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she’ll wait until we’re behind the closed doors of her house to ream me out.
    â€œNed’s looking good these days, eh?” she says to the others, then catches my eye and tells me Ned’s the guy with the earring we met as we came in. I nod as if I noticed that kind of detail, and she goes on. “He got out of detox a few months ago and has never looked back.”
    Louise smiles. “I hear he’s moving in here soon.” She jerks her head toward the far end of the dining hall. Behind those doors, my aunt has told me, homeless people can have a room for up to three months, until they find a more permanent place to live. To be accepted, though, they have to be sober and looking for work.
    â€œPretty impressive, considering what he’s been through,” adds Turtle Guy.
    Again, Jeanette fills in the blanks. “Alcoholic parents. On the streets by the time he was fourteen. In and out of shelters for ages. Finally got into a program for drug addiction, but the program’s funding got cut, and he wound up on the streets again. Last year, he got hit by a car. It happened right here, in front of the soup kitchen, and a bunch of people saw it. The driver got out, looked at Ned, made some comment about one less drunk and took off. Left him for dead.”
    I stare. “God.”
    â€œYup, and that’s just one story,” says Louise. “Everyone here’s got stories like that. Amazing they keep going, really. It’s humbling to work here, that’s for sure.”
    I think about that as I keep plopping margarine onto bread. Jeanette goes on smiling and talking, but I tune her out. No wonder Jeanette and Alison wanted to donate money to this place. I’ve never thought about the stories behind guys like Ned. And when I realize that, I see how dumb I’ve been. Like anyone would choose to live like they do. I shake my head, trying to shake my thoughts into some kind of order.
    On our way out, I smile at a few of the people in the courtyard, and they smile back, like normal people.
    For the first few blocks of our walk home, Jeanette acts like I haven’t done anything wrong. In fact, she even smiles when she says, “I’m glad you shook hands with those fellows on the church steps.”
    I breathe a sigh of relief.
    â€œOne of the biggest gifts you can give people,” she says, “is to treat them with respect. You did that, and I was proud of you.” It sounds like the kind of Teachable Moment speech most adults would make, but Jeanette doesn’t do Teachable Moments. I know she’s totally sincere.
    I don’t do tears, yet suddenly they’ve sprung to my eyes. I wonder if I’m turning into my mother, getting emotional about absolutely everything. I blink furiously. “I thought you were mad at me.”
    â€œFor shaking their hands? Why would I—?”
    â€œFor not shaking their hands,” I say. “I didn’t want to at first.”
    â€œBut you did, in the end. That’s what counts.” She looks baffled.
    Suddenly I am too. When I was just visiting for a week or so, I didn’t worry about making Jeanette mad, but now that I’m here for two months, the thought of crossing her makes me jumpy. What’s worse is that I don’t know the rules. At least at home, I know where the danger zones are. For the first time it occurs to me that maybe there are no danger zones here.

S EVEN
    T hat evening, Mom misses our nightly phone call. I know I shouldn’t worry. She often works late. Then again, maybe she had something scheduled for tonight, and she forgot to mention that she wouldn’t be calling. Whatever she’s doing, I hope it gets her mind off her troubles. All day, I’ve been saving up interesting things to tell her, little things that might make her smile— like the fact that Jeanette got me a dentist appointment at the end of this month. After half an hour of hanging