I glance at Dad sideways. “Expenses?”

“Your equipment, for starters. Transportation. Music lessons. It all adds up.”

There it is again. A familiar push on another familiar bruise. “Yeah,” I say. “I know it does. This summer I’ll mow lawns again, and—”

“Summer,” Dad cuts me off. “Sure.” He turns to Mom, his tone shifting. “Did you say you were heading to Halmstad today?”

Mom nods, happy to have things moving into a lighter key. “I have to return those shoes to Petersons. They just weren’t—Anders.” Mom stops me before I can push my chair back and walk away from the table. “What happened to your hand?”

“Oh.” I hide the carpet-burned knuckles against my side. “I scraped it on the stage when we were loading up last night. No big deal.”

“You look tired,” says Mom. “Did you get enough sleep last night?”

I look past her at the old cuckoo clock with the pinecone pendulums that hangs on the kitchen wall. It’s almost nine-thirty. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You don’t think two shows a week will be too much for you?”

“No. I’m fine. Really.” I set my bowl in the sink. “I’m going over to Jezz’s before my lesson. That article is supposed to get posted this morning. We said we’d read it together.”

Mom’s face goes from worried to bright again. “Which article?”

“The one in Urban Planner. That arts magazine.”

Dad’s eyes are on his plate. “How are you going to get there?”

“. . . My car.”

“Your car? You mean the Nissan?” Dad says pointedly. “Your mom needs it for errands. I’m going to be changing the oil in the wagon today. It’s overdue. And it’s been awhile since you’ve filled the tank, by the way.”

There’s no use asking to take the truck. Dad’s let me drive his pickup twice in my life, always with him in the passenger seat, his work boots pressing phantom brake pedals the whole time.

“Fine,” I say from the kitchen doorway. “I’ll see if someone can pick me up.”

Mom says something to Dad as I leave the room, but I’m heading down the hall so fast that I can’t hear it.

Patrick pulls into the driveway half an hour later. The thing he drives and the thing my dad drives are both called trucks, but in the same way a champion German shepherd and a twenty-pound junkyard mutt are both called dogs. Patrick’s truck is mostly rust, with some black paint in between. Its prickly fabric seats are exploding with split seams and cigarette burns. The interior smells like oil, old coffee, cut grass, and feet.

“Thanks for driving all the way out here.” I lift Yvonne’s case into the cab. No way I’d let her slide around back there in the bed. “I’ll pay you back.”

“No problem,” he says.

Even though I know it is kind of a problem. Even though Patrick with his job making pizzas at Papa Julio’s doesn’t have much more money for gas than I do.