I laughed. “Pretty girls can’t have lice? Trust me, they can. Lice are actually attracted to clean scalps, did you know that? It doesn’t mean you’re dirty.”

A flicker of gratitude moved across her expression, but then her face darkened again.

“How have you been doing?” I asked.

She sniffed, but she didn’t answer.

“My mom was gone a lot too,” I said, wiping the comb on the paper towel. “I was in foster care a couple of times, so I get it.”

“You were?”

“I was.”

“What’d she do?” she asked.

I shrugged. “She wasn’t really good at taking care of me.”

She peered at me. “My mom was good at taking care of me,” she said, her voice almost too low for me to hear.

“You know who else will be good at that? Justin. And Leigh too.”

A long pause. “I guess. It’s like, nobody gets it though. Alex is just all Alex and Chelsea’s so small she doesn’t even know. She thinks Mom’s at camp.”

“Camp’s as good of a story as any. Let it be camp.”

“Yeah, but it can’t be camp for me. I have to know.”

“She’ll be home one day, Sarah. It’ll come faster than you think. You can visit her and write to her and call her. You can stay close to her—you just have to try. I know this is hard, but good things can still come out of it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like what?”

“You find out a lot about yourself during times like this. You realize how resilient you are and what you’re capable of.”

“I don’t want to know any of that,” she said.

“Ha. Fair enough.” I worked quietly for a moment. “What are you going to miss the most while your mom’s gone?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe like, her cookies or something.”

“Learn to make the cookies, so everyone can still have them. Maybe you can even bring them to your mom when you visit. I bet Justin can help. He’s a really good cook. You should try what he makes.”

She looked like she didn’t believe me.

“He made me this egg salad sandwich that was, I swear to you, the best one I’ve ever eaten,” I said. “He smokes ribs, and he’s got a really good Mississippi chicken recipe. Seriously. Try it.”

She seemed to consider it. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Several minutes passed. I watched her face in the mirror, deep in thought.

“They’ll make fun of me at school,” she whispered. “’Cause my mom’s in jail.”

I nodded slowly. “They do that.”

“Did they make fun of you?”

“They did.” I dragged the comb down to the ends. “My clothes were too small, my hair wasn’t brushed. There were a few weeks I had to use a men’s briefcase for a backpack because I didn’t have anything else. All my clothes were in black trash bags.”

She looked horrified.

I shuddered a little thinking about that time. I didn’t usually dredge up those memories. Of everything, the trash bags were somehow the worst part. They were so dehumanizing. It made me feel disposable. When I finally had my own money, I bought the most expensive set of luggage I could afford. It was the one thing I never skimped on, the one thing that would always be with me, no matter where I ended up. And every year I bought bags to donate to kids in foster care.

Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.

It occurred to me that’s why I knew what to say and do now. I guess I had Mom to thank.

“The trick is not letting anyone see you care about anything mean they might say,” I said. “Don’t react. Don’t let them see you cry. They’ll get bored when they don’t get the reaction they want.” I wiped the comb. “And lean on your friends. It helps.”

Justin popped into the doorway. “Hey, how’s it going in here?”

“Good,” I said. “Making progress.”

“I just finished Alex,” he said. “Want me to take over?”

“I want Emma to do it,” Sarah said quickly.

He put his hands up. “Okay.”

His hair was tousled. “No lice.” He pointed at it. “Leigh checked me.”

“Good. Did you check her?”

He paused for a second. Then he disappeared back out the door. I smiled after him. Then I saw how big I was grinning in the mirror and had to make a conscious effort to make my face straight.

Sarah was watching me. “My brother really likes you, I think.”

The corner of my lip turned up again. “Oh yeah?”

She nodded. “Yeah. He, like, never talks about girls and he talks about you all the time.”

“What does he say?”

“Emma this and Emma that. Blah blah blah.”

I laughed.

“Do you like him?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course I do.”