Wallo led computer club that afternoon so Ali took the bus home unescorted, sat quietly in her window seat as the shuttle lumbered down Cermak through the heart of Mexican Chicago back to her street. Upstairs, there was a note waiting for her on Carmen’s bare mattress:

Querida Ali

Off to invade the annals of the invaders. Take care of Howard. FYI some stuff in 2 boxes in the basement. Plz protect. I return 4 U, Princesa! Here’s ½ October rent.

XXOO

Carrrrrrmen

Beside the note was a check for two hundred dollars and the stolen photo of Howard Zinn. Ali lay down on the mattress besides these abandoned objects. Through the floor she could hear the family downstairs arguing.

Ali hoisted herself from the bed, padded across the hall to her own room and snatched her messenger bag with her as she went. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands like a child, fell onto her own bed, that downy sea of Laura Ashley which Carmen and Wallo both found fit to mock. Was it Ali’s fault her mother had bought her nice linens and matching curtains when she’d moved to Chicago? Did a dust ruffle make her Marie Antoinette? She pulled her iPhone from her bag and Facetimed her mother. In a moment, a nose appeared, a nose much like Ali’s, with the same long eyelashes fluttering above.

“Alison, my love!” Jean White sang. The inside of a car swooshed around the screen. “I’m sorry, hon, I’m driving. I have to put you down.”

“That’s okay.” Ali spoke to the sharp lines of her mother’s chin, her narrow nostrils, the camel-colored felt of the car’s ceiling.

“What’s up, cookie?” said the chin.

“Not much,” Ali began. She shifted on her bed, kicked of her ballet flats and made a move to get under the covers. “Carmen got fired yesterday.”

“What? What did he do?”

“Well, laid off. They said there was redundancy on the faculty.”

Jean’s arm cut across the screen as she turned. “Can he substitute?”

“Maybe, but he left town, actually. He went to New York. Occupy Wall Street.”

“What?” Jean picked up the phone and stared into it. Ali could see her mom, the inside of the Saab, something piled in the backseat, movement beyond the back windshield. “How is he going to pay his rent?”

“I’ll find a subletter. He left next month’s.”

“Just laying around?”

“Well, half of it.”

Jean squinted into her phone so that her face, Ali’s face, filled the whole screen. “Do you need money? I can talk to your father.”

“Mom! I just called to keep you in the loop. It’s Chicago, I’ll find a subletter!”

Jean demoted her daughter back to her lap. “No need to snap at the hand that feeds you.”

“But I’m not hungry,” Ali wailed.

“All right, honey, I’m here,” Jean said. “Keep me posted. Smooch.” And the screen went blank.

“Bye, Mom,” Ali said. She pulled the covers over her head.