I wondered if this was a trick question. “It dries fruit.”

“Why would you need a machine to dry fruit? You can just wipe it off.”

“No, it dries it up, like the way they make raisins from grapes.”

“They make raisins from grapes?”

I wondered if she was kidding. She wasn’t. “Yeah.”

“Does it work?”

“Yeah.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Maybe we could turn it on.”

“It doesn’t make much heat. I’m sorry, it almost feels colder in here than outside,” I said. “It’s like the meat locker at the Queen.”

“It’ll warm up,” she said hopefully. “Eskimos live in igloos. It can’t be that bad.”

I pointed to the corner. “That’s the mattress. And our sleeping bags.” I unzipped Joel’s sleeping bag and laid it across mine for extra warmth, but it was cold like everything else. I lit the kerosene lamp on the small wooden box we used as a table and the sweet scent of kerosene filled the room. The sight of the flame at least made it seem warmer.

“That will help,” she said.

“I’ve got an idea. I’ll be right back.”

I crawled out the clubhouse door and ran to the house. Fortunately the back door was unlocked and I tiptoed in. My parents’ room was across the hall from the one Joel and I shared and I could hear my father’s heavy snore echoed by my mom’s lighter snore. I softly pulled their door shut, then looked through the hall closet until I found what I’d come for. When I returned, Grace was in the sleeping bag with her coat still on. She had found our Etch A Sketch and was drawing. The bag of food was open next to her. The clubhouse already seemed a little warmer.

“Look at this,” I said. “A heating pad.” I plugged it in the opposite side of the extension cord. An amber light glowed on its control box and within a minute it was toasty warm. “Try this.”

“This is great.” She looked a little relieved as she put it inside the sleeping bag. “Have you always lived here?” she asked.

“No, we moved here last May.”

“Do you like it?”

“No.”

“What don’t you like about it?”

“Everything.”

“Like what?”

“Like our first week here my mom dropped me and Joel off at the movie theater. After the show a gang of kids followed us out to the parking lot. They wanted to beat us up because we were clean-cut.”

“You got beat up?”

“No, but almost. My mother drove up and they ran off. But you know how it is. There’s a fight at school almost every day.”

“I know what you mean.”

“My mom grew up here. She said Utah was a nice place to raise a family but it must have changed.”