Dad signed up for gigs closer to home, sometimes not even as lead guitar. He checked Nola's homework. He was proud of her good grades. He told her which books to take out of the library and then quizzed her on them. He composed music for her poems, and the two of them sang together and Mom clapped and said they made a very good team. Nola was just sorry that Jenna couldn't be there.

That year, Ms. Beverly Cutter invited Nola to join the drama club, and gave her the part of the lion in Aesop's Fables, and then of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Nola also got to sing the national anthem at school games and Christmas carols over the PA system. Even though the kids thought she was weird, with clothes that weren't right, they played with her, although the girls told her she couldn't come to their homes after school because her parents were "hippies," which meant refusing to buy living room furniture and a TV and a telephone. It hurt, but with things so much better at home, Nola dared not mention it to her parents—or speak again about bringing Jenna home, even for a visit.

When Mom began to smoke again, Nola knew this was "drugs." Sometimes when the three of them sat together on the Indian pillows and made music, Dad smoked too. Once, after they all fell asleep, a cigarette started a fire. Nola woke up to see a pillow burning. She screamed and pulled Mom away. Then she poured the water from the teakettle and kept screaming while she filled the lobster pot in the sink, but then she couldn't lift it. Dad just sat next to the burning pillow and laughed and laughed at her efforts to pick up the heavy pot. Nola's nose ran as she cried and scooped the water out of the large pot with a smaller pot, and finally put out the fire.

The next day, both Mom and Dad apologized and said it had been a lousy thing for them to have done and swore they'd be much more careful in the future. They kissed her and told her that she was a terrific kid. Also, she must promise never to tell that nosy social worker who might then decide to take her away like she had taken Jenna. If that happened, Nola figured, Mom would first be sad, but then she would forget all about her, too.

Afterwards, Nola always worried. What if something terrible happened to her parents, like that fire, but she was too small to save them?