“Guess what! I know what I want to be when I grow up!”

“What’s that, sweetheart?” In addition to wanting to be an author, Beau’s secondary career ambitions changed on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, depending on what books or podcasts he’d most recently listened to.

“A beachist!”

“A . . . beeshist? I’m not familiar with those.”

“Beach-ist, Mom. You know, like a shelleographer?” Beau held the phone one inch from his face, providing a spectacular view of his nose and teeth. “They are people who study the sand and the sea.”

“Oh, that’s . . . well, that sounds intriguing, Beau. Like marine biology, maybe. Is Mrs. Hartell-Lydon doing a unit on the oceans?”

“Yes!” said Beau. He was in his default mood, which was chipper. “If we didn’t have to do virtual learning, we were going to make as many papier-mâché sea creatures as the actual ocean, but Mrs. Hartell-Lydon says we can go ahead and do them at home if we are careful not to glue our hands to anything.”

“Well . . . good . . . I’m not sure we have supplies for that, though.”

“Do not worry about a thing. I got it figured out,” said Beau, somewhat mysteriously. Before I could inquire further as to how he planned to make an ocean’s worth of papier-mâché creatures from whatever crappy art supplies we had at home, Rorie reappeared.

“I need my phone, Mom. I have, like, five hundred quizzes today. Can you bring me some sparkling water to my room?”

“What, right now?”

“Like, soon.”

Honestly. Teenagers were more narcissistic than toddlers. “I’m at work, Roar. I have a meeting with the president in a few minutes.”

An eye roll. Staying hydrated for a ninth-grade Spanish quiz trumped task force meetings with POTUS, apparently. Rorie tilted the phone, providing a view of her torso and hips as she slouched into the kitchen to poke around in the fridge. She’d turned fifteen a few weeks ago, and her childish figure had stretched into a new vertical dimension but also solidified into the mass of an adult. She stood an inch taller than me but possessed all the dewy beauty of a little girl, a combination posing all sorts of dangers.

Along with the physical changes had come a corresponding increase in sauciness. And boys: they now flocked to her like a swarm of ants to sugar. She’d taken to switching off her phone whenever I came into the room, issuing an affronted yelp if I tried to peek over her shoulder at the screen. This phenomenon deserved more attention than I could muster, what with working eighteen-hour days and the medical/economic collapse of the country and all. I made a feeble effort to impose some parental order before we hung up: “Reminder, Rorie: no video calls with Gnash or whatever his name is—”

“Crash, Mom! And it’s a nickname. His real name is Christopher.”