After lunch, I watched some videos of people dancing at a club called Studio 54, which was kind of a famous disco club in the seventies, where famous singers and actors and dancers and even some really good-looking regular people used to go to dance and do drugs. Every video of Studio 54 looks crowded. It’s all flashing lights and people with long fluffy hair bouncing and twirling. I always imagine it hot and sticky, smelling like lipstick and perfume and melting ice in people’s drinks. It was the kind of place where people could be themselves, but it was also a place, Millie reminded me once, where there would be a huge line of people at the door waiting to get in.

“And part of what made that place so famous was how few people could get in,” Millie said.

Even cool disco places from the seventies were mean and excluding (also, drugs).

I was thinking about this and about how I’d have to find the pots and pans my mom still hadn’t unpacked if I wanted to make soup, the food of the sick, when I got a text from Berry.

BERRY

Hey you weren’t in school (which u prob know)

BERRY

BERRY

Anne

BERRY

of Greenville?

ANNE

ANNE

BERRY

Are you contagious?

I tested my voice. I already had more of a whisper.

ANNE

Probably not.

BERRY

So you’re not doing anything and you’re not contagious?

ANNE

Yes and yes.

BERRY

Come downstairs, then.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that Berry knew where I lived when even I didn’t know my address by heart yet, but she did, and it did. I looked out the window and there she was, standing outside my door, the sun setting behind her plume of green hair. Monty barked her two barks indicating that a person she did not know was near the house. Then she lay back down in the front hall and whined.

“What the heck?” I pushed open the door.

“Are you wearing footie pajamas?” Berry pulled a pair of paint-splattered sunglasses down off her face.

“Yes,” I said, kicking up my left foot. “It used to have a unicorn head hood, but Monty chewed it off.” I stood back so Berry could see Monty sitting and looking unamused. “My dog.”

“Well, that’s something I didn’t know!” Berry looked around my shoulder. “Moms home?”

I shook my head.

“So, you can leave?” Berry asked. “I mean, the house?”

“I guess.” I texted my moms and shoved my phone in my pocket, which on the onesie was actually a pouch. “Do I need to change?”

“People around here are pretty cool with people wearing their pajamas outside.”

“I’ve heard that.” I locked the door. “Where are we going and how are we getting there?”