Sublime

“Lu, don’t you have any friends your own age to hang out with?” That was cruel. AJ knew I didn’t. Although I did have a plan to take care of that, a strategy for transformation that would make me the most popular girl in the third grade.

They could still find each other, no matter where they were, just as they had when they were children whose skills made it impossible to play hide-and-seek.

Maybe Ma was never coming home.

East Tremont was a sense of continuity, of warmth, of the security that comes—and only comes—with a sense of belonging.

“Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten,” Dad said, “you’ll still have your stars.”

She had, in short, done everything right and she had built a good life, the kind of life she wanted, the kind of life everyone wanted. Now here was this Mia, a completely different kind of woman leading a completely different life, who seemed to make her own rules with no apologies. Like the photograph of the spider-dancer, Mrs. Richardson found th

“What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.”

toward the juvenile that said, We still get to be kids, right?