Chapter 11

“Where’s Emma?” Leo asked Meg.

He’d just returned from school. He pulled his backpack off his shoulders.

“The basement,” she replied.

He nodded and hurried to his room to change out of his school uniform and into something else. After he was done slipping into his house clothes, he headed to the basement. He was always looking forward to any opportunity to be away from school and his peers because of how silly they were.

He knocked on the door of the room belonging to Emma’s family. She asked him to come in. He did. She was sitting on her bed with her baby brother on her lap, reading a storybook to him. Pictures of her family hung on different sides of the gray wall. The room was neatly arranged, with some perfectly folded clothes tucked underneath the dresser. And the floor was litter-free.

“Hi,” Leo said, staring at the baby whom he found cute.

“Hi,” Emma replied but didn’t look up at him.

“May I sit?”

“Of course. The entire house be