I made some coffee. I really needed some coffee. It had been nearly five o’clock when I’d fallen into bed, and even then I’d had a hard time sleeping. I’d nodded off around six, and now it was eight, and I’d been up half an hour, so do the math. I was hoping coffee would help, but was not particularly hopeful.

All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed, but it had been my plan originally to head into the paper with Sarah when she went in, and this particular week that happened to be around eight-thirty.

“I can’t believe he’s calling me this early,” Angie said. “Bad enough having a stalker. I have to get an early-bird stalker.” The phone had rung six, seven times now, but I’d lost track, since I was counting out eight spoonfuls of fine-grind Colombian into the coffeemaker. Finally, the ringing stopped. “Now he’ll leave me a message,” she sighed, brushing back some of the blond locks that had fallen across her face.

Her brother Paul, who at sixteen is two years younger than Angie, had his back to her as he looked into the fridge, but he’d been listening. “Five bucks says he phones the house next,” he said as he struggled to get a yogurt from the back of the fridge without moving the milk and pickles and orange juice that blocked the way.

Angie took one bite of her cold toast. “Last night he phoned me five times. I never did answer it. So then I have to listen to all his creepy messages. ‘How are you? I was just thinking about you. Why don’t you give me a call? Do you want to get together?’ Uh, I don’t think so.”

Paul, his head still in the fridge, said, “You’re so hard on everybody.”

I spilled the last spoonful of coffee before I could get it into the filter, and scooped it to the edge of the counter and into my other hand. I went to toss it into the wastebasket we keep under the sink, when I noticed a glass bottle sitting on top. It was an empty Snapple bottle that earlier, according to the label, had had apple juice in it. “Hey,” I said. “Who’s tossing Snapple bottles in the regular garbage?”

Angie was still shaking her head over her unwanted phone call and Paul was peeling off the top of the yogurt container. I glared at him. He was the one who liked apple juice.

“We have a recycling box,” I reminded everyone, taking out the Snapple bottle, which had its metal cap screwed back on it. “Glass bottles, tin cans, plastic—that all goes into the box, not into the garbage. Are we interested in saving the planet or not?”

“I could go either way,” Angie said.