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always be your father.”
    â€œWell, you can’t have it both ways,” I said, balling my hands into fists at my sides. The words came out angrier than I’d intended, but suddenly all I felt was angry. Not confused, not disoriented, not numb. Just furious. “I don’t even know your real name, do I? If Mom used to be Mina instead of Noel, then you’re not really Joey, are you?”
    Joey Spero. Joseph Spero.
Joseph
. The name clicked with a hollow thud in my mind.
    They must have seen from the look in my eyes that I’d made the connection, gotten to the punch line of their cruel joke.
    â€œThe name Joseph started with a little teasing from your mom soon after you were born,” my dad said, the words nearly a whisper. “But my name was Jesse back then. Jesse Spero. We decided it was safe enough to keep my last name—we were just two people in millions here in New York, after all.”
    I shook my head slowly, all my thoughts colliding at dangerous speeds. “Okay. So now you’ve told me this . . . this
story
. And what do you expect? You tell me that I’m some half human, half . . . half—what, God? Angel?
Messiah?
Do I have a mission? A job to do? Can I fly off of buildings or bring people back from the dead? Tell me, please, what the hell am I supposed to do with any of this information?”
    They froze at the words, their lips paused in gaping round circles. I shook my head and started toward the door, not knowing anything except that I needed to be outside of this house. Away from both of them.
    â€œI don’t know, Iris,” my mom whispered. I turned back to face her, but her head was down, her face buried in her hands. “I don’t know the answers. Iris—the other Iris—she said she’d be back when the time came. So I tried to be the best mom I could be for you in the meantime. But I don’t know what comes next. I wish I did, sweetie. I really, really wish I did.”
    Somehow her looking so sad and weak just enraged me even more. “Who
are
you?” I asked. “Do I even know either of you at all?” The words burned my lips on their way out, but I couldn’t stop the fire, red-hot and blazing through every last inch of me.
    Before either of them could answer, I flung the door open and ran out of the room. I ran away from them before I let myself ask the real question, the question that was too scorching, too combustible to let out.
    Who am
I
?
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    I didn’t think to take a jacket with me when I left. Or my phone. Or my keys. I regretted the jacket mostly, now that the sun was setting and the cool early autumn air was cutting through my flimsy cardigan. But getting out of the house had been first priority, any kind of planning a distant second. My feet traced their usual path to Prospect Park, and the rest of me followed.
    My mind kept looping through my mom’s story. This couldn’t be real—none of this could be real. But my parents had never been good at telling even the littlest of white lies. Or so I’d thought, at least. How could I tell anymore? They’d kept this secret, after all. For more than
seventeen years
. Still, the dread on their faces, the agony—it had all felt so real. They’d meant what they said, I felt eerily certain of that much, and that thought alone made my stomach clench in fear. Were they insane? How could my predictable, stable, rational parents disappear so quickly? Disappear and leave me with
this
.
    I passed through the park entrance, and my feet kept moving, making my decisions for me, until I came around a bend in the path. My lungs heaved for breath. I stood at the entrance of the playground, paralyzed. No matter how many times I’d walked here in the past month and seen the signs and the flowers and the teddy bears—and the photos, those devastating photos—I wanted to sob all