“Stay here if you want a lift.”

It wasn’t lost on me how close it sounded to Stay here if you want to live.

So I sat in the gutter and watched Grace as she limped wildly down the street and into her sad gray house. She was gone for a long time, maybe forty-five minutes, long enough that I thought I’d better either call the cops or start walking home, before a woman with bleached-blond hair slammed the front door open and stalked across the lawn to the car. She backed the shabby vehicle so quickly and violently out of the driveway that she hit a trash can on the opposite side of the road before smoking the tires as she took off.

“Was that your mom?” I’d said when Grace finally emerged with her car keys another ten minutes later, her jaw clenched, her lips a hard line.

“No. Yes. It doesn’t matter.”

“You look like her.”

“I look like a forty-five-year-old alcoholic slash casual meth user?”

“Jesus, Grace, I didn’t—”

“I know you didn’t. It’s fine. Just drive.”

“Do you live with your dad?”

Grace was silent.

“I don’t know anything about you and you won’t even tell me when I ask.”

“You know my favorite song and my favorite color.”

“We aren’t in kindergarten. I want to know real things about you. I want to know the shit stuff too.”

“There’s more beauty in mystery.”

“I don’t want you to be a mystery.”

“Yes, Henry. You do.”

And maybe the thing that stung the most was that Grace was right. My best friends and I had never had to deal with unstable parents or broken homes. Lola, Murray, and I were the blessed three. The most gut-wrenching fight any of us had had with our families was when La was eleven and she’d run away from home (all the way to my house). During her weekly English lesson at the YMCA, Lola’s pint-sized Haitian mother, Widelene, had proudly announced to the class that the loose skin on your elbow was called “the weenus”—a fact taught to her by her preteen daughter, who was in a lot of trouble from her dad when he found out. Lola and I had hid under my bed eating Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and looking at pictures of boobs on Sadie’s laptop. Which, in retrospect, left no excuse for me not guessing that Lola had a penchant for the ladies way sooner.

Grace and I hadn’t spoken for the entire drive to my house. And now here were my parents trying to embarrass me, and I wanted to be pissed at them, but neither of them was an alcoholic or a casual meth user, and I’d never taken the time to be truly appreciative of that fact before, so when Dad said, “Live long and prosper,” and did the Vulcan salute, I held up my hands in surrender and said weakly: “Please. Stop.”

Grace’s lips were pulled into a tight line, her attempt at a smile, but her eyes were glassy and she had the thousand-yard stare of a battle-weary general who disapproves of everyone’s bullshit. Jesus. This was gonna be fun.

I cleared my throat and continued. “Grace, parentals. Parentals, Grace.”

While Grace was shaking my mom’s hand, Dad said, “Henry, catch,” and because I’d obviously developed lightning-fast reflexes from that one game of touch football, I caught what he threw me without a second thought. Which turned out to be a box of Trojan condoms. “Just in case. I don’t want you to have to endure the hell of an unexpected pregnancy like we had to. The pregnancy I’m referring to, of course, is yours. We wanted Sadie.”

“You know, I tell people that you’re cool and then you consistently manage to make me look like a delusional liar.”

“You tell people we’re cool?” said Mom. “Well, beam me up, Scotty!”

“We don’t need his approval,” said Dad. “I already know we’re the most illogical Vulcans in town.”

“Oh my good God. Grace, please, move away from them slowly.”

“Later, gators,” said Dad as I took Grace’s hand and dragged her away from them.

“It was nice to meet you,” Grace said over her shoulder.

“No, no, it was not nice, don’t lie to them.”

“No copulation in the house, please,” Mom yelled after us in a sweet voice. Then, much quieter, “Why does no one tell you that being a parent is so much fun?”

I poked my tongue out at her as I closed the basement door.

“I’m so sorry about my parents,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. Not about that.”

“Do you want to talk about your mom or—”

“Highly presumptuous of you,” Grace said as she took the box of condoms out of my hands while I walked down the stairs with her, one step at a time. “I was thinking . . . maybe I could stay over after the Halloween party this weekend?” Grace shook the box of condoms. “These might come in handy.”

“Um . . . uh . . .”

“This is the point where you say something smooth to seduce me.”

“If you were a carrot, you’d be a good carrot?”

Grace burst out laughing and chucked the condoms across the room. “Well, I guess we won’t be needing those.”

I picked them up and put them on my bedside table. “Let’s not rule anything out,” I said.

Grace sat on the side of my bed and pulled me down next to her and kissed me. “I’m serious. About Halloween. If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”

“I’m not really good at this whole subtle-seduction thing, so I’m gonna come right out and say it: I assume you’re alluding to sexual intercourse?”

Grace rolled her eyes. “Yes, Henrik. Well done.”