“You want dinner?” Mama asks finally.

“I don’t,” Atlanta says. “I got it covered.” Which means some generic frozen entrée from the Amish store where they sell grocery goods that are either off-brand, out of date, or both. Froot Loops from two years ago, or Fruit Scoops only a month old.

Probably best her mother isn’t cooking dinner. Mama can make a hell of a breakfast, but her dinners are at the end of the culinary spectrum reserved for roofing shingles.

Just to be a bitch, Atlanta walks over to where her mother is setting up the cot, opens the garage fridge, and pulls out a beer. Coors Light. Tastes like watered-down cat piss, she thinks, but part of her just wants to see how far she gets to push.

Mama sees but pretends not to see, and that’s all Atlanta needs to know.

Atlanta goes inside while her mother sets up a cot on the oil-stained concrete.

The age of the house shows in all the doorways—each tilted off-kilter like something out of a carnival fun house. Floors aren’t level, either. Atlanta one time put a cat’s-eye marble on the floor and it rolled away, down the hall and into an old iron floor grate. She never got that marble back.

Knock knock knock.

He about scares the spit out of her. Standing by the kitchen window like that. Atlanta goes and opens the back door and pokes her head out.

“What?” she barks.

The Venezuelan kid practically jumps out of his skin. Then he steeples his hands in front of him, looking nervous. “I just wanted to, uhh, ahh, say thank you.”

“So say thank you.”

“What? Oh. Thank you.”

She nods. “Uh-huh.” Then she slams the door.

But as she rips the cardboard zipper off the frozen dinner, she sees him still out there. He’s no longer looking in the window, but he’s on the back lawn by the rusted patio furniture. Pacing.

Fuck it. She ignores him. Perforates the plastic with a fork. Dinner in the microwave. She cracks the beer and takes a sip and makes a face, then dumps it in the sink. It’s not skunked, but it might as well be.

The kid knocks at the back door. Moon face peering past floral curtains.

“Don’t want any,” she says. “Already have plenty. You’re welcome. Scram.”

When next she looks to the door and window, the kid is gone.

Five minutes later she’s eating bad General Tso’s chicken, each nugget so nasty it’s like eating fried homeless people dipped in ketchup.

Door to the garage opens up. Mama comes in.

“Hon?” she asks. Atlanta’s about to tell her mother, No, thanks, I said I got dinner covered, so you go on back to your garage now, but instead her mom beats her to the punch with: “I think a friend’s here to see you.”