And it turns out that none of that is where it lives.

It lives in whether a seventeen-year-old calls you before she calls anybody else on the worst afternoon of her year.

Maya came out of the hallway and saw my face.

“Are you crying?”

“A bit.”

“Oh my God.” She hugged me, which at seventeen is a considerable expenditure.

“What is wrong with you?”

Julián put his head out of the kitchen with a spoon in his hand.