Elena DeMaio, or Len or Lenny as everyone called her, snickered and swung her gaze over to my direction. In a button-down cotton dress she had borrowed from me because she still couldn’t lift one of her arms over her head after a surgery she’d had two months ago, she almost looked sweet with her sling on. Almost.

But we all knew she wasn’t, and we loved her for it anyway.

She was one of my favorite people in the entire world, and I had no idea why this three-time Judo national champion and one-time world champion had picked me out of a self-defense class she’d been teaching and decided to make me her friend eight years ago. Lenny had literally walked over to me while I’d been toweling sweat off and asked, “You wanna get something to eat?” Maybe she had seen the loneliness in my eyes, because I’d been pretty freaking lonely back then, or maybe she had just been bored, but going with her had been one of the best decisions I had ever made.

Because of her, I’d added more people to my extended family—her grandpa and his best friend. Getting to look at the hot guys at her gym was a nice bonus too.

“You never texted me back the other night,” Lenny decided to change the subject instead of reminding me that I had a reason to be a little sad. “How did it go? Did you see you-know-who?”

I eyed my siblings down the table then made sure Mr. Cooper was in the middle of a conversation and not listening. He wasn’t.

Plucking at a royal blue thread from my dress, I wrinkled my nose and whispered, “Yeah, I meant to call you, but I spent the rest of the day with Lily and worked all day yesterday.”

She leaned forward. “And?”

I moved my gaze back to my siblings down the table. “Let’s just say I went all Judo on my cousin and his elbow is going to be hurting for a while.”

She punched me. She literally punched me right in the shoulder, and I didn’t bother trying to pretend like it didn’t hurt because it did. “You didn’t!”

Rubbing at my upper arm, I nodded. “Yeah. Rip threatened to kick his ass, and that was the end of it.” I winced. “Damn it, Lenny, you need to keep your Amazon strength to yourself. That hurts.”

Lenny rolled her eyes and brushed my pain off. “Is that all that happened?”

I shrugged and glanced toward Mr. Cooper again. I had left that part of the story out when I’d told him. “Yeah, basically. My dad looks like shit, and the girls’ mom looks even worse. Pretty sure she’s on meth now. It’s over with at least. I won’t have to see them ever again.” I smiled and tried to give her an enthusiastic “Yay.”

She didn’t “yay” me back or mutter a word, and that said everything.

Beside me, Mr. Cooper was in the middle of a conversation with Lenny’s grandpa’s best friend. On Lenny’s other side, Lydia was talking to Grandpa Gus. We were all familiar with each other. Most of us had even had a few Thanksgiving dinners together when everyone was in town.

They were everything I had ever wanted.

Beside me, Lenny sighed, and I had to eye her.

“What’s that sigh for?”

“No reason,” she lied.

I made a face at her.

It was impossible to miss the way she shrugged her one good shoulder, the one that wasn’t in a sling. “You got me thinking about how when I was little, I used to cry over how much I wished my mom would have stuck around, and how I probably got lucky that she didn’t.” She didn’t need to say what her words really meant. I understood.

She could have had a family like mine. She could have ended up with my dad. Or with the person I had called Mom for too long. Or my brother, who hadn’t necessarily been bad but had never been good either. Or any of the rest of the Millers.

She had heard enough bits and pieces to know I wouldn’t have wished them on anyone.

As I looked down the table again at three sisters who I had busted my ass for everyday for years, this tiny part of me wept silently that I hadn’t had the same opportunities as them. It was selfish and I knew it, but I knew more than anything that if I had to, I would never switch positions with any of them. Never.

I couldn’t help the words that I whispered over to my best friend as I thought about how I never got to experience so many things other people took for granted. At least I had gotten a dinner the day my GED diploma came in. Mr. Cooper and Lydia and taken me to this very same restaurant to celebrate that day.

“I used to tell myself that I’d gotten switched at birth with someone else and my parents were off raising somebody else that looked just like me,” I told Lenny quietly, keeping my gaze down the table on the two blondes and the one light brown head of hair. “I would think about how they took her to Disney and gave her ballet lessons and had dinner around a table every night… and how she was probably super happy.

“And at first, I’d want to cry, thinking about how she got lucky and how I’d ended up with them, and one day, after my dad had grabbed my arm so hard I thought he had broken it when he was drunk… I thought about how I was glad she had gotten the better parents because at least one of us could be happy. Maybe she—that girl—wouldn’t have been able to deal with them. But I could, deal with them I mean, so it had worked out for the best.”

I pressed my lips together as I tipped my head back and looked up at the ceiling. Not because I didn’t want Lenny to see me cry—she had plenty of times in the past—but because I wouldn’t even want to look at myself right then. I didn’t want to remember that I was the same person who had dreamed those things. A part of me would probably always hate that I’d had to, and that was pointless and dumb because I was over it.

But still.

When you want to survive, your body and your brain will convince themselves of anything.

I wished I could have protected Little Luna from all of that. I could have stopped the “Fucking Luna,” and the “Why are you always bothering me?” and “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” and “You stupid little shit” and “Leave me alone” when all I wanted was attention or affection from my dad or the only mom I had physically ever known. I could have stopped all the times my dad had called me useless and told me he regretted I was the one who had made it instead of my real mom. I could have deafened Little Luna’s ears from hearing all the arguments and the fights that had nothing to do with her but ate her up all the same.

I mourned that.

I mourned for that girl like I couldn’t put into words.

I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth and blinked.

I grabbed onto that knowledge deep in my heart that it was better late than never. I was loved, I had a home, I had money, and I had a job now. I was safe. I was happy. I had so much more than I might deserve—so much more than the people who should have loved me would have ever wished for me.

I packed up those thoughts, shaped them into the size of a basketball, and three-pointed that ball into an imaginary net far, far away from me.

I was here. I was fine. It was a beautiful day, and I was around people who gave me more love and happiness in a month than I’d had for seventeen years.

I would never have to see those jerks again.

And today was going to be a good day, damn it.

So I got it together and finally looked back down at my best friend to ask, “Did I tell you I stole a bottle of Visine once because I wanted to put a few drops into my dad’s coffee, but I always chickened out?”

Lenny snickered. “No. Psycho. Did I tell you that one time I asked Santa to bring my mom back?”

I made a face. “That’s sad, Lenny.” I blinked. “I pretty much did the same thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “Did I ever tell you that I wanted to have like ten kids when I was younger?”

The laugh that came out of her wasn’t as strong as it usually was, but I was glad she let it out anyway. It sounded just like her, loud and direct and so full of happiness it was literally infectious. “Ten? Jesus, why?”

I wrinkled my nose at her. “It sounded like a good number.”

The scoff that came out of her right then was a little louder. “You’re fucking nuts, Luna. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-ten?”