Shelby tries to plan a great opening remark, but when she sees Jasmine’s tearstained face, she simply puts her arms around the girl and hugs her.

“I hate my mother,” Jasmine says.

It’s as good a beginning as any. The dogs are thrilled to have company, especially Blinkie, whom Jasmine used to think of as creepy and scary. He leaps around until she picks him up. “Oh, Blinkie,” Jasmine says, as if he’s the only one in the world who could ever understand her. She hides her face in his fur and sobs.

“You must be starving. I have Chinese food,” Shelby says.

Shelby always has Chinese food. She now stores her unread fortune cookies in a plastic container she keeps on the kitchen counter, behind the toaster.

“Why don’t you ever eat those?” Jasmine asks.

“No one should know the future,” Shelby says. “What if it’s horrible?”

“What if it’s great?”

“Like life on Long Island?” Shelby jokes.

Jasmine groans and throws herself onto the couch while Shelby reheats broccoli with black bean sauce and General Tso’s chicken. “I don’t know if I can eat,” Jasmine says when the plates are brought out.

Shelby starts right in on her food. How did she come to be responsible for the well-being of someone’s child?

“The taxi driver was so creepy,” Jasmine says. “He told me if I didn’t have a place to stay I could stay with him. He made me sick to my stomach.” All the same, she has begun to eat, daintily at first and then as if she were starving. “Do you have soy sauce?”

Shelby gets some soy sauce. She starts the discussion gingerly. “Let me guess. You hate Long Island.”

“You try living there.”

“I did until I was nineteen. How do you think I got this way?”

They both laugh, but Jasmine doesn’t stop laughing. It’s the kind of laughter that quickly becomes hysterical. Shelby can tell it’s going to turn into crying before it does.

“I have a life,” Jasmine sobs. “I have friends.”

“As in the creepy boyfriend?”

“Marcus is not creepy. And he loves me.”

“Love is for when you’re older,” Shelby says.

“Like your age?”

“I am not the love expert,” Shelby admits. “Learn from my mistakes.”

“My mother thinks she’s the expert. She thinks she rules the world.”

“Well, I hate to tell you, but she does rule your world. You’ll make new friends on Long Island.”

“Oh yeah, sure. Now you sound like my mother.”

A mistake. Shelby tries another tactic. She’s best as bad-girl ­sister who knows the score. “Don’t you get it? You’ll be the new hot girl ­everyone wants to date. People are so bored with the friends they have, you’ll be a queen. Queen Jasmine from Queens. You’ll meet other guys. Better ones.”

“Hah,” Jasmine says, but Shelby can tell from the look on her face, she’s begun to make a dent.

“I bet you a hundred bucks you get asked out the first day you’re in school there.”

Jasmine is eating in earnest now. Shelby fetches them two Diet Cokes. The apartment is so small a person sitting on the couch can see every inch of the place, including the kitchen and the sleeping alcove that’s entirely taken up by Shelby’s bed.

“We could go to Pier 1 and get some awesome stuff for your new room. Red silk curtains.”

“I like blue,” Jasmine says. “Aqua.”

Shelby tries not to smile. She’s hooked Jasmine with shop therapy. “There’s a huge mall near your house. Green Acres.”

Shelby hates shopping. Most of the things in her apartment are castoffs—the couch is from some ex-neighbors who skipped on their rent, the table and chairs belonged to Ben Mink’s great-aunt. True, she got the rug at Pier 1, but only because there was an eighty-percent-off sale and the rug was fluffy and white, the perfect accessory to go with dog hair.

“Would you go shopping with me?” Jasmine asks. “My mother likes everything to match.”

Shelby brings out an extra quilt and some sheets so they can make up the couch. This means tying Pablo to the dining room table with his leash so he won’t try to share the couch with Jasmine in the middle of the night.

“Thank you for understanding.” Jasmine hugs Shelby tight. She’s still a little girl even though she looks like a grown woman. She’s five foot seven with perfect coffee-colored skin and high cheekbones. Maybe she’s relieved to get away from her neighborhood and her jealous boyfriend.

Shelby goes to the bathroom and runs the water full blast so she can phone Maravelle without being overheard.

“What the hell took you so long?” Maravelle has had a pot of coffee, and her nerves are shot. “Put her on.” Now that Maravelle knows her daughter is safe, she can allow herself to be furious. “I’m going to punish the crap out of her.”

“I’ll get her there in the morning,” Shelby whispers.

“I can’t even hear you!”

“I don’t want her to know I’m talking to you. She’ll feel betrayed.”

“She’ll feel betrayed! She likes you better than she likes me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not her mother. And I used to be bald, therefore I can’t be a full-fledged adult.” Shelby gazes at herself in the mirror. She thinks of what Ben said long ago, how Helene’s hair was still long, how it was still the color of roses.

Maravelle laughs. “Well, I love you anyway, bald or not. Just don’t lose my daughter.”

The funny thing is, Shelby can’t sleep. She keeps getting up and checking on Jasmine. Jasmine is curled up with Blinkie beside her, but Shelby still feels anxious. Someone could climb up the fire escape and grab Jasmine. Shelby stays up all night so she can save her if need be. At seven, she makes coffee and feeds the dogs.

Jasmine lifts her head. “Hey,” she says sleepily. “I dreamed I lived in a castle.”

“Was it in Valley Stream?”

Jasmine grins and throws a pillow at Shelby. “There was a white horse in my dream. See if you can find me one of those. Then I’ll be happy.”

They take the train out to the island, then grab a taxi to the mall, where they have the driver wait while they shop. When they arrive at the new house, they’re carrying two huge shopping bags. They have cornered the market on candles, velvet pillows, wall hangings.