Patrick is aware that Marnie and Maybelle have come in and are standing near the door, watching. He sits very still, waiting with his battle plan.

“But,” Annie says, “sometimes we want to help so badly, and we can’t always know the right way to do things, can we, Fritzie? And so let’s try to brainstorm what might be a better way of helping Laramie without taking away something from other people or embarrassing him. Because, as you already know, Fritzie, taking money from other people isn’t the right thing to do. Right?”

Fritzie nods. But Patrick is pleased to see she doesn’t look horribly ashamed. She’s fine.

This Annie takes out some paper and a pen and says, “So let’s hear some ideas. Anyone can contribute.” And she looks around, waiting, her eyes sparkling.

Patrick flicks a piece of an old leaf off his jeans hem and when nobody else says anything, he says, “Well, we could pay the money back to the people who gave to the book fair.”

She nods and writes that down.

Fritzie says, “I could say I’m sorry.”

“Yes, and . . . ?”

“I know!” says Fritzie. “We could ask Laramie’s family to come and live at our house! We have plenty of room!”

Marnie laughs, and Patrick’s stomach drops. He knows Marnie well enough to know that it is not outside the realm of possibility that she and Fritzie would start a campaign to move an entire homeless family into their house.

Annie smiles. “Well, although that is very, very kind of you, Fritzie, maybe we should think of something that doesn’t involve such a huge change. Is there something simpler we could do for now?”

Fritzie bites her lip. “Um, I could ask Laramie to come and play at my house after school. And he and I could do paintings with my dad, who’s a painter—and then we could go to Marnie’s store, which has flowers, and maybe Marnie would pay us money to work in the store. I know how to work the cash register, and it’s really fun there, and then . . . and then . . . then we can go down the street and get snacks. Would that be okay, Marnie?”

Patrick’s brain short circuits at the words my dad, just as if he’s received an electric shock. My dad? He catches Marnie’s eye, and she smiles at him.

“Well,” says Marnie, “one idea would be that maybe Laramie and his mom and the other kids in the family would like to come over for dinner sometime. We could get to be friends, and maybe that would help them most of all.”

Annie is beaming at them. Patrick feels his ears buzzing, no doubt a result of the short circuit.

They are still buzzing twenty minutes later, when he and Marnie leave together, walking back to the subway, after dropping Fritzie off at her classroom. He has met and somehow shaken the hands of both Karen and Josie, he has endured the stares of thirty pairs of eyes as kids looked up from decorating papier-mâché Thanksgiving turkeys, and he now feels himself to be coated in a kind of brotherly love and kindness that is so palpable it’s almost uncomfortably sticky. Having kids paint in his studio? A family coming over for dinner? He is trying to get ready for a show. Has everyone somehow forgotten that? The day feels too bright, the air sharp against his skin.

Marnie takes his arm. “You did brilliantly in there,” she says and hugs him. “And what did you think of the school? Isn’t it just fantastic?”

He feels himself grimace for no good reason. “Well,” he says. “They put on a good show. I’ll say that for them.”

She laughs very hard at that one.

“You are such a porcupine, Patrick Delaney! Can’t you take just a moment to bask in the idea that what we just experienced was pure joy?” She pokes him in the arm, and then seeing that he’s still scowling, she stands on tiptoe and kisses him long and hard and juicy on the mouth. Right there in public, two weeks before Thanksgiving, and him with his porcupine quills sticking out all over the place.

No, no, no, he thinks. Pure joy would be having our lives go back to the way they were. No art show, no daughter I’d never known about, and no need to go visit some elementary school in the middle of the morning. It would just be me and Bedford and Roy, watching our game shows, visiting with Paco, letting the days drift by, and then calm, beautiful Marnie coming home in the evening. Alone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MARNIE

The next day Ariana comes clomping into Best Buds after school, and I can tell right from the moment the bell sounds over the door that trouble is a’coming in. And sure enough, there she is, soaking wet from the rain and filled with angry purpose. Ariana, of course, is usually the human equivalent of a sparkly unicorn of love, so I sit up and take notice.

She jumps up to sit on the counter like she does when she wants to talk. I’m filling out an order form that’s overdue, and she fiddles with the flower arrangement we keep by the cash register. Today it’s lilies and mums. I wait to see what she wants to tell me.

“You should totally get more of those tulips, the ones that are multicolored,” she says. “Everybody loves them so much.”

“Well, it’s true they’re lovely, but they’re out of season now, so I think I’m going to concentrate more on the mums.”

“Oh! Totally! Yes. Fall is mum time. I guess you probably had to study up on flowers before you could run this place.” She sighs and looks around, picks some imaginary speck off her left boot. Her curly yellow hair falls over her eyes when she bends forward. I see that the tips today are tinted purple. Without looking at me, she says, “So. I’ve got to do a magic spell on my dad. Any ideas?”

“Your dad? Why? What’s going on?”

“He’s decided that I’m a loser because I don’t want to go to college next year.”

“Wait, wait, wait. I’ve met your dad, and he doesn’t seem like he’s even capable of saying your name and loser in the same sentence. If he had had buttons on his suit the day I met him, they would have been busted off, he was so proud of you.” Then I say, “And also, another whoa. Back up a sec. Why don’t you want to go to college?”

“Because I have another plan for my life.” She brushes back some of her stunning curls. “I’ve decided that I want to go on the road with my video camera and interview people about their lives and then make a whole series out of it. And my friend Justin wants to do this, too, and so we’re going to get his uncle’s van and do a GoFundMe thing so we can outfit it for podcasts and videos and stuff, and then we’re going to broadcast our way across the country for at least a year and after that, if we’re not famous yet, we’ll go back to school.”

“Wow,” I say. It’s true that she’s been taking videos of all of us nearly relentlessly. And it’s also true that she and Justin, a handsome, lanky guy with a killer jawline, and who slouches rather admirably, have started hanging out at Best Buds—and they have been sitting in the corner lately, their heads together, excitedly writing stuff in a notebook. I could sense that plans were afoot. But I thought we were having some senior-in-high-school love stuff. I even said to Kat one day, “Well, now we’re going to be having a bunch of sparkly unicorn love action going on. We won’t be able to see the flowers for the amount of love sparkles we’re going to be experiencing here,” and she said, “You forget you’re the only one who sees the sparkles. The rest of us can see the flowers just fine, and also the dust and the cracks in the plaster and the storm clouds.” (I am apparently surrounded by porcupines.)