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Bass Lofts, though, we gaze covetously at the lit-up windows and the cool people milling around inside, and fantasize about having our own places.
    “I’m not sure I’d want to live in an old high school, though,” he says. “I mean, the one I’m in is bad enough, right?”
    “Well, let’s try to find something better for you, then.”
    So we walk farther, down by the park, looking at the houses lining it. We take the next side street, to keep wandering, and then another turn, and another after that. We move deeper into a neighborhood of huge, beautiful houses: gables and deep porches and painted brick. Houses perched on tiny fenced yards, some covered in ivy, others dotted with ornamental bushes and crossed with rock-lined paths. Everything is honey-lit, everyone inside unconcerned about what’s happening outside.
    “Can you imagine living in a place like that?” I nod towardthe biggest one: a literal mansion hulking across the entire corner of one intersection. It’s the perfect setting for women in hoop-skirted dresses and wide-brimmed hats. Men with gardenias tucked into their buttonholes.
    “Maybe with a bunch of friends it would be cool,” he says. “But with my dad? Probably we’d keep half the rooms closed off, to save money on heat.”
    I picture him and his dad in the two-bedroom house they live in. Secondhand furniture. Not much on the walls. Trip’s room, crowded with his music equipment. All the weekends Trip spends at Oliver’s house— its open, stylish-but-comfortable rooms, Mrs. Drake and her perpetual hostessing.
    Trip interrupts my thoughts. “Do you know where we actually are?”
    I peer into the shadows between the pools of street lamp light. “Um, no.”
    He heads for the next intersection. “Let’s see what’s up here.”
    We squint at the names of the streets, then each other. We don’t recognize anything. We bust up laughing.
    I slowly turn, straining to hear signs of any kind of traffic, any indication of which way we should go.
    “How about—this way?” I point at the road that heads gently downhill. “Didn’t we walk up a hill to get here?”
    “Atlanta is full of hills. Hills on top of hills. With more hills in between.”
    “Well then, genius, you pick.”
    “I say . . .” He puts his hands over his eyes, spins around and around in a circle. When he stops, he points. “Come on. This is it.”
    He grabs my sleeve and pulls me down the very hill I pointed at.
    “Oh, you needed your little dreidel trick to figure out what I already told you?”
    “Second opinion is all,” he teases.
    But at the bottom of the hill the road ends, teeing off either left or right. We have no idea, so we choose right. And then when another street comes up, left. Then right again. Still, only houses and houses. No sign of Little Five Points anywhere. No brightening lights.
    “You know, we could just be walking deeper into nothing,” I say, starting to feel unsure.
    “We could be halfway to Cabbagetown.”
    Which doesn’t help. “Wouldn’t we see the MARTA, then? Or at least hear it?” The thought of being near the MARTA, though, makes me—it’s not fair, but I can’t help myself—worry we could get mugged.
    He can see that I’m uneasy. “Come on.” He offers his elbow for me to take. “It’s this way.”
    He leads me off to the right again, chattering about how heused to ride his bike all up and down these streets when he was a kid. Even if he doesn’t remember exactly, he insists, it’s a muscle memory for him. We’ll be there in no time. I decide to let him go on with his joke, and not point out that he grew up in Tampa.
    But after a couple more turns, we find ourselves walking up the back side of the same gigantic mansion on the corner.
    “Um,” he says.
    We both just stand there. I take my phone out, check the time. It’s 10:42.
    “You’ll make your curfew, don’t worry.”
    “But we don’t know where we are .” I’m starting to feel a little panicked