Noah Coyne is thirteen years old.

He is tall for it, quiet in a way that gets mistaken for shyness and isn’t, and he is the best student in his year at a public middle school in Sunset Park.

He has been raised for seven years by my sister in a two-bedroom apartment with my mother in the other room.

He does his homework at the kitchen table because Chloe works nights twice a week and the kitchen is where the light is.

That Thursday he’d been doing a project on family history.

A social studies assignment.