“I talk to somebody on the bus.”

“Well, why don’t you have lunch with him?” Mom asks.

I don’t want to say it’s a her. “I didn’t feel like it today.”

“How often don’t you feel like it?” Mom’s accent has changed since we moved from New York. Or maybe it hasn’t changed but it just sounds normal now. In New York it was always like she was pretending. She said “y’all” and stuff like that, just to make a point, I guess, but it was always like—it was like when she wears too much makeup, or something, and I feel like, it’s embarrassing. But over here she fits in fine; I’m the weirdo.

“Most days,” I tell her. Then, to change the subject: “Granma, can I have some ice cream with my apple pie?”

“Of course,” she says, “that’s what it’s there for.” But Mom makes a face.

“What?” Granma makes a face back at her.

Sometimes they act like that, like sisters; or Granma acts like she’s really Mom’s bratty teenage kid, and Mom is too strict. Like Granma and me are on the same team against her. She takes some ice cream out of the freezer and gets her scoop from the drawer. “I want some ice cream, too.”

“I don’t want him eating too much junk,” Mom says.

“This is good Texas ice cream.”

“I just don’t want it to be a sign of something. Sometimes people eat too much when they’re not dealing with other stuff.”

“You read too many magazines. It’s a sign that he’s growing is what it is,” Granma says.

In the morning, as we walk to the bus stop, Mom says, “How come you don’t bug me about getting a phone anymore?”

“What’s the point? You’re not going to give me one anyway.”

“That never stopped you before.”

“Well, that was before.” I kick a few leaves along the ground. It’s another cool day, cloudy, too. “Do you want me to bug you?”

Mom puts her hand on my arm. “I want you to do something other than say fine and thank you and leave me alone, which is basically all that you say to me. You just climb into this hole whenever I’m around.”

“No, I don’t.” But it’s true, which annoys me, too. “First you complain if I ask for a phone, and now you complain if I don’t. You’re driving me crazy.”

“You sound like your father,” Mom says.

We walk a little farther in silence. All the houses here have grassy front yards, and sometimes there’s a sidewalk, but sometimes there isn’t, and we have to walk in the road. Which doesn’t matter, because there are hardly any cars; we can kind of spread out. At the end of the block, Mom says, “I want you to want a phone. That seems like a normal thing . . . for us to fight about. Like, get off the phone, do your homework, stop talking to your friends.” I can see the corner where the bus stop is, just at the top of the rise.