“Oh,” I said. “Well, then what’s she like?”

“Who?” asked Jasper.

“Your mom.”

Jasper shook her head. “Not crafty,” she said. She turned away, to reach up and touch a green fig. “This sure is a fruity neighborhood. There’s all kinds of stuff growing at the farm too. Strawberries and whatnot.”

“Yeah, but we aren’t supposed to pick any of that,” I said, scratching the back of my head. “Unless Farmer Red’s there and he offers. Like, if he has too many cucumbers or something, sometimes he’ll send me home with a few. But mostly he saves what he grows, I think maybe to sell at farmers markets around town.”

“I guess that makes sense,” said Jasper.

“Yeah.”

By that point we reached my house, so I turned and pointed. “This is me,” I said, starting up the driveway. Our house was brick with white trim and a big low front porch, like most of the houses in the neighborhood. The bushes in front were overgrown, and the grass was high and messy. I hadn’t noticed how bad it was until this very minute.

I opened the gate, and Jasper followed me into the backyard and through the side door into the kitchen.

“Oh! The air-conditioning feels so good in here,” she said when she stepped into the room. “It’s like walking into a refrigerator.”

“Yeah, my dad keeps it really cold,” I said. “He and Mom argue about it. She says it’s better for the environment to turn it off, and he says it’s better for their marriage to keep it going full blast.”

“Well, I feel a little bad for the environment,” said Jasper. “But I’m not complaining. It’s delicious in here.”

“Delicious,” I echoed. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Somehow, the strangeness of the whole morning hit me then, and I found myself staring at Jasper, at this girl I barely knew. She gripped her dripping bundle, in her pink teddy bear T-shirt and her flip-flops, in the middle of our kitchen, which still smelled like coffee and toast. The ghosts of breakfast.

“Okay, so, laundry,” I said, leading her straight through the kitchen and into the room we called “the office” because there happened to be a desk there. For months, the desk had been stacked with unopened tubes of Hanukkah wrapping paper that Mom had bought on clearance somewhere. But of course it wasn’t Hanukkah, so they just sat there on the desk, covered in shiny blue dreidels, collecting dust. “The washer and dryer are over here, in this closet. And here’s the detergent, and dryer sheets, and a basket. Sorry if it’s all a little messy right now.”

“You think this is messy?” Jasper set down her bundle and glanced around the room. “You should see where I live. This place is amazing.”