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waiting for me to say something else. He gestured to a chair facing his desk, and I sat down. He continued to stand, staring down at me. He was tall, well over six feet, and he had a comically thick shock of dark hair—too uniformly brown for a man over the age of fifty—that looked out of place on his egg-shaped head. “He’s had hair transplant surgery, for sure,” Dad used to murmur to me whenever we’d see Mr. Miller at football games and school concerts.
    That’s what I was thinking about when Mr. Miller cleared his throat. “Lacey, do you know Kelsi Hamilton?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Her mom has cancer.” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I hated myself a little bit for saying them. It was the way everyone identified me: by the sad thing that had happened in my life.
    I’d known Kelsi since elementary school, and I’d had a class with her last year, but she was quiet, and we hadn’t sat near each other, so we barely ever talked. I knew as well as anyone else in the school that her mom had been diagnosed with lung cancer back in May. Bad news tended to travel fast, whispered near lockers between classes, until everyone was walking around with a piece of your life stuck in their back pocket like a trading card.
    “Lacey, Kelsi’s mother passed away last Saturday,” Mr. Miller said.
    “Oh no,” I said, my heart sinking for Kelsi. “That’s awful.”
    “Yes,” he said, sitting down. He pressed his hands together. “Lacey, I need to ask you a favor. And please, feel free to say no.”
    “Okay.”
    “Kelsi is back in school today,” he said. “For the first time since her mother, um….”
    “Died,” I filled in. It was sometimes hard for people to actually say the word. I had gotten used to filling it in, in awkward silences, like I was playing a constant game of Mad Libs with only one word to put in the blanks.
    “Yes,” Mr. Miller said. “I was wondering whether you might … spend some time with her.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Mr. Miller cleared his throat. “Kelsi’s father called this morning, and of course she’s still very upset. He was hesitant to send her back to school, but apparently she insisted. Now, last year, when your father passed …” He paused awkwardly. “Well, I know you had Logan to help you through. At school, anyhow.”
    I resisted the urge to snort. What exactly had Logan done to help me?
    “So I’d like to ask you, as a favor to me—well, to Kelsi, really—if you’d talk to her,” Mr. Miller concluded.
    “Talk to her?” I echoed.
    “You know. Just let her know that you’re there for her.”
    “Oh. Of course,” I said right away. After all, Kelsi had to know that I’d understand in a way other people couldn’t. I wished I’d had someone like that when my dad died, instead of feeling like such an oddball. Sure, Cody Johnson’s dad had died in Iraq when we were all in eighth grade, so I suppose he could identify with me when my dad died. But he never said anything. In fact, I could swear he deliberately avoided me, just like so many other people who didn’t know how to act. I wished I could scream at people that I was the same person, that all they had to do was treat me normally. But apparently when you had a parent die, you became some sort of science experiment, to be poked and prodded and stared at.
    “I’ve already spoken with your second-period teachers,” Mr. Miller said. “You and Kelsi are both good students, so they have no problem releasing you from class so you can have a chat. Maybe the two of you can take a walk or something.”
    Well, that sounded supremely dorky. I suspected that Mr. Miller was imagining that when we came back from our stroll, Kelsi wouldn’t be upset anymore. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him that real life didn’t exactly work that way.
    “Sure,” I said instead.
    “Thank you, Lacey.” Mr. Miller sighed and looked very relieved, like he had just had a great weight lifted off