At home, Mom kept muttering to Dad that she couldn’t believe that Sophia could do this to her. Dad tried to tell her again and again that it was only a necklace, and it wasn’t worth losing her sister over, but Mom said it wasn’t about the necklace any more. It was about trust. It was about respect and loyalty and love. Sophia, of all people, knew what that necklace meant to her. How could she?

When Dad tucked me in that night, he tried explaining it to me. “Mom’s insisting this is about tradition, but I know her. To Mom, it’s like Aunt Soph made a choice between her and Eleni, and she chose Eleni. And that’s hurt Mom more than anything.”

I nodded. I understood how Mom felt better than Dad realized. It hurt when someone you loved, someone who was always there for you, acted in a way you just couldn’t understand.

After that day, Mom went into a kind of haze. She couldn’t eat or sleep, and because of that, she got the flu and ended up in bed. I don’t like it when she’s sick, but this was even worse because she wasn’t just physically ill. It was like her mind had switched off and she’d turned into someone else completely. Even after she was well enough to get up, she refused to answer the phone or even look at her cell phone. When she was alone, I’d catch her shaking her head in disbelief or groaning in her chair like she was in pain or going mad. My dad kept trying to talk to her about it, but she shook her head, and all she did all day was cry and cry and cry.

After a few days of being away from school for the funeral and all our relatives coming over and everything, I had to go back. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Eleni since our moms had argued at Pappou’s house, but when I saw her on the playground before the bell, she wasn’t cold or angry. I stood beside her without speaking but saying a thousand things in whale song until she broke the awkward silence and said, “I’ve got a new pen.”

I swallowed, and in a nervous voice I asked, “Oh yeah? What color?”

“Red. Because red makes you write faster.”

We both smiled. When we were seven, we chose the same sneakers, but hers were red and mine were blue. Elias told Eleni that hers were better because red made you run faster, which was obviously nonsense but she believed him.

Huh. Lies. Even then. I just didn’t realize it at the time.

Eleni and I glanced at each other and she bit her lip. “Why didn’t you tell them?” she asked. “What Yiayia said.”

I kicked at nothing on the playground floor. “I couldn’t,” I replied. And then I shrugged. “My mom.”

Eleni nodded. Things were going to come between us that we hadn’t even thought of, and this was one of them.

At break, we sat in the furthest corner of the playground and shared a banana. She took a bite. I took a bite. She took a bite. I took a bite. All the way down until the last speck was gone, and I said, “greedy.” The shouty, clangy noises of the playground echoed in the damp gray air. Kids skipped and ran past us. Others played soccer, shared snacks, or argued. We were in our own private world. As usual.

I unfolded my white ankle socks, and they came three quarters of the way up my calves. Eleni was counting something, her finger bobbing every time she added another one. Sometimes it was people with red hair, sometimes the number of chimneys you could see without turning your head, sometimes the line markings on the tennis courts.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Me neither,” she replied, her finger dropping on to her lap but her eyes still searching. Then her shoulders sagged, like she’d given up the count. “Your mom should have it.”

“What about Yiayia’s promise?”

Eleni blinked at me, like she does when she’s about to say something blindingly obvious. “Um. Yiayia’s gone, Lex. She’ll never know.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know that. But she made a deal. Probably with God. She said He talked to her all the time.”

Eleni paused. “I wonder what God’s voice sounds like. Do you think He’s got a Greek accent?”

I considered that. “Probably Spanish.”

She nodded. “Or Australian. Like He goes up at the end of his sentences? You know? Like those girls in that mermaid show?”

“I don’t think God’s Australian. They’re laid back and go surfing all the time. God’s not like that. Look what happens in the Bible. What if we break Yiayia’s deal with Him and He gets so angry that He destroys the world?”

She gasped. “And it’d be all our fault.”

I swallowed. “What’s the right thing to do, Eleni?”

“Only God knows that,” she said matter-of-factly. She looked up at the sky, so I did, too. It was white with baggy gray clouds, like two-day-old mashed potatoes. I’d never thought of drawing the sky white. I always drew it blue. But it was white most of the time in England. Like it was waiting for someone to color it in with felt-tip markers.

I couldn’t see God up there, but then I wasn’t sure what He looked like. And anyway, maybe the sky was actually the end of a giant telescope lens and He was watching us from far away. I waved just in case, and Eleni frowned and twisted her lips, but she waved, too.

“Hi, God,” she said. And then she whispered, “Do you think it’s a little rude to say hi? Maybe we should say, ‘Good morning, Sir,’ or ‘Dearest Most Honorablest God in Heaven’ or something, and not just call him by his first name. I mean, we have to write He with a capital H in Greek school.”

She had a point. “Is God his first name?” I asked. “Does He have a last name?”

She frowned. “I didn’t know the queen had a last name until yesterday, so who knows? It’s not like God needs one. Everyone knows who He is.”

“What’s the queen’s last name?” I asked. “Elizabeth…?”

“The Second.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s not her last name!”

Eleni squinted. “Oh. Maybe it’s Windsor, then. I wrote down The Second and Windsor, but I wasn’t sure which one it was. Isn’t Windsor the place where her castle is?”

I grinned and nodded. I was still wondering about God’s last name when Eleni added, “I don’t get it. If God talked to Yiayia, why doesn’t He talk to us, too?”

“I wish He’d tell us what to do,” I murmured.

“Let’s ask Him.” Eleni wiped her hand on her shirt, looked at the mashed-potato sky, and said in a loud clear voice, “Dearest Most Honorablest God in Heaven.” She whispered in my ear, “Just in case.” Then she continued, “Please tell us what to do about the family necklace. You can tell us in English, but we understand Greek and whale song, too. Thank you, love from Eleni Kyriacou and Lexie Efthimiou, aged nearly eleven.”

“I think he knows how old we are.”

“In case He forgot. He has a lot of people to deal with.”

I nodded. She took my hand and we sat listening as hard as we could, staring at the sky for ages and ages, until the bell rang.

God didn’t answer. Not in any language that we knew of, anyway. So we had to go inside.