“Really?” I looked from the cluttered desk to the overfull bookshelf and tried to see it that way.

I’d always liked our house fine, but it wasn’t the kind of house people usually complimented. Certainly not amazing. It was regular, a house house. It was true that we had a nice big back deck. And there was lots of strange art on the walls that my dad had made, or friends of his, back when he was young and trying to be an artist. I tried to see all of that now the way Jasper was seeing it. But the couch had cat claw marks Mom always covered with a blanket when people came over, and there were crayon scribbles on the wall from a long time ago that couldn’t be cleaned completely.

Back when she used to joke more, Mom would say that she preferred a relaxed lifestyle, that she didn’t ever want to feel like her house was too nice to put her feet up on the coffee table. That was funny to me, because feet or no feet, Mom was never really relaxed. She was always dashing somewhere in a hurry, and she usually had a list of fourteen things in her pocket that she needed to do that day and tell you about the minute you saw her. Mom stressed. But she was also kind of sloppy. I think relaxed just made her feel better about herself than sloppy.

“I think it’s beautiful,” said Jasper as she unpacked the sweatshirt and started tossing everything in the washer. “I like how every room is a different color. And the furniture is so old and wooden. Like in an antique store.” She pointed to a stack of old peach crates Dad had fastened together for shelving. “I love this.”

“Well, thanks, but this is nothing compared to some of my friends’ houses. They have pools, a few of them. There are some really rich kids at my school. You know, living in those mansions we saw.”

“Well, nobody I know has a pool,” said Jasper. She grinned and added, “Feel free to introduce me to your friends!”

“I guess they’re more just kids I know, not really friends,” I said honestly. Over the years, I’d gotten invited to a lot of birthday parties because of Tess. She just kind of knew everybody, and somehow she always sat at the center of the lunch table. I’d felt lucky to be her best friend. Popular by association.

“Anyway, you should see my place. This house is nice for sure.” Jasper slammed the door of the washer and turned it on. Then she spun around to look at me again, and I wasn’t sure what came next. The laundry would be in the washer for forty-two minutes, according to the green blinking digital numbers. And then the dryer. We had an hour or two, at least.