Then she remembers the glaring fact that the lease is up in less than two months and Lizette is almost homeless. She’s been so wrapped up in her grandmother that she hasn’t even thought about the urgency of Lizette’s situation. Are you okay?
Stop, Angel rebukes herself. She jams her phone in her sock drawer.
Just before bed, Angel allows herself to check her phone. Lizette hasn’t texted, but there is a missed call from her, fifty-three minutes ago.
Angel sits upright on the edge of her bed and rings back, almost numb with nervousness.
“Hey.” Angel can’t read her tone from the single word. Depressed? Aggressive?
“Are you okay?” Angel tears her nail too close to the quick. “Where are you at?”
“Home.”
“Oh. Good. So when do you move?”
“Just before Christmas.”
Angel’s heart pounds. “Do you . . . have a place to go?”
“Yeah, my one cousin’s friend said I could crash with her for a while.”
Angel is jealous of this anonymous friend who is able to offer Lizette such essential, material aid. “Oh. Okay. So you’ll be okay?”
“Yes, Angel,” Lizette drones. “You’re not my mother.”
“I’m really relieved. Did you get my texts?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we all miss you.”
Silence. In the crib across the room, Connor wakes, sits up with bleary effort, and looks around, his cheek creased from the crib sheet. His face cinches as he works up to a wail, but when he sees his mother he smiles and bucks.
Angel flashes him an automatic smile and inhales. “You’re, like, the main part of Smart Starts! It’s boring without you. Who’s supposed to keep Jen in check?”
Silence. Connor has found a board book in his bed. He turns it in both hands, inspecting it nearsightedly.
“Brianna seemed really sorry,” Angel says.
“I don’t fucking care.” The words come out with startling velocity.
“I mean, she said that. Said, ‘I wish Lizette would come back.’ ”
“She said that?” There’s hope in Lizette’s voice, hope so naked that Angel is taken aback. “Did she say that?” Lizette repeats with urgency.
“Yeah! Yeah.” But her voice wavers. Angel is not a good liar, and this fact enrages her. She should be better, especially now, when the stakes are this high.
“I gotta go. Nice fucking try, Angel.”
“Wait. Can’t I see you?”
The pause is long enough that Angel wonders if the call has been dropped.
“Lizette?”
Then she says with a sigh, “I don’t know. I gotta go.”
For a long time Angel sits with her phone in her lap. As close an observer of Lizette as Angel has been all these months, she somehow missed this central, astonishing fact: that for all her bluster and antagonism, Lizette cares what Brianna thinks of her. She wants—desperately—for Brianna to help her.
And why shouldn’t she want that? Lizette is a kid, a kid well within her rights to expect help from her teacher. Except that of course she doesn’t, because she is also a kid who’s been wronged and hurt and abandoned by every adult she’s ever known.
Angel must talk to Brianna, must make her see how much Lizette and Mercedes need the program. And Angel needs Lizette. Their teacher can convince Lizette to return—Angel’s sure of this—if only Angel can convince Brianna to convince her.