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respond.
    “Darren. Darren Gansler.” He drops his cigarette to the ground without having taken a single puff that I could see, as if its purpose had already been accomplished. Was he waiting for me?
    “You don’t look like a Darren.” I realize this is ridiculous as soon as it’s out of my mouth. I know nothing about what a Darren does or doesn’t look like. I do, however, know what a liar looks like. He looks like a liar, this man who has followed us from the worst day of my life to here.
    He shrugs. “You’re probably right.”
    He is utterly indifferent to my challenge. He knows that I know he’s a liar. But he doesn’t care. “What are you doing here?” I ask, even though I suspect he’ll just lie to me in response.
    “Waiting to talk to your mother,” he says, then ducks away to answer the cell phone that begins to ring from his pocket.
    Frustrated, I walk off. I’m not going to get any answers from this Darren who isn’t Darren anyway, and I’m offended to have been so easily dismissed. But I am certain that neither his presence nor the men in my apartment can possibly mean anything good.

COMPENSATION
    The days that follow bring no answers.
    Mother is vague about the gathering; my questions only invite pinched lips and irritable head shakes from her. She’s suddenly busy all the time—not an easy thing to accomplish in our tiny, distractionless apartment. Bastien didn’t overhear anything useful either, so I am left alone with my confusion. At least one surprise comes from the meeting, though.
    Food.
    I arrive home from school to find the refrigerator and the cabinets full. Mother must have gone to a hair salon too, because the gray streaks that were beginning to snake their way through her hair have vanished. She laughs and waves away my questions. “Just enjoy it, Laila. I bought you something special—look in your bedroom.”
    I walk into the room expecting to find a small trinket, or maybe a new blouse. Instead, I find a laptop computer sittingon my bed, brand-new and still in its box. It’s the same kind as Emmy’s, but a more recent version. Bastien’s bed has a box on it too—it looks like a video game console of some sort.
    I rush back to the living room, positive there’s been a mistake. “But these things are so expensive! How did you get them?”
    Mother laughs again, then twirls around in the middle of the room. She’s wearing a new dress. It looks like it cost as much as my computer, if not more. She’s always had expensive taste.
    “Mother, where did you get the money for all this?” My heart is pounding in my chest, partly because I’m excited to have my own computer, but more because I’m afraid of what these gifts mean. Did she trade the last of her jewelry for one final splurge, or has she bartered something else? It pains me that I can’t just accept, can’t just enjoy. But I can’t. There’s something stopping me, even if it is only the perpetual sourness that seems to run, corrosive and sluggish, through my veins these days.
    “I told you that money would come.” She is smug. Proud. Standing there, stunning and confident in her expensive new dress and young-again hair, she could be a snapshot from our past—a photo ripped in half, my father’s image torn away.
    But I’m tired of the way she dances around questions. I have a right to know.
    “Mother!” My voice is shrill as I repeat my question. “Where did you get the money for these things?”
    Her head snaps up. She’s said nothing about my small act of rebellion the day before, but I know there is a tally in hermind. Confronting her, questioning her, is my second act of defiance in two days. She’s indignant, but after trying out her anger for just a moment, she softens and discards it. “It’s from Mr. Gansler. Darren. I’m doing a little work for him, and in exchange he’s going to pay our expenses for a while.”
    “What kind of work?” My mother has never worked a day in her life, and I