you about parenting! Doesn’t he know you’re an expert?”

“A wimp too.” She frowned. “But I do have a plan.”

• • •

Dad and I were driving back to the city, and I said, “Dad, you’ve got to talk to Kate. In three days, we’re moving in! In five, Alexa comes back! She’s going to blow a gasket when she finds my toothbrush in her bathroom.”

“Common sense is an uncommon gift, and Katie has it in spades. But right now, she’s being remiss.”

Remiss? Try moronic! “That’s putting it mildly,” I said, frustrated with both of them. Then I added, “But she did say she has a plan.”

“She told me she ‘took action.’” Dad said that Kate asked the main office to ask Alexa to call home. “She said she didn’t want to alarm her, so she told them not to use the word ‘emergency.’”

“That’s taking action?”

“No, but last night, she said, ‘I’m a writer, for God’s sakes,’ and then she spent hours composing a letter. She sent it to the main office and asked them to forward it to Alexa’s group leader.”

“It’s about time.”

“True.”

“Dad, you know her dad’s gay, right?”

“Katie told me.”

“Sam told me. I had no idea. What’d she say?”

“That she and Bryan are better as friends than spouses, and that theirs was a ‘happy marriage’ but not a ‘real marriage.’ She said I’d like him. His partner is also named Brian, but with an I, so everyone calls them the Bryans. Oh, and they’re engaged. Katie said that at first Alexa did not like the extra attention from her peers, but she adores Brian—the partner—and sometimes refers to him as her ‘fairy godfather.’” He shook his head. “She’s a pistol, that kid.”

“Where do they live?”

“Chelsea. He’s a freelance videographer. Katie said he does weddings as well as sports and theater videos for schools. They also do travel assignments.”

“Sounds cool.”

“Yeah, well, apparently, when Alexa learned what I do, she told her mom, ‘So Dad couldn’t deal with women’s bodies and this guy can’t get enough of them?’”

“Signature Alexa.”

“She also said she was the only person she knew whose parents both had boyfriends.”

I had to laugh. “What’d Kate say?”

“That you never know about people’s private lives.”

“Remember what Mom used to say? ‘Cada familia es un mundo.’”

“‘Every family is a world’?” Dad ventured.

“Yeah. I’m not sure I ever got it before, how complicated everything is.”

“Well, your mom did. At parent-teacher conferences, she saw a lot of families from the inside, even high-profile ones.”

I nodded.

“I’ve been reading Katie’s columns,” Dad continued. “Maybe there’s no such thing as ‘a normal childhood.’”

“Maybe not.”

We drove under the George Washington Bridge, and I was amazed at how fast the trip had gone. Had Dad and I really been talking the entire way home?

“Alexa’s childhood couldn’t have been easy,” he added.

“No,” I agreed. “And right now, she’s a happy camper who’s in for a shock.”

• • •

Pepper was not a happy camper. He was meowing more than ever, asking about his favorite blankets and cushions.

On moving day, he paced. He still had his kibble, water, and litter box as well as the occasional fly to chase. But he kept looking at me as if to ask, What’s going on?

“Come here, scaredy cat.” I picked him up, then sat with him on the floor in a diamond of sunlight. I petted him until he started to purr. He was shedding up a storm.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “In your new home, there’s a fat old cat named Coconut, and you two are going to get along great, you’ll see. You’ve been a city kitty, and your world is about to get a whole lot bigger.”

Pepper purred, clueless.

I hoped he could handle the transition. Halsey Tower was the only home he’d ever known, and he’d never even tried to sneak out the front door.

“The end of one chapter,” I told him, “is the beginning of the next.” Dad had said those very words to me that morning, our last in my childhood home. He’d placed a pound of coffee and a welcome note on the counter for the young family who was about to take our place in 5C.

I still couldn’t believe we were really doing it—moving. In our apartment, I had grown used to Mom’s absence, but I could feel her presence too, in the rooms, the photos, the air. What would it be like to step away from these memories?

The buzzer sounded, and Pepper arched his back and jumped sideways. Dad pressed the button, and soon, three burly men wearing matching black Movers Not Shakers T-shirts entered our apartment. Pepper puffed himself up like a Halloween cat, but the movers, unfazed, started packing up the remaining furniture. Pepper hightailed it to my bedroom.

Too late. My canopy bed was already gone. There was no place to hide.