Ted grabbed a coffee can off his bookshelf and emptied its contents onto the table. There were some mini pencils, some tiny, grotty neon-green Post-its, loads of broken crayons, and about ten dollars in pennies, nickels, and dimes.

“Draw a lot of roads with trees and an ocean and fields on this piece of paper,” he ordered, pushing a piece of wide-ruled loose-leaf in front of Shy. “The whole point of Catan is that you’re trying to expand your settlement and use all your resources and keep your enemies out.”

Shy did her best. She was not a skilled artist, and she hated crayons. They smelled like throw-up. She drew connecting pathways and lumpy bushes and puddles, sort of modeling it after Chutes and Ladders.

“We need sheep,” Ted said, drawing on a Post-it. “And wood and wheat. I’ll draw those.”

“Okay.”

“Draw huts that look like they’re made of straw,” he told her. “Not too close together.”

Shy bit her lip and drew four droopy square houses with triangular roofs and round windows. They looked very postapocalyptic.

“Does our game take place in the future, or is it, like, old-fashioned times?”

Ted didn’t seem to hear. He drew pointed ears on his brown sheep. “What kind of tails do sheep have?”

There were sheep all over England. Shy used to see them from the car window when they drove to the seashore or to the home where her grandma sat staring at the television, drinking gin and eating chocolates until she died.

“Little dinky tails, like the very end of a dog’s tail.” Shy had sort of hoped that Ted would want to go to sleep soon. “Do you want to watch a movie while we’re drawing?”

He shook his head adamantly. “No, we’re going to play our game. Ours is actually better because we customized it.”

“I’m just going to get a glass of milk,” Shy said, because she knew milk sometimes made her sleepy. “Do you want some?”

“Okay,” Ted said. “But don’t touch the cookies in the jar in the refrigerator. They’re for grown-ups only.”

Shy found a carton of organic milk, filled up two glasses halfway, and returned the carton to the fridge. At the back of the top shelf was a large metal jar with a screw-on lid. She retrieved it and screwed off the lid. The jar was full of lumpy, homemade-looking chocolate-chip cookies. She held the open jar to her nose and took a whiff. The skunky, man-sweat odor was unmistakable. The cookies were laced with weed.

Shy located the kitchen drawer containing useful items like Saran Wrap and tinfoil, and procured a Ziploc sandwich bag. No one would notice if she took two cookies. She stuffed the bag with the cookies into the pocket of her hoodie and returned the jar to the fridge.

“I’m all done with the sheep!” Ted yelled from his bedroom.