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pizza—”
    “It’s anaphylactic shock, by the way,” Jake interrupts. “Not antiseptic.” He turns
to walk alongside me. “And I’m allergic to raisins and egg whites and squid and cheese
that’s been aged more than ten years and red M&M’s.”
    “Now you’re full of it,” I tell him.
    “So why did you leave in such a hurry?” He sits down on the bench at a bus stop to
tie his runners. It’s a miracle he didn’t trip running backward like he did. “Dinner
wasn’t that bad, was it?” Jake asks. “Steph noticed we forgot to put out the cheese.
Is that why you left? Because there was no parmesan for your pasta? Or maybe you’re
allergic to that too.”
    I can’t help but smile.
    He grins back. Then he gets serious. “Are you going to tell me?”
    I look back toward his house. “You have no idea, do you?”
    He frowns. “Idea about what?”
    “About my life.”
    He shrugs. “What about it?
    “Our spaghetti comes out of a tin or in a little frozen package. Right now we’re
staying in one room in a motel. Who knows where we’ll be this time next week. I haven’t
been to school since…I don’t know. Maybe four years? The last time I sat at a kitchen
table to eat was at my grandfather’s. I don’t know how long ago. Mom talked back
to the tv news the whole time. Grand ended up taking his dinner into the garage just
to get some peace.”
    Jake is watching me carefully. “What are you saying?”
    “That happy family stuff? Back there?” I nod toward his house. “You take it all for
granted. Everyone around the table together. A nice meal. Chatty conversation. Parents
who don’t wig out every time someone cuts them off in the car or doesn’t wrap their
sub the right way.”
    Jake stands up and puts his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—”
    “Why should you? It’s not your life. It’s my life. Always on the run. With a crazy
mother and no money and no idea when it is all going to change. Or end. Knowing that
if it does end, it won’t end well.”
    “What about your grandfather? Can’t he help?”
    “He worries. He really does.”
    “That’s good, isn’t it?”
    Jake doesn’t get it. And, really, why should he?
    “If he worries, it means he cares,” Jake says.
    “Sure, he cares.” It’s true. I know that. “But he’s not about to do anything about
it.” I slump onto the bench.
    I haven’t done anything either. I could have begged, pleaded, insisted that he take
care of us. What have I been waiting for? For Mom to figure out what a mess she—we—have
made of things?
    There’s not much chance of that happening.
    Jake plucks at my arm. “Come on. The bus is coming.”
    “I’m not taking the bus.”
    “It’s cold. Come on. Let’s take a ride.”
    “Where are we going?”
    He pulls his chin back to his chest as if I’ve said the stupidest thing ever. “Is
there somewhere else you need to be right now?”
    So we ride the bus, and I tell him everything, or as much as I have the stomach to
tell. The more I tell him, the quieter he gets. He does not look out of the window
once while I tell him about Mom’s pills and her moods and all the things she has
been afraid of and all the reasons she gives me for moving from one place to the
next and how hard it is to never make a friend.
    I don’t know the last time I ever told anyone this. If I ever have.
    I tell him about the room we rented with the damp creeping up the wall. And the motel
with so much dog hair in the carpet I could weave my fingers in it and pull it away
in hanks. And the landlord I punched when he squeezed me against the wall in the
hall one day to feel me up.
    The more I talk, the more intently he listens.
    “Doesn’t sound like any fun.” His voice is quiet.
    He could say what a rotten mother Mom is. Then I’d have to defend her.
    He could ask what we live on. And I would have to explain that if we didn’t use Grand’s
address, we’d not even get welfare.
    He could tell me