Page 48 of My Family

Harry lounges in the front seat. He seems a little nervous.

"How did your dad get rich?" Jack asks. Jack likes asking uncomfortable questions that no one else dares to ask.

Harry shrugs. "My father's company, Westfield Capital, owns about thirty percent of the commercial real estate in the metro area. Office parks, mixed-use developments, a couple of those horrible luxury condo things. He started with strip malls in the nineties that he inherited from my grandfather."

"So, he's rich rich," Jack says. "Like, private jet rich?"

"Nah," Harry says. "He's not an animal. But we have a boat in the Hamptons."

Jack whistles, low and appreciative. "And you ended up at Aspire. With us. Eating mystery meat and sharing a toilet."

Harry chuckles. "Dad was sick of my bullshit."

"Clearly," Jack says. There's a silence after that. I catch Liam's eye in the reflection of the window, and we stare at each other.

The scenery changes. The chain-link fences disappear, replaced by wrought iron and stone walls softened with ivy. Lawns appear. Driveways hold BMWs and Range Rovers. Mailboxes are made of brick. There are no men on folding chairs here, no plywood windows, no burned-out letters. The trees are taller, the sky somehow bluer, as if even the atmosphere knows which zip code it's in.

Jack presses his face to the windshield. "Is that a tennis court? In someone's front yard?"

"That's the Hendersons'," Harry says, not looking up. "They have three."

"Three tennis courts."

"They're very athletic people."

Jack snorts.

Liam has gone quiet. He looks down at himself, at the facility-issued sweats and the black t-shirt, and something crosses his face that I recognize: the sudden awareness that you don't belong. That the world you're driving through was built for people who have never had to share a toilet or eat off a plastic tray or count days.

He catches me watching and tries to smile, but it doesn't land. I kiss his temple. A silent 'it's okay.'

Gerald turns onto a road that doesn't have a name, just a number posted on a discreet stone marker half-hidden by hydrangeas. The houses get farther apart, separated by acres instead of feet, until they're not really houses anymore but estates.

Then the gates.

They're wrought iron, ten feet tall at least. They swing open as we approach. The driveway beyond is paved in dark stone, curving through immaculate landscaping. Manicured hedges. Beds of white flowers arranged in geometric patterns. An actual stone fountain gurgling softly at the center of a circular turnaround.

And beyond it, the house.

It's not a house. It's a fucking castle. Three stories of stone and a dark roof, large windows and wealth written all over it. The stone is the color of wet sand, smooth and expensive-looking.

Nobody speaks. Not Jack, not Liam, not me. We're too stunned.

Harry stares out the window at his own home, and for a moment his face is unreadable. Then he adjusts his glasses, straightens his shirt, and says, "Welcome to mi casa."

The car stops. Gerald opens the door. The summer air rushes in, warm and scented with cut grass.

There's a difference between seeing wealth through a window and standing inside it. It feels like being inside a magazine. Harry walks ahead, hands in his pockets, narrating the tour with boredom like he's a museum guide on his nine thousandth loop. "Living room," he says, gesturing at a space roughly the size of our entire dormitory. White couches that look like they've never been sat on, a fireplace made of stacked gray stone, and a wall of windows overlooking the back garden. "Kitchen's through there," he nods toward an archway that opens into a room of marble countertops and stainless steel that would make Lu weep with envy, "theater room downstairs, wine cellar next to it, but that's locked. Dad's paranoid. He's probably right."

Jack doesn't listen to a word. He's already off, running his fingers along the edge of a glass coffee table, picking up a small sculpture from a shelf, some kind of bronze figure, twisted and abstract, and turning it over in his hands like a kid with a new toy.

"Don't touch that," Harry says, not turning around. "It cost more than your sister's tattoo shop."

Jack sets it down carefully, then immediately picks up a different one.

Liam moves through the rooms like someone walking through a church, quietly, without that bouncing energy he usually has. He pauses in front of a painting in the hallway, a massive canvas of nothing recognizable, just slashes of red and gold that look like someone had a very expensive tantrum, and stares at it, confused.

"That's a Richter," Harry says, over his shoulder. "My mother bought it before she left. Dad keeps it because it's worth more than the house."