Excerpt from The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The front door was open. Our teacher and his wife were dead, lying next to each other on the kitchen floor. The robbers had taken everything in the house. Our teacher, like me, had a mother in America, in Dallas, Texas, a gleaming city we had seen on the television in the window of the PriceSmart electronics store. The point is that our teacher had many things—a watch, alarm clock, boom box, lantern. Luckily, our teacher did not have any children (as far as we knew). That would have been very sad.

Humberto cried out when he saw the bodies. I did not make a sound. My eyes went to my teacher's wrist, but his watch was gone. His wife no longer wore her ring or the bracelet our teacher had given her on their one-year anniversary. The robbers had taken our teacher's shoes, shirt, and pants. It was strange to see our teacher like that. I had never seen his bare legs before. They were hairy.

Humberto and I walked home. We were not allowed to be out after dark, so we walked quickly. We wondered whether we would get another teacher. Humberto thought we would, but said he might stop going to school and start going with his brother to the dump. They needed more money. They had not had dinner in two nights, and he was hungry.

"If you smell like your brother," I said, "I cannot be your girlfriend anymore."

"Are you my girlfriend?" said Humberto.

"Not yet," I said. "Not ever, if you smell like Milton."

"When?" asked Humberto.

"When I'm eleven," I told him.

He walked ahead of me, kicking the dirt. He shook his head. "I'm too hungry," he said finally. "And that's too long."

"Race you," I said. As we passed the dump, the birds shrieked: awful, empty cries. Yet the air on my skin was velvet, the sky magnificent with stars.

"Go," said Humberto. We ran.

2

Alice

Jake and I weren't sure what to do about the party. Benji had sent out an e-vite to all our friends and the whole Conroe's BBQ staff before Naomi changed her mind about giving us her baby, and what else were we going to do with the afternoon? Just not show up? Just stay home and stare at Mitchell's empty crib? (An aside: it was also possible that Mitchell was no longer named Mitchell. Naomi might have changed her mind about that as well.) In short, we went to Matt's El Rancho on South Lamar.

Benji had gone all out. It was fantastic: a cake with blue frosting, baby presents piled high. There were margaritas and nachos, beef flautas and queso flameado. Jake ordered tequila shots like the old days. For about twenty minutes there was small talk, and then Lucy DeWitt said, "Well? Where is the little cutie?"

"Oh, Christ," I said. "Well, it didn't work out, in the end."

Jake raised his arm to signal the busboy, pointing at our empty shot glasses. "Dos más," said Jake.

"Oh, honey," I said, putting my hand on Jake's shoulder and looking at the busboy apologetically. It was offensive to assume he didn't speak English, and also offensive to speak Spanish as badly as Jake did. I didn't speak Spanish at all, but I was going to immerse myself some summer soon.

"More tequila?" said the busboy.

"Yes, please," I said.

Jake said, "Sí, sí."

"What didn't work out?" said Benji, his brow furrowed. "What do you mean, Alice?"

"The birth mother has forty-eight hours to change her mind," explained Jake. "And our . . . and we . . ." Jake's eyes grew teary, and he put his palm over his face. I stared dully at the burn scar on his thumb.

"She took the baby back," I said. "She just . . . we had him at our house. We had him on the couch, and even on top of our bed. We put him in clean diapers and a swaddling blanket. He slept in his crib. And then she . . . she changed her mind."

Excerpted from The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward. Copyright © 2015 by Amanda Eyre Ward. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.