Page 46 of Main Event

“Yes.”

“Do you believe her?”

A long pause.

“I’m trying to,” Deja says.

“That’s enough,” I say. “That’s all you need right now.”

We sit in the backyard for another hour. At some point, she says, “I’ve been sleeping in a building on Pryor Street. There are four of us. We have a system.”

“Okay,” I say.

“It’s not that bad.”

“I believe you,” I say. “But it’s also not that good.”

She almost smiles.

“No,” she says. “It’s not that good.”

Then we go back inside together.

ANDI

She finds me in the kitchen before I leave.

Not Kelly—Deja. She’s been quiet since they came back inside, standing slightly apart from the room the way she always does, watching how people move around each other.

“The room Linda showed me,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Is it—is that the one?”

I look at her. “It’s yours if you want it.”

She looks at the floor for a moment. Then, she continues, “I have some things. On Pryor Street. I’d need to go get them.”

“I’ll take you,” I say. “Tonight, if you want.”

She’s quiet. Processing something she’s been holding for three years—the weight of someone who has learned not to put things down because you might need to move again.

“Okay,” she says. “Tonight.”

The building on Pryor Street is exactly what she described—abandoned, structurally intact, the kind of place that four teenagers with a system can make work when the alternative is the shelter that reports to the system.

She goes in alone, and I wait in the car, giving her the time and space she needs to breathe while she collects what little belongings she owns. She comes out seven minutes later with a backpack and a plastic bag. That’s everything. Three years of surviving, and it fits in one trip.

She gets in the passenger seat. I don’t say anything about the bag. I don’t say anything about the building. I just drive.

When we pull up to Sam and Linda’s, the porch light is on.

“They left it on,” she says.

“Linda always leaves it on,” I say.

She looks at the house for a moment. At the light.