“I bet I know what. Maybe he wants the window seat. Am I right?” Bells says that last bit to me, leaning over and touching me on the knee. I think she thinks I’m like seven years old or something, maybe because I’m not very tall. Maybe because that’s still how Mom treats me, especially when she feels emotional.

“I’m all right.”

“Well, you may be all right, but there’s no point in that when you can be a whole lot better. Come on.” And she picks up her purse from between her feet. “Let’s you and me swap. I need to use the little girls’ room anyway.”

So Mom and I have to get out of our seats and stand in the aisle so she can squeeze through. “You can sit by the window,” Mom says. “She won’t care.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk to people like that,” I tell her.

“What do you mean, people like that?”

“I mean, about me.”

“There,” the woman says, when she comes back from the restroom. I’m sitting in her seat. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Yes, thank you.”

What else can I say? I mean, people just do what they want to do anyway—it’s not up to me. They fly to London, they fly to Texas. They tell you to apologize or change seats. They talk about you in front of your face. They play with your toys or make you clean up their messes or act like something is your fault when it’s not. At least now I don’t have to pretend to read. For a few hours I don’t have to pretend at all, not even to be happy; I can stare out the window at the clouds.

Six

I’VE NEVER BEEN to Texas in the summer. Usually we go at Christmas or New Year’s, when it’s nice and sunny but not too hot. But this time, when we walk out of the airport, it’s like walking into a bathroom where someone has left the shower on. In about half a minute, my shirt’s soaked through with sweat—that’s how humid it is. I can hardly look at the road, to watch out for Granma’s car, because the sunshine coming off it is too bright.

“There she is,” my mom says, as an old white Volvo pulls up next to us.

Granma rolls down her window—I can tell it’s the kind where you have to turn a handle. “We need a storm soon,” she says to my mom. “This is too much.” And then she looks at me and smiles. “Hey, sweetie. It’s nice you’re here.”

Mom and I load our suitcases into the trunk, then I get in back. The air-conditioning is broken, and the leather seats are so hot I can barely sit on them. I take a sweatshirt out of my backpack and sit on that. Granma keeps the windows wide open, and the air roars through them as she merges onto the highway, overtaking people. The airport is really in the middle of nowhere—there’s a big hotel with a big parking lot around it and other than that . . . nothing. Just a lot of highways and empty land. In New York, it’s like every square foot of land has something going on. Either a neighborhood or a park or an office building or store. But here even the roads seem empty. Even the skies seem bigger. I look at my mom in the front seat. She has her eyes closed; her hair’s blowing back against her ears. And she looks . . . happy.