Pin frowned. She recognized this girl—she’d seen her at Essanay that morning, one of the two costumed to look like twins.

Pin shaded her eyes. Was the man Charlie Chaplin? From this distance, she couldn’t tell. He gestured toward the canal, then leaned in to whisper in the girl’s ear. Ahead of them, the last of the three couples waited as Horace used his boat hook to pull a boat toward the wooden walkway. The boat rocked slightly as the boy stepped in. He took the girl’s hand, pulled her onto the seat beside him, and slid his arm around her shoulders as Horace pushed them off.

After a few minutes another empty boat appeared. Horace snagged it so that the man and the girl in the yellow dress could step inside. The man sank onto the plank seat, and instead of sitting beside him, the girl settled onto his lap. Horace pushed them off, straightened, and wiped his forehead, leaning on his boat hook as he waited for the next customer. He pulled a stogie from his pocket, lit it, and began to smoke.

A strange sick heaviness weighted Pin, like one of the nightmares after her sister, Abriana, disappeared. Abriana had been born backward, their mother said. The woman who’d come to help had pulled the baby out by her feet as Pin watched. She was only two, so she didn’t remember, but she’d heard Gina tell the story so many times that she’d never been able to get the image out of her head. Later, when their mother explained to people that Abriana was slow, Pin thought it was because her sister’s feet had been injured when she was born.

As she got older, Pin realized that slow meant Abriana would never, never learn to read or write, never remember the rules of ringolevio or stickball or even checkers. She’d never learn not to talk to strangers or follow an organ-grinder, no matter how often you told her. Pin would beat up other kids who called her sister numb in the head, though sometimes Pin felt like saying the same thing herself.

You couldn’t tell by looking at her that something was wrong; not unless you watched the way her smile seemed disconnected from her eyes. That was something else their mother said: that Abriana had been born smiling, the way that Pin had been born dissatisfied. Abriana might have been born backward, Gina said, but Pin had been born sideways.