Amy rolled her eyes.

“What are you going to wear?” It was a question Gina’s mother would have asked; a question that would have driven Gina, at thirteen, to wear something shocking.

“This,” Amy said, nodding at her soccer warm-ups. It could have been true.

“Is Dad going to pick you up after?”

“He’s my dad, not yours,” Amy said, but she poured her cereal milk into the sink and went to the living room to ask. Gina washed the white film down the drain and thought about getting Amy a fresh glass from the fridge—for the calcium, for her bones—but Amy would say drinking cold milk in the morning made her puke.

Amy returned from her father. “It’s like talking to a wall,” she said. She blew her bangs off her forehead. “Marisol’s mom’ll pick us up.”

Gina walked her daughter outside, where the sun slanted yellow through the trees. “Dr. Fisher would skin me for letting you dance,” she said. She wondered, briefly, if she could have gotten the doctor to forbid it. She didn’t want Amy there untended.

Amy didn’t answer, but threw her arms around the golden retriever in the drive, rubbing his sides and talking in his ear. “Yes you are, yes you are,” she said. “Yes you are.” The sun caught them, lighting up the hair of girl and dog like two flames. “Yes, yes, yes,” Amy said. Then she carried her heavy backpack, with her odd, uneven gait, across the road.

Marisol, the best friend, lived in the only other house nearby. The access road to both houses was unpaved, to keep it passable in snow and ice. To the south, the road led to the mailboxes and the fairgrounds and town. To the north, it led to a beaver creek and tall willows. In good weather there was a hobo camp near the creek, where someone was once murdered with an ax. Gina held the dog’s collar and watched Amy disappear through the brush. Beyond the hedges, she heard Marisol’s mother tell the girls to buckle their seat belts. Three car doors slammed shut. Gina went inside to her husband.

“You could answer Amy when she talks to you,” she said.

“What?” Chase placed his bookmark and looked at her over his glasses, his face blank and innocent.

“She asked you for a ride home.”

“Home from what?”

Gina gave up, and went upstairs to see if there was any hot water left.