Her father sets the blinker long before their exit; the flicker of the arrow on the dashboard lights his face so that she can see the lines running back from his eyes; he might be squinting, but she can’t tell for sure. She’s not sure why he would squint in the dark.

She clucks her tongue along with the tock of the blinker, keeps clucking even after they have made their turn.

“Isabelle,” her mother says.

She stops.

The traffic is slow-moving as they cross the city. She rests her elbows on her knees and lowers her chin into her hands, letting herself lurch back and forth as the traffic stops and starts. They slowly pass a Christmas tree stand set up in a lot where she has seen flea markets before, and once a school fair; the trees are still stacked against one another three deep at least, the lanterns strung above them swaying gently. There are only a few hours left until Christmas day, and she wonders what will happen to all the leftover trees. It makes her sad to think of a tree, grown its whole life to be decorated and loved, instead left to dry out and die on a curb, or to be tossed with trash onto one of those garbage islands where seagulls scream and dead bodies are found. She can picture it: a mound of dented car parts, garbage bags, cardboard, Styrofoam, bent bicycle frames, old tires, body parts, and Christmas trees. She frowns. The trees deserve better than that.

She hears her mother suck a breath in loudly through her teeth as the car stops abruptly. A car has pulled out fast in front of them; its window goes down and a fist comes out, but the cars behind them have begun to honk, and the car squeals away, the last to make it through the light.

“I swear to God,” her father mutters, peering up at the stoplight.

A church on the corner is letting out; men standing in each door of the church hold baskets of candy canes, which they hand out to the members of the congregation as they leave, a flow of people in their best winter coats all hurrying home to hang their stockings or light a fire, the girls Isabelle’s age in the black patent-leather shoes and white tights that she knows she would be wearing were she now coming home from church. She is glad to be in her blue jeans instead.