Excerpt from The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The voices of Kara's parents are hoarse and wispy, as if they were the ones who were sick. Once, a sudden gasp comes from the mother's throat, "Stop it, Richard," she says, and she begins to sob. "You're ripping it."

This is the moment when Mei peeks out at the parents, as if watching from a great distance, which, in a way, she is.

The father is struggling to roll up one of Kara's posters. It's Paris, black-and-white, tacked to the wall with pushpins, and bought, Mei knows, from the campus bookstore the first week of school. So familiar has the poster become to Mei that she has begun to associate Kara with the girls in the photograph, laughing and glamorous on a cobblestone street in the rain.

"Just stop touching it," the mother says to the father. "Please."

After that, the father is quiet.

Mei lingers in the hallway. She should introduce herself to these parents, that's what her mother would say.

But there is something unbearable about the way that man looks out the window, so like Mei's own father would, and how he doesn't seem to know where to put his hands. It is in the way he keeps touching his beard, the way he stands so silently in the corner of that room.

Mei hurries back to her new room without speaking to them.

Only Caleb is brave enough to approach Kara's parents. Caleb, tall and skinny, brown hair and freckles. Caleb, the En­glish major, a little more serious than the other boys.

The girls watch him shake hands with Kara's father. They watch the way he holds his Cubs cap at his side while he speaks to Kara's mother. And the girls' - ­every one of them' - ­long to smooth his hair, which is sticking up on one side and sweaty from where the cap has been.

The girls love him right then for talking to those parents. They love him for knowing what to do.

Excerpted from The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker. Copyright © 2019 by Karen Thompson Walker. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.