I only looked from the green house to Jasper and nodded. “Yeah, she’s a friend. But I think she’s on vacation right now.” My voice sounded funny coming out when I said that, sort of hoarse and quiet, so I cleared my throat. Then I turned to the house next door, and pointed. “But now, that house is pretty funny. The guys who live there—Ed and Johnny—they have a yard sale every Saturday, full of things like half-burned candles and old remote controls. There’s a bowl of batteries, but no way to know whether they’re dead or not. So much junk.”

If Jasper could tell that I was changing the subject, she didn’t say anything about it. She just said, “Every single week?”

“Yep!” I said. “I don’t even know where it all comes from? Maybe the house is just getting emptier and emptier, week by week. One day there won’t be anything left inside it, and then they’ll move away.”

“Weird,” said Jasper.

We started walking again, and I pointed out the dead-end alley where the basketball hoop was. But as we passed a big new house going up, its raw wood gleaming yellow in the sunlight, it was Jasper’s turn to point. “Whoa! Now, that’s a mansion, huh? Who has that much money? Can you even imagine living in a house like that?”

“It is pretty huge,” I said. “Hey, what if you were at one end of the house, and you had to pee, and the bathroom was at the other end? You might not make it, the place is so big.”

Jasper laughed. “It probably doesn’t matter. It probably has, like, seventeen bathrooms.”

“Good point,” I said. “Still, I bet it echoes.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, there’s a bunch of those being built now around here. My parents used to talk about it all the time, when rich people started moving into the neighborhood. It’s funny. They have these big lawns that none of them mow themselves.”

By that point, we were nearing my street, so I pointed out the fig tree in the middle of the roundabout. “We helped plant it,” I said. “When I was little.”

“Oh, figs,” said Jasper. “Are they ripe?”

I shook my head. “Not until July. I don’t think. Can’t remember for sure. One year we picked them and tried to make jam, but it was actually pretty gross. That’s the kind of thing my mom used to pretend to do—stuff like making jam or quilting. She’s awful at it all, and she doesn’t usually finish. Just buys whatever equipment she needs, and then it ends up in the garage. Does your mom do stuff like that? Crafty stuff?” I looked back at Jasper, but she had a vacant look on her face—like she was staring through me.

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”