Kelly’s voice faded as her friend’s face changed. Melissa put the stringer in the grass and dropped the minnow bucket. Running to the tree, she put her hand on the trunk and leaned forward. She hadn’t had anything for lunch, so nothing came up but acid water, but her stomach clenched and she couldn’t stop the churning.

When she could finally stand, her hand still on the tree and her head spinning, she saw Kelly studying her.

“Something you ate?” Kelly said.

“Probably.”

Two hours later, as the downpour subsided, Melissa walked through the puddles along the street and into the pharmacy, shaking the water from her hair like a wet dog. She pulled a plastic bag from under her shirt and waited by the makeup until there was no line at the cash register and put the bag before a man she didn’t recognize. Then she stared at her hands and wondered if the man smelled the fish that lingered.

“What’s this?”

“I want to return it.”

He untied the bag and looked inside. “Got a receipt?”

She shook her head. “I just bought it a couple of weeks ago.”

“If you don’t have a receipt—”

“I don’t want cash. I just want store credit. To exchange it for something else.”

“Was there something wrong with it?”

“No. I never opened it.”

Before he could respond, she hurried to an aisle in the back by the pharmacy, found what she needed, and returned to the front. A woman the age of her mother stood at the register, leafing through dollar bills, a plastic rain bonnet on her head. A greeting card sat on the counter, and the woman handed the bills to the man and turned, spotting what Melissa held in her hands before she could hide it.

The woman looked up at Melissa, pursed her lips and shook her head, and took the greeting card and the receipt and left.

“I want to exchange it for this,” Melissa said, putting the pregnancy test kit beside the unused home perm box she’d bought. “I think they’re about the same price.”

The man stared at the two items before him as if he were trying to figure out some complicated mathematical theorem. Or was it a postulate? Melissa hadn’t done well in geometry and had opted for consumer math instead of algebra. Unless some miracle happened, she wasn’t going to college. And if you weren’t going to college, who needed algebra or calculus?

The man looked up at her again and started to say something but held back. When he’d done his calculation, he said, “You’re four dollars short.”

She dug in both pockets of her cutoffs. She knew there were no bills there, just coins. She placed eighty-seven cents on the counter. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“You’re still short.”