One Saturday morning, June is washing dishes at the kitchen sink when she sees Karen kneeling on the back lawn and tying an empty oil canister to an old broom handle. June realizes she is trying to make a yoke-shaped set of dumbbells; this amuses her a moment, but only a moment. (Too soon she sees her child as a farmer, carrying water across burnt fields.) She walks out to the garden and taps Karen on the shoulder, who stiffens at her presence. The canisters are positioned too close to the center of the broom handle, and not tied securely enough. Karen moves aside so that June can kneel down next to her. She unties the ropes, then moves the canisters towards the ends of the broom handle and swiftly fastens them.

“It’s stronger this way,” she tells her daughter. “How did you get the idea?” A shrug. “Well, it’s a good idea. Clever girl.”

Karen tilts her head, shy from the praise. They remain a moment, kneeling side by side in front of the contraption. Finally, June gets up. She tells Karen to put a jacket on if she’s going to stay outside. Then she heads towards the house, brushing imaginary blades of grass from her elbows and knees and contemplating the faint stretch of muscle along her daughter’s shoulder.

For weeks, Karen has successfully avoided Ricky Stokes during the day. His attendance at school has become erratic, but she notices that when he does show up, his movements are still somewhat predictable. She sees him in the same places: lurking by the auditorium, smoking by the bike sheds, or looking bored and defiant on the bench outside the headmaster’s office. Karen makes sure she’s always in a group at lunch and between classes; no more reading by herself in the library, or on a bench in the schoolyard. Instead of walking home alone after school she joins the stream of students heading towards the town center to the bus stop or the burger restaurant. Karen breaks off at the roundabout by the church and ducks into The Golden Dragon, where her father has set aside a back table so she can do her homework, quietly pleased with her company. On busy evenings, she’ll help clear and set tables, and at the end of the night, sometimes even before closing time, her father will drive them home, his favorite Cantonese ballads playing on the stereo. As they pull into their cul-de-sac, there’s never any sign of Ricky Stokes waiting by the lamppost outside her house. But his absence doesn’t give her any relief; she knows he’ll turn up later.

On the night she decides to open the window, it’s almost a full moon on a warm, cloudless evening. Ricky Stokes looks up in surprise and gives an awkward wave.

“Didn’t think—” he quickly lowers his voice—“Didn’t think you’d ever do that.”