She didn't even say anything, just took off her mittens, gave them to me, and helped me back to the dressing rooms where I cried in private as she unlaced my skates, telling knock-​knock jokes the whole time. To be honest, a part of me had been looking forward to Cass going off to Yale at the end of the summer.

I thought her leaving might actually give me some growing room, a chance to finally strike out on my own. But this changed everything. Id always counted on Cass to lead me. She was out there somewhere, but she'd taken her own route, and for once I couldn't follow. This time, she'd left me to find my own way.

Chapter 2

The next morning when I woke up I realized I hadn't dreamed at all, not even one fleeting image. I took the book Cass gave me out from under my bed, where I'd hidden it, and opened it to the first page.

There was a drawing of a full moon, sprinkled with stars, in the corner. August 18, I wrote at the top of the page. Nothing last night. And you're still gone. I couldn't think of anything else, so I got out of bed, threw on some clothes, and went down the hallway to the kitchen. The door to my parents' room was closed and my father was in his office, on the phone. He had to have talked to a hundred people in the last twenty-​four hours. “I understand that,” he was saying, his voice level, but I could tell he was frustrated. “But eighteen or not, we want her home. She's not the kind of girl who does something like this.” The door to his office was half open, and I could see him standing by the window, running his palm over the small bald patch at the back of his head.

My father, as the Dean of Students at the university, dealt with problems every day. He was the stand-​in parent for thousands of undergraduates, and was quoted each time a fraternity got caught pulling pranks or a beer bash got out of hand.

But this was different. This was about us.

I pulled the patio door open and slipped outside, where it was thickly hot and muggy, another August morning. But at least it was quiet. Next door, I could see Boo and Stewart sitting at their kitchen table, eating breakfast.

Boo raised her hand, waved, and then gestured for me to come over, smiling. I took one look back at my own house, where my mother's stress filled the rooms to the ceiling, leaving a stink and heaviness like smoke, and started across the one strip of green grass that separated their backyard from ours. When I was little and got in trouble and sent to my room, I'd always sit on my bed and wish that Boo and Stewart were my parents. They'd never had kids of their own. My mother said it was because they acted so much like children themselves, but I liked to think it was so they could be there for me, if I ever needed to trade my own family.

The window in my room faced their back sunporch, an all-​glass room where Boo kept most of her plants. She was mad for ferns. Stewart's studiohe taught art at the universitywas just off that room, in what was supposed to be the living room.

They kept their bed in the corner, and they didn't even have any real furniture to speak of; when you were invited over, you sat on big red velvet cushions decorated with sequins that Boo had picked up on a trip to India. This drove my conservative mother crazy, so Boo and Stewart almost always came to our house, where Mom could relax among the safety and comfort of her ottomans and end tables.

But that was what Cass and I loved most about them: their house, their lives, even their names. “Mr. Connell's my father, and he lives in California,” Stewart always said. He was a mild and quiet man, quite brilliant, whose hair was always sticking straight up, like a mad scientist's, and flecked with various colors of paint. For most of the nights of my life I could hear Stewart coming home late from his university studio, the brakes of his bikethey had in old VW bus, but it broke down constantly squeaking all the way from the bridge down the street.

He'd glide down the slope of their yard, under the clothesline, to the garage. Sometimes he forgot about the clothesline and almost killed himself, flying backward while the bike went on, unmanned, to crash against the garage door. You'd think they would have moved the clothesline after the second time or so. But they didn't. “It's not the fault of the clothesline,” Stewart explained to me one day, rubbing the red, burned spot on his neck.

He'd broken his glasses again and had them taped together in the middle. “It's about me respecting it as an obstacle.” Now Boo slid their door open and came out to meet me on their patio. She was in a pair of old overalls, a faded red tank top underneath, and her feet were bare. Her long red hair was piled on top of her head, a few chopsticks stuck in here and there to hold it in place. Inside, Stewart was sitting at the table, eating a big peach and reading a book. He looked up and waved at me; he had juice all over his chin. “So,” Boo said, putting an arm around my shoulder.

“How are things on the home front?”

“Awful,” I said. “Mom won't stop crying.” She sighed, and we stood there for a few minutes, just looking across their yard. Boo had gone through a Japanese garden stage a few years back, which resulted in a footbridge and a fat, rusted iron Buddha sculpture. “I just can't believe she didn't tell me anything,” I said. “I feel like I should have known something was going on.”

Boo sighed, reaching to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “I think she probably didn't want to put you in that position,” she said, squatting down to pull a dandelion at the edge of the patio, lifting it to her face to breathe in the scent. “It was a big secret to keep.”