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made his
way down the hall. When he reached the back door, I saw him pause for a second when he saw my bedroom.
    I was suddenly embarrassed that he was seeing my bedroom. No one ever sees my bedroom, so I’ve never felt the need to give it a more mature look. I still have the same
pink bedspread and curtains I’ve had since I was twelve. For the first time ever I felt like ripping down my poster of Adam Brody.
    Atlas didn’t seem to care how my room was decorated. He looked straight at my window—the one that looks out over the backyard—then he glanced back at me.
Right before he walked out the back door he said, “Thank you for not being disparaging, Lily.”
    And then he was gone.
    Of course I’ve heard the term disparaging before, but it was weird hearing a teenage guy use it. What’s even weirder is how everything
about Atlas seems so contradictory. How does a guy who is obviously humble, well-mannered, and uses words like disparaging end up homeless? How does any teenager end up
homeless?
    I need to find out, Ellen.
    I’m going to find out what happened to him. You just wait and see.
    —Lily
    • • •
    I’m about to open another entry when my phone rings. I crawl across the couch for it and I’m not the least bit surprised to see it’s my mother again. Now that
my father has passed and she’s alone, she’ll probably call me twice as much as she did before.
    “Hello?”
    “What do you think about my moving to Boston?” she blurts out.
    I grab the throw pillow next to me and shove my face into it, muffling a scream. “Um. Wow ,” I say. “Really?”
    She’s quiet, and then, “It was just a thought. We can discuss it tomorrow. I’m almost to my meeting.”
    “Okay. Bye.”
    And just like that, I want to move out of Massachusetts. She can’t move here. She doesn’t know anyone here. She’d expect me to entertain her every
day. I love my mother, don’t get me wrong, but I moved to Boston to be on my own, and having her in the same city would make me feel less independent.
    My father was diagnosed with cancer three years ago while I was still in college. If Ryle Kincaid were here right now, I’d tell him the naked truth that I was a little bit relieved when my
father became too ill to physically hurt my mother. It completely changed the dynamic of their relationship and I no longer felt obligated to stay in Plethora to make sure she was okay.
    Now that my father is gone and I never have to worry about my mother again, I was looking forward to spreading my wings, so to speak.
    But now she’s moving to Boston?
    It feels like my wings were just clipped.
    Where is a marine-grade polymer chair when I need one?!
    I’m seriously stressing out and I have no idea what I’d do if my mother moves to Boston. I don’t have a garden, or a yard, or a patio, or weeds.
    I have to find another outlet.
    I decide to clean. I place all of my old shoeboxes full of journals and notes in my bedroom closet. Then I organize my entire closet. My jewelry, my shoes, my clothes . . .
    She cannot move to Boston.

Chapter Three
    Six months later
    “Oh.”
    That’s all she says.
    My mother turns and assesses the building, running a finger over the windowsill next to her. She picks up a layer of dust and wipes it between her fingers. “It’s . . .”
    “It needs a lot of work, I know,” I interrupt. I point at the windows behind her. “But look at the storefront. It has potential.”
    She scrolls over the windows, nodding. There’s this sound she makes in the back of her throat sometimes, where she agrees with a little hum but her lips remain tight. It means she
doesn’t actually agree. And she makes that sound. Twice.
    I drop my arms in defeat. “You think this was stupid?”
    She gives her head a slight shake. “That all depends on how it turns out, Lily,” she says. The building used to house a restaurant and it’s still full of old tables and chairs.
My mother walks over to a nearby table and